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A
alexanderschmidt
Known Participant
July 28, 2023
Question

Consolidate / Merge certain duplicate compositions

  • July 28, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 1288 views

Hello,

I quite often use compositions in multiple projects and work paralell on those (f.i. templates, logo animations). So I'm frequently ending up cluttering my project files with duplicates of these compositions (and their nested precomps). I'm not feeling safe with automated tidy up solutions, as it is not always clear, what these tools keep and what they delete (including AE's own "consolidate footage items" function). Does anyone know a script or a plugin, that for example allows to select multiple compositions (or folders with compositions) and specify which compositions to keep and which to delete (after consolidation, of course)? Or can someone recommend a tool, that reliably does something similar?

 

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1 reply

Mylenium
Mylenium
Legend
July 28, 2023

I don't think anyone has really bothered. A script that can check these dependencies would be extremely complex and would need a ton of extra safeguards. That's really the crux of it. Even AE sometimes doesn't correctly know where and how often stuff is used and what the dependencies are if e.g. something is referenced in an effect, but not the timeline.

 

Mylenium

A
alexanderschmidtAuthor
Known Participant
August 6, 2023

Well, so I have to continue with the awkward process and consolidate the precompositions by hand. For the Solids, Nulls and Adjustment-Layers, that accumulate in the "Solids" folder, there is a free script at least. It's called "conSOLIDator" (https://fendrafx.com/utility/consolidator-after-effects-script/).

    Melanie Stirner
    Melanie Stirner
    Participating Frequently
    August 6, 2023

    Hi Alexander 🙂

    Regarding the Solids a.o. there's a tool from Battleaxe as well I discovered recently. Looks like it avoids from the very start to create solids and similar things in the file structure at all. So, if you work with it from the beginning on, you will probably not have to remove them.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1D_R83Slh4

    https://www.battleaxe.co/void

    Still don't know how to get rid of the rest, but have the same problem sometimes when using things multiple times. I came to the solution to keep only the absolutely needed things in a project, like for example a logo animation. When it comes to logo animation I also tend to have no links but to use only AE specific objects, like shape layers – so all I have to save in the end is that one or two comps, what will be imported in the end. Hope you know, what I mean.
    So, I work with some small animations like stars and dots I have saved as an AE preset es well. Here it's the same, I've deleted everything not needed and it's three comps in the end I will be importing to another AE file. I would not, for example, store the logo animation together with the stars in one file, but use multiple files to import.

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