Creating Multiple Variations of the Same Animation - Scripting outside of AE?

[stnesx24]

I am experimenting with creating multiple variations of the same animation in After Effects- where all that changes from variation to variation is 1 image and 1 color.

I have the project set up so that all colors within are pick-whipped to a Color Control effect layer, which works well. I am aware that I could write a script inside AE that could set up a nice GUI interface to make this process even easier.

However, is there an option to do this OUTSIDE of After Effects? So for example, I could design a web interface, where I could select the color for the control layer, and then it would create an AEP, or even better, tell AE to render the anination with that color?

[Justin Taylor-Hyper Brew]

There's a bunch of ways to approach procedural projects like this. Here's a few of the most comment from simplest to most complex:

Essential Graphics / Master Properties:

Create a comp with those variable colors/text elements and use the Essential Graphics panel to add them to that comp's master properties. Now you can use the comp in multiple instances but with unique values. This requires a user to use the AE user interface.

Reference External JSON/JS file:

You can write expressions to reference an external sidecar JSON or JavaScript file that contains your variable info. You'd then have an external script like a BAT file on Windows or Shell Script on Mac create those JSON files, and then queue up the comp for rendering with the aerender command-line tool. This way you can automate the procedural process of creating the JSON file, duplicating the project, and queueing the project for rendering.

Web Procedural Rendering:

You can create a script or CEP extension (I would recommend an extension for this) that listens for changes on a web database or Spreadsheet and then creates and renders projects as needed as new data is added. When new data is received, the script can open the template project, update the variables, save out a new project, and then open and render or queue that comp for rendering.

If you're looking for an out-of-the-box solution for this, check out Templater.

[Dave Merchant]

Assuming the image dimensions and position don't need tweaking, then you can simply replace the external file on disc and re-open the AEP file. After Effects doesn't care if the contents of a file are different when it opens a project, only the filename matters. You could also create a simple text file (included within the project as a data object) and have your scripted controller read it to get the color values.