How to batch export selectively...

[GM Rod]

Hey guys!

I've just bought a stream deck and of course, I want to make my own icons for it.

After making one, I had a thought.

It's an animated GIF.

The idea is to have a little shine go past the logo on the button every few seconds, it works perfectly.

So the question now is, how do I avoid doing it again from scratch for every single button?

The way I've done it is, there's two layers. One contains the button graphic, and the other is just the shiny animation and of course this one is the top layer in screen mode, etc.

What I want to do now is just import every other icon into AE, and export all of them in one fell swoop.

So it'd be one resulting animated GIF per layer, EXCEPT I need the first layer to always be in it too.

So each export would be like:

LAYER 1 - Shine
LAYER 2 - Icon

Next

LAYER 1 - Shine
LAYER 3 - Icon

So on and so forth.
Any ideas?

P.S.: I've included the one I made for reference. It also has Twitch stuff on it but that's easy, I can just copy the effects from this one and paste it to every other layer at once.

[Kyle Hamrick · Accepted solution]

You could probably craft a way to do this via scripting, but it would probably be a lot more work than just stepping through it.

If it were me, I'd:

• Make one comp, test & confirm it's what I want.
• Duplicate & rename until I've covered all the needed icons.
• Import all the other icons (prepped & sized consistently before import)
• Step through and replace the icons in the individual comps. (Alt-drag or use CTRL+ALT+/ hotkey) 
• Add all to Render Queue.

[Mylenium · Accepted solution]

This is even simpler than Mr. Hamrick actually explained. If you reverse the logic, you simply create the light sweep once as a pre-comp and slap it on top of the other comps which you could sort of auto-create by just dragging the prepped images onto the comp creation icon. If they are named correctly, you don't even need to change the auto-generated comp name. With continuous rasterization/ collapsed transformations the effects and blending modes would pass through, though that may require some restructuring in the sweep comp itself.

Mylenium

[GM Rod]

Right, awesome ideas guys!

But I'm not quite there yet, I don't think.

So far, I've done:

- Precomp light sweep

- Drag every image in there onto the new comp button, this successfully created a comp for every image already named correctly, amazing!

But, what now? I still have one comp on top that's the light sweep and all the other ones below. If I switch the visibility on/off for each one, it looks correct. But if I export like this, they will all come out separate, as in, I'll have one light sweep comp and every other comp will be by itself with no light sweep, yes?

[GM Rod]

I just feel like odds are, there is a script or plugin out there that does this. I'm sure someone else has had this need before.

It'd just need to export multiple files, one per layer, while offering the option to "lock" one or more that are on top and "blend" it with every single one below...

[GM Rod]

One way I've just thought of is, duplicate the light sweep X times for how many other layers I have, and pre-comp one copy of it with each of the other layers then just export all these comps... But this is still too tedious, right? There has to be a better way.

[Kyle Hamrick]

Scripts are good at doing one specific (usually repetitive) task really well. If someone else came across this exact need, and wrote a script to accomplish it, you're in luck! I don't intend this to be snarky, but for your use case, it would take less time to just do it the way we've explained than to keep explaining to us that an automated solution has to exist. If you needed hundreds of variations, yeah, it's probably worth writing a script for. Sometimes making a few dozen variations of a thing just involves a little bit of tedium. Turn on some music you like, put your brain into assembly-line mode for 10 minutes, and you'll be done. 

To export each variation of your button, you need different compositions for each one - so they'll each have unique names. Mylenium is correct that if your button designs are already named (and sized) correctly, you could save some time in naming by dropping them into comps directly - though it sounds like you'll be copy/pasting effects and such if you take this route. Since we're not looking at your project, it's hard to advise which approach is better. 

However you choose to approach it, your process is this:
1. Make the thing.

2. Make variations of the thing in different compositions, each named correctly.

3. Export them all.

[GM Rod]

I might've actually found something that does this.
However, it's a LOT more comprehensive than just this, and it's $30.

So yes, I'll do the "manual" solution suggested, thank you!