Put AfterEffects Layers in Folders instead of PreComps

[StephenAymond]

Love your stuff, Adobe. But when are you going to give AfterEffects the option to put layers inside of folders instead of pre-comps? It would help tremendously in keeping the timeline organized.

[Rick Gerard]

I think you're asking to have the ability to expand pre-comps in the same timeline. Pre-composing is not just an organizational tool, it's a way to re-order the rendering of the pixels in the frame so you can do things you couldn't do before.

[StephenAymond]

No, I recognize expanding pre-comps would be impossible. I'm just asking to have some layers hidden away in a folder without having to scroll through 70 layers to find what I need on the timeline. Imagine if the Project Window didn't have folders. It'd be a nightmare.

[Taverino]

Like "groups" in C4D? Very powerful organizational tool. I like Smoovies suggestion. I often end up precomposing just for grouping a bunch of related layers for the reasons cited by Smoovies. This adds unnecessary complexity to the Project panel

[StephenAymond]

Taverino. I'm going to click the link above and request this feature. You should do the same.

[Taverino]

Before I request a new feature, I want to see how others solve this problem. My current system, which leaves a lot to be desired, is to create a text guide layer above the layers I want to group. I then "shy" the "grouped" layers. The text in the guide layer serves to document the underlying layers. Surely someone here has a better way. 

[Todd_Kopriva]

I use Zorro:

http://aescripts.com/zorro-the-layer-tagger/

I address this feature request here, by the way:

http://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2012/12/top-feature-requests-for-after-effects-in-2012.html

I have hope that we will be able to do this somewhat soon. More requests that give details will help to raise the priority and focus the effort.

[Snakedogman]

Seeing as it's now 2016 and we still can't do this, I expect this will never happen (hope to be proven wrong though).

In the meantime, this is quite handy:

GM FoldLayers on Vimeo

[Roei Tzoref]

and there's also this: Layer Groups 2 - aescripts + aeplugins - aescripts.com

[Todd_Kopriva]

Submit feature requests here:

http://www.adobe.com/go/wish