What should I use to create ui for a AEGP plugin in mac

[Zhiqiang_Li]

Hey there,

     I'm new to plugin development, but I been doing script development for quite a long time though. I'm tring to develop a AEGP plugin. I'm going over  the "Panelator" example project(from AE CC SDK), but I don't know how to create ui stuff for the plugin panel.

     The example project doesn't have any example code for doing this on a mac computer, I found the examle code for windows though.

     So, can someone generously tell me how to do this? Should I do it with cocoa? But from what I understand, I can only use Objective-C to write cocoa ui.

     Thank you very much!!!!

[Zhiqing_Li]

Looks like nobody want to answer my silly question .  But I did find out that mac has a carbon framework for ui drawing? Is this the answer?

[Zac Lam · Accepted solution]

Hi Zhiqing Li,

We just announced in the next major update to AE CC, that HTML5 panels will be supported:

http://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2014/04/new-changed-after-effects-cc-2014.html

This will allow you to build the UI using HTML5, and use your scripts for driving AE.  This is quite a bit easier than using Cocoa for building panel UI.  Thoughts?

[Zhiqing_Li]

Hi Zac Lam,

     This is a very exciting new feature!!! I been dreaming about this for quiet a long time!

     But from the feature announcement page, looks like this great new feature is only available for scripting. it that right? or is it also available for plugin development?

Thanks

Zhiqiang Li

[Zac Lam]

You're correct that HTML5 panels will use scripting and not plug-ins.  Since the scripting support in AE is so broad, scripting functions can accomplish much of what is made available to plug-ins with the AEGP API.  In addition, since there are ways for plug-ins and scripts to communicate, there may be some creative ways to build something that uses both.

[Zhiqiang_Li]

Hi Zac, I know you are busy, but I really want to know a little more about the html ui(cause it's very exciting). Will it support svg and canvas? how about webgl?

Biiiiiiig thanks !

[Zac Lam]

> Will it support svg and canvas? how about webgl?

I believe so, and see those working in the build on my machine, but I will check with others to make sure there are no gotchas.

Also, our HTML5 panel support in this next major version is based on the Chromium open-source project.

[Zhiqing_Li]

Hi Zac Lam,

     Thanks for your info! If the html5 panel uses Chromium, then I think there will be no trouble getting canvas and webGL running.

     By the way, do you think you can show me a small screenshot of the html5 panel? 🙂