Working with After Effects, CC Libraries, and a team of editors

[willh81328174]

I'm working in After Effects with another motion artist and several editors. We're working together on a Google Drive and store all of our files there so everyone can access every project. 

I'm taking brand guidelines and creating CC Libraries for each brand. Inside the CC Library are vector logos in .ai format. 

When I drag one of these logos from the library to my After Effects project, the .ai file is saved to my local machine rather than the project folder on the network drive. This means when someone else on another machine opens the project, the logo is not available to them.

I want to be able to define where assets from CC Libraries are saved to so I can include them in the project folder on the network drive. This is not possible, am I right?

[Warren Heaton]

Google Drive and your Creative Cloud storage work almost identically, the main difference being that you can view the contents of your Creative Cloud storage via the Libraries panel in AE, PR, PS, AI, etc. as well as add it to a project or document from there (which downloads it to the local storage location).  

You probably want to pick one or the other rather than try to use both.

If you stick with Google Drive, make sure you're all syncing the same Google Drive folders to your local storage locations.  If you're using Google Drive Sync, that may be a dead end.

If you stick with CC Libraries, you would want to use the Share function in the Libraries panel to make brand guidelines and content available.

You mentioned a network drive.  Assuming this is storage configured for video post production (like a SAN), you could just save the files there and skip Google Drive and CC Libraries entirely.  If it's a network drive being used as the sync location for either Google Drive or Creative Cloud storage, that probably will not work as expected as you are mixing cloud user acocunts with local area network user accounts.

[willh81328174]

Thanks for the reply, Warren. I understand your suggested workflows, the issue I'm facing is with this piece of what you pointed out-- "(which downloads it to the local storage location)". The local storage location isn't something I can change, like a scratch disk in Premiere, right? 

This is the same scenario but without the cloud storage component:

I am working on one computer with an external hard drive connected. I have a CC Library where I've added a .ai logo. I'm working in an After Effects project that is saved on the external hard drive and I drag and drop the .ai file from the library panel in After Effects into my comp. I save my project file and eject the hard drive. 

Someone else takes the hard drive and opens the After Effects project on their computer. The .ai file is no longer linked in the comp, it's missing because the .ai file, when it was dragged from the library to the comp, was stored on my computer's Document's folder rather than the external hard drive. I have to gather the asset manually or do a Collect Files... to keep everything together. I can't just tell CC Libraries to copy anything coming from the Library panel to my project folder on the external hard drive, right? 

[Warren Heaton]

Yes, it would be great if After Effects had options like Same as Project, Documens or Custom for CC Libraries Downloads.  Are you familiar with the Adobe User-Voice page for After Effects?  I just posted this as a feature request, but it'll need a lot of votes if it's going to get considered by the AE team.

You're probably already aware that you need to make sure that the next person to get the drive also has access to the CC Library that contians the logo or you'll have to copy it the hard drive prior to importing it to the AE project to begin with.  

Most of the facilities that I feelance for have a pre-set folder structure that's used at the start of any project with a sub-folder that contains shared assets (usually logos).  Maybe that's an approach you can use, distributing the pre-set folder structure via Google Drive.

[willh81328174]

Thanks for your help, Warren, I appreciate it!