Feature request: ability to see comps to which a property has been added as an Essential Property

[Aaron Cobb]

More and more I'm finding myself working on templates from other design groups that make use of Essential Properties. Unfortunately a lot of these templates use the EP's in ways that run counter to good versioning practices (please stop building workflows that use the Essential Graphics panel in AE for versioning, people!).

In trying to restructure these projects for a better workflow, I need to trace just where properties are used as Essential Properties. Unfortunately the only way I can see to do this is to go through comps one-by-one in the EG panel and then use the "Reveal in timeline" feature. It would be great if I could right-click on a property and see a list of comps that have that property as an essential property. It might also be useful to have a way to see a table of all the EP's in the project, including their source layers and containing comps, along with the comps the EP's are attached to. If these Essential Property links were exposed in the scripting API I'd gladly write a script to do this, but sadly, they are not. But the aforementioned pop-up menu would be a good start in helping to untangle these projects.

[Roland Kahlenberg -]

It's a pain for sure. What I do is double-click on a property in the EGP - this sends the UI to the property in the Timeline. It's much quicker than right-clicking and then selecting from a displayed list. I'm also surprised scripting doesn't support this because AFAIK you can send props to the EGP via scripting. Perhaps you'll want to get in touch with Alex White of AeViewer and Ae2MoGRT to see if he can look into this, to add it as a feature to his excellent, related, products.

[Rick Gerard]

I use the Composition/Composition Flowchart menu all the time to drill down through complex compositions. Expanding the flowchart will reveal all layers, all effects, and all source files in a master comp. Double-clicking on any of the little squares in the comp will open up the nested comp and select the layer. It's a great time saver.

[Aaron Cobb]

As far as I know the flow chart only shows links between comps (and footage) via layers. It doesn't show how essential properties are linked from properties to comps. That is what I am looking for.