AFTER EFFECTS WISHLIST

[Andrew Yoole]

What features would you like to see implemented in After Effects? New ideas for plugins? Interface changes? Post 'em here!

Let's keep bug identification to individual posts, as these will probably be addressed more readily. Let's use this thread for specific ideas about ways that AE can be improved and expanded.

These Forums are for users, not Adobe employees, so don't forget to also fill in an Adobe feature request form.

To view the Wish List posts prior to September 2009, look here.

[TheFosterHouse]

No argument intended Rick. Eventually, AE is going to have to move past 2.5D compositing and use a real 3D workspace. There is a whole world of composite tools that open up once that happens.

Thanks for the link to scopo gigo, I'll check taht out. Hopefully, Speed Grade will get here before we know it. Or beter yet, hopefully Adobe will add Speed Grade funtionality in AE. I just hope they support my Euphonics MC Color!

[Dan Ramirez]

• Parenting that doesn't change the values of the child.

Do this:

hold down option key, and pick parent

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If you think something is missing from AE. Try modifier keys.

[TheFosterHouse]

Dan Ramirez wrote:

• Parenting that doesn't change the values of the child.

Do this:

hold down option key, and pick parent

---

If you think something is missing from AE. Try modifier keys.

That doesn't do what I'm describing. I moves the child to a posittion relative to the parent layer by the amount of the original values.

[Bob Currier]

I'm responding to the all caps and exclamation points you used for "SCOPES!!!!!!!". I gather you want them rather badly.

If Color Finesse doesn't count (presumably because the scopes are on a different screen), then what about other third-party plug-ins? Namely our own Test Gear product. It's a pretty inexpensive way to add scopes in proper AE panes that you can dock or float in the AE UI just as you would expect.

Is it just an aversion to spending any money at all? Or is there some feature/capability Test Gear doesn't give you?

I'm asking in all seriousness.

(On another thread someone said they'd "kill" to get scopes in AE. But they refused to spend $95. I can't say I understood the logic of that, but maybe life is just cheap in the motion graphics business.)

Bob Currier

Synthetic Aperture

[John Stanowski]

I seem to recall waiting forever for Test Gear to update so that I could use your scopes with AE CS5. I might have some details wrong because I don't really keep track. I just remember constantly checking to see if I could use Test Gear again after upgrading AE. It took almost half an AE cycle for it to show up. It just makes sense that AE should have its own scopes, nice, though SynAp's are.

[Andy_Bay]

I would rework the whole "save" consept to something like this:

Automatically save every step the user makes. Also save the undo history on a separate file on hard disk (not just in ram).

Benefits:

-User never has to worry about saving

-Crashes never result in lost work

-Undo history is available always, not just during the same session

[Navarro_Parker]

Andy, that sounds a lot like the Versions feature of Mac OS X Lion, except it makes a version for each operation you perform. The cool thing about versions is that it only saves the difference between the old and new version, so it's pretty lightweight as far as disk I/O goes. (And probably imperceivable if using a SSD.) If AE went entirely to an XML-based .AEP, it would be pretty simple to implement, I would think.

[TheFosterHouse]

hey Andy, I like your idea of the undo history being saved to disk in addition to RAM. not sure how that would effect performance, though. The Version feature (Like OS X Lion) might be great for word processing, but I'm not sure if it's best suited for programs like AE. I had a project that with incremented saved project plus the auto-saved projects, the total size of my Comps folder was over 40Gb in size. You could imaging how much space would be taken up if it saved everything that I had done.

[PFuerst]

- A few months ago gridiron stopped the develpmonent of nucleo pro. It had really nice features like constantly filling the cache so that you could play back the timeline a lot faster. It would be really great if AE would include those features . I think it makes a lot of sense because our computers constantly get faster so we would benefit from those features.

-Another feature we really need is a per vertex mask feather option. I know there is a plug in out there and you could achive this with mocha but thats not always an option to use. Please add those necessary features. It would help so many people with their daily work. It's like scopes you really need them but After Effects lacks those features way too long.

But never the less. You guys are great. Keep up the good work. Can't wait to see what you come up with next. 🙂

[jahesscreen]

- the ability to fade in / fade out transfer modes (if this is possible)

[Rick Gerard]

jahesscreen wrote:

- the ability to fade in / fade out transfer modes (if this is possible)

Duplicate the layer with the transfer mode you want to use, set the top duplicate's transfer mode to alpha add, set the bottom copy's transfer mode to the desired mode (add for example), then animate transparency of the top copy.

[jeromeOlivier]

I haven't read through every post and I'm sure this has already been mentioned, but wanted to include myself for these:

1. native 3D extrusion -- especially for text.  I think this is long overdue.

2. shadow color.  We can adjust the color of a light, but why not its shadow as well?

3. light color fall off.  Much like light shadow color, but the ability to apply a gradient to a light's color and create varying colors based on the distance an object is to the light source.

Best of luck to the software development team on future releases of AE.

[jahesscreen]

4.: White Balance Effect like in CameraRaw

[TheFosterHouse]

Rework how Dynamic Link creates a comp in AE to give more control to the user:

I don't like how Dynamic Link trims the footage and places it in a comp at 0:00:00:00. I'd like the option to have a "Leave all Attributes" style of comp creation, where it creates a comp the same length as the original footage, trims the footage and work area to the the edits in Premiere with user specified handles (in seconds or frames), does NOT trim the comp to the work area, and places comp markers or layer markers on the actual in and out points specified in Premiere. I Like having a comp where the footage and the comp have the same timecode relationship which makes it so much easier to find, perform and track changes.

[Todd_Kopriva]

I just wrote up a summary of the top feature requests that we've gotten for the past year or so, with commentary on ....

[Constant Production]

CUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTSCUDA GPU ACCELERATION FOR ALL GRAPHIC & EFFECTS

That's all I have to say.

There's no reason having processor and RAM doing work with something graphical when there's a graphics card with a lot of power stuck in there with them. Make the processors and RAM deal with other calculations and let all the effects and pixels render with CUDA. If there where no change to AE what so ever from 5.5 except this type of acceleration I would be happy for a long time.

If not, then please make the engine better so that more processors can work with parts of the frame divided, like Nuke does.

There's a lot that could be done with speed enhancements in AE and all the other shortcomings with certain tools and a like are really just minor updates compared to this. This would change every process in AE making everything better.

[jahesscreen]

1.: select multiple layers and change the expressions of ALL OF THEM simultaneously!

2.: use e.g. an null object as a "master expression object" for other layers so you can use for several layers the expression of the null.

3.: same as 2. for other atributes like layer styles (so that you can change the look auf maybe 300 layers by just changing one layer. A Slider Expression would work, but it`s really inconvenient

3.: Link text objects to a .txt File (to do an animation with hundreds of words without typing each of them with the text tool)

[prowl]

1. Agree.  AE should have a referenced expression window...  Create and manage all you expressions in one place.  Like Flash with it's Actionscript window.  You can edit Any expression anywhere within the project in one place. AND Apply to an object as a function.  Control any aspect of an element from one function.

2. Well you can use the picker to point from any / all elements, say transform to the Null transform - you can link as many as you like.  Or jsut parent it and it will copy all the Transforms - but still not ideal.

3. http://aescripts.com/compsfromspreadsheet/

[jahesscreen]

4.: Inner/Outer Masksplines for a better feather-control (Start/End of the feathering)

[Arivl]

I'd love an option appended to all AE filters to constrain the application of the filter with a mask.  That is, to apply the filter only to the area within a user-selectable (and featherable) mask.

In its simplest application, it would simply be a dropdown menu and an invert checkbox.  As a bonus, it could have an additional option:  "Link Mask Density to:" and then a dropdown menu to select one of the filter's parameters.

Extraordinarly helpful applications of this feature would be things like roughen edges for compositing (Link mask density to Edge Sharpness).

[TimeRemapper]

This has been submitted through the standard request form, but just to throw it out there again:

• title = "Smart Key Copy/Paste"
• functionality =  If the user has multiple keyframes selected across multiple layers and chooses to "copy" them, then moves the CTI to a different point in time and chooses to "paste" them, the keyframes will be copied and pasted, not the layers themselves.
• reason = this would speed up workflow considerably.

[jahesscreen]

• Copy Keyframes with STRG+Drag`n`Drop to another frame

[jahesscreen]

1.: Change the value of multiply identical keyframes with a slider control of an "Controller Layer"

     Let`s say you have Layer A and Layer B. Both of them with two identical opacity-keyframes (key1 and key2). The only difference is: They are delayed in time.

     With a seperate layer you could now change the value of key2 of ALL layers (no matter you have just 2 or 200 layers), maybe with a slider

2.: Link keyframes of different layers to a "keyframe group". Select the group and all of those keyframes are selected, too.

Or ist this already implemented?

[Shrunken]

When collecting files, I'd like to have an option to collect selective files.(same with premiere)  I often work with a lot of the same large video files and don't need to back them up with every single project.  I'm typing this as AE is collecting 101GB of footage, 90+GB will be deleted when I'm finished...

[Guest]

Hi I am currently using AECS5.5 for my animatic and animation and find it so useful for animating backgrounds and love using the software. However it is not as good at animating characters and is quite time consuming. I would like to see Adobe add some good animation tools like bone rigging tools and more animation tools in the future. Much like Toon Boom and Anime Studio Pro. I also think the expressions could be made more simple as I do not understand it at all or how to use the camera, so perhaps a simpler way of using it which is more intuitive.