Location of panel for Logs & Commands in After Effects

Report · Jul 06, 2021

I remember stumbling across this panel while scripting that showed logs of things happening in real time inside of After Effects. We were also able to type in commands that told AE to do things. Its appearance was sort of a dark grey background with a small bar at the bottom & no auto-complete for anything typed in it.

It feels like I'm hallucinating it honestly. I've looked online & failed to find a screenshot of it. I've asked around & no one seems to have heard of it before. I've looked through every dropdown, extension, & ounce of sanity I could find too. I'm using the same machine & environment as before so it was highly unlikely it's something I forgot to install either.

Example log entries would be something like this when I would unminimize AE:

<5992> <ALOG> <5> EGG IEggApp Done.
<5992> <ALOG> <5> DynamicLinkPlugin SuspendApp 
<5992> <ALOG> <5> DynamicLinkPlugin ResumeApp 
<5992> <ALOG> <5> EGG ParseClipboard Begin - ParseClipboard.
<5992> <ALOG> <5> EGG ParseClipboard End - ParseClipboard.

Example commands would be something like this:

script do "var a = 1"

(I don't remember the specific syntax, but it's close. There was a help command as well.)

Any help would be appreciated.

Report · Jul 06, 2021

The debug panel can only be enabled in some internal builds or Beta releases, if the developers decide to do so.

Mylenium

Report · Jul 06, 2021

Ah I see, that's interesting. The thing is though, I've managed to get it up before on my installation but don't remember how. Could there a possibility that there are some flags or run arguments to use it regardless?

Report · Jul 06, 2021

There is a hack where you can place a dummy debug log file into the user directory and enable the panel via some shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F1 or something), but even that does not work with every build.

Mylenium

Report · Jul 06, 2021

Damn that sounds awesome actually. Can't seem to find anything about it anywhere too though which is a bummer, I guess I'll have to find another way to do quick scripting.

Thanks for the help!