File "New Comp from Character Animator Recording.jsx" mentioned in docs is missing from installation

[alank99101739]

The docs in Bring your 2D characters to life | mentions "New Comp from Character Animator Recording.jsx" as the second way (other than dynamic linking) to include exported PNGs from Character Animator into AE, but I cannot find this script on my installation. Is it still supported? Or is dynamic linking the only way to go?

From some crude experiments, I don't think Dynamic Linking is the same as dragging the PNG files across. Here is what I did. I have a character scene (around 10 seconds long). I preview in CH and it plays full speed (very minor jitter). I then create a new AE project and drag the Scene from the CH UI over to the new AE project. It sets up dynamic linking. I then right click and "New Comp from selection". I then preview the new comp. You can see it take 1 second per frame. The computer is 100% CPU, 0% disk. 3G free RAM. At the end of 12 frames x 10 seconds = 120 seconds I can now preview in AE at full speed (I have made zero changes in AE - just dragged it across). The disk starts going at 100% with 0% CPU. It seems like AE computed everything in memory, then is writing the results to disk as a cache. After a while the disk stops.

Looking for recently modified files, I can see lots of PNG files holding the different body parts newly created - not full screens that I can see. There are lots of .aecache files (which are quite big) also created. I am therefore guessing that AE is animating the individual body part images(?) which may mean that dragging over PNG files will probably be faster than Dynamic Linking as AE won't try to rerender everything. The negative is you have to manually export the PNG sequence each time you make a change in CH.

All of the latter part is just to say there may still be reason to have the "New Comp from Character Animator Recording.jsx" file included, so people can choose which way to go. I am using Dynamic linking, but the x12 delay in rendering is painful - it seems to need to rerender more often than I expect (but I have not collected proof yet).

[Post Bail Studio]

Same here! Can someone that has it just upload it and post a link?

On PC, it should be here:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC 2018\Support Files\Scripts\

[ILJI]

Don't know, if this is the latest version. It's from April this year.

Dropbox - New Comp from Character Animator Recording.jsx

[Post Bail Studio]

Thank you very much for this ILJI!

[AlexMcMilo]

Do you still have the script file?

[ArtLone · Accepted solution]

Since the last After Effects updates, they have removed this script. It is much more flexible to import puppets as puppets so you can tweak them in after effects. The more popular and easier option for puppets which you do not wish to edit is importing a transparent video file into After. Of course, as ILJI pointed, the old script is still available to download

[alank99101739]

Thank you.

Just as feedback, *on my project and hardware* the performance of puppet based imports has led me to the following.

1. Try to do as much as possible in Ch and export each scene as a video file to drop into Pr - very fast in Pr to stich them into the final movie.
2. Export as PNG sequence if you need to do work in After Effects (using the script) - it gives reasonable performance (x5 slower?) but is sometimes necessary as exporting PNGs preserves transparency information (I have not worked out how to export a video with transparency preserved - I would do that if I could)
3. Import puppet as absolute last resort via dynamic linking into AE (x50 slower? Can wait a minute for a single frame to appear in AE before can layer effects etc on top). Makes working out the effects in AE like pans and timing very painful.

Importing the AE compositions via dynamic linking into Pr then adds to the performance problems as extra overhead is added again.  (Note: Dynamic linking from Illustrator to Ch works nicely.)

So while the Puppet linking is very nice, something about my setup makes it excruciatingly slow to the point of being unusable. I have to “render” the imported clip in advance to get anywhere (go grab lunch), then any change in the imported code invalidates the cache so do it all again. Exporting PNG sequences was a workable middle ground of functionality and performance, and I controlled when the cache was invalidated. I may be doing something wrong, but no idea what. Basically the PNG sequence importing made AE usable with Ch for me. Dynamically linking the Ch scene into AE was unusable performance wize. I have moved as many camera pans, gave up on blur effects etc, and just do as much as possible in Ch now and have been a lot more productive.

Note: My artwork was drawn with Adobe Draw on iPad, so has lots of strokes and points on each stroke - probably a lot more detailed than if you just drew it in Illustrator directly. (I should try the other way as a comparison I guess.)

Note: my laptop is a 2017 Microsoft Surface Pro 4, 2 core i7, 16GB ram, minimal GPU. I could believe it is a combination of poor laptop for graphics + overly complex artwork that is slowing it down.

[ArtLone]

Hey again. I did half of my puppets on Adobe draw on my note pro 12 (For some reason, I find it even more fu than my cintiq, probably cause of weight and portability). I always have the habit of importing back to my laptop, since I thought the less layers I have, the less confused Im going to get (and adobe draw makes a lot of layers). Yeesh! Puppet exporting is, indeed really slow, even though it was made to replace exporting png sequences. Haven't got to that part, but I'll update you on performance with dynamic link (Macbook Pro, don't fail me now!) Surface laptops do tend to get a bit slow (since its a dual core) and generally because it was designed for moderate users. Now that you mention it, I'll probably also have to export a PNG sequence as well, or do some cutting in After fx (a 2nd character appearing through doors is needed).

[alank99101739]

Thanks @ArtLone. "The more popular and easier option for puppets which you do not wish to edit is importing a transparent video file into After" - sorry, just re-read this. I am on Windows - I cannot find a video file format with transparency support - only "sequences" of single frame files (like PNG files). I suspect video will be faster than image sequences as it reduces the stress on the file system (does not have to open a new file per frame, and you can get better compression across frame boundaries to reduce total disk I/O).

But the only mention I can find of a video format with an Alpha channel on Windows is the Lagarith encoder, and when I tried RGBA and loaded the result into Premier Pro, the alpha channel did not work. The only way I can get transparency working is with sequences (like PNG file sequences).

Is there a way to get a transparent video file? Or did you mean the "sequences" support?