After Effects ExtendScript Training: Ep. 18 Part 1

August 03rd 2012 08:00:41am

In this episode:

  • Build a dockable GUI.

Welcome to episode 18 of the After Effects ExtendScript Training series. This week We tackle our fourth full length script and it will involve roughly 260 lines of code.

Today we will build a functioning dockable GUI that contains a button that launches our process to search for all effects plugins applied to our layers, then sorts the resulting data and removes duplicate info from our results, then populates that data into a two column listbox. We will also have a button that will easily save that final data to a text file for offsite review or handoff to a third party.

Four completely new functions will need to be created as well as modifying some previous functions we’ve made. After this episode, you’ll have reusable functions that grab all effects that have been applied to layers in your project, populates a multi-column listbox, strips the file extension and gives you only the file name, sorts and removes duplicate array info, and more.

We will also be dealing with assigning onClick events for our buttons. I did my best to shorten this tutorial, but it still came in at just under two hours long, so there is a lot to go over here. Let’s do this.

Checkout more:
Free Function Friday Ep.21 – collectCompCameras
Free Function Friday Ep.39 – setMaskPaths
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X-Particles Tangential Advection
Houdini | Noise