April 07th 2019 08:00:19am

Update 8/16/2020: 2.5.1 bug fix released

Disorganized project files have bugged me for the longest time. Everyone has dealt with it at one point or another. Your co-worker is unorganized and brings assets into a project haphazardly, a client supplies you with a jumbled mess of a project as a starting point, an outside artist passes off their half done work over to you to finish, etc… While not everyone is messy with their projects, there is a large amount of disorganized users out there that could benefit from learning a little bit of organizational respect, for all our sakes.

Awhile back I had developed a script just for these people, actually for myself because of those people. It can be a very helpful tool. “Organize Project Assets” is an After Effects script I built to do a foundational cleanup of a project. It helps get your project file into, at the very least, a starting point to where you can better understand what is in the project and possibly find the main render comp faster.

It’s not super fancy, but it does put things in their place, literally. Precomps in a precomp folder, solids in a solid folder, and all footage into folders based on their file extension type. So all jpg’s go into a jpg folder, wav’s into an wav folder and so forth. Now if I can only write a script to translate their lack of naming conventions. Maybe someday I will be able to read minds, just maybe.

The script comes in two versions:

• Free: Organize Project Assets
• Paid: Organize Project Assets Pro

The difference between the two are as follows…

Free version
This is a standard script and has no dockable panel or interface. Just place this script in your After Effects “Scripts” folder, NOT the “ScriptUIPanels” folder. If you are an ft-Toolbar or KBar user, you can easily add a button and assign this script for quick access to launch it. The script should be compatible with CS3 or newer. Including the cloud versions of After Effects

The free version is a one trick pony. No frills, no fancy features(outside of the footage folders being dynamically created based on existing file extensions), it just straight organizes your project file one way.

• Comps
• Precomps
• Footage
• [file_extension_name like jpg]
• [file_extension_name like mov]
• [etc… folder names are dynamically created]
• Solids

Paid version
Organize Project Assets Pro brings tons of new features. The script is dockable and has KBar support. The core functionality of the original script is still available, in addition to customizing folder structures, and folder names. Presets can be saved so you can use your layout as a starting template for any new project with the click of a button.

Pro version compatibility:

• After Effects CC or newer

Features include:

• KBar support (3 different mode types)
• Launch your preset as folder template
• Launch your preset as folder template and organize assets into them
• Launch the full script with UI access as floating window
• Customize your folder names
• Build your own folder structures
• Extract current project folder structures for fast preset creation
• Assign folder asset type(s)
• Assign folder label color
• Sort footage by:
• Extension name (Option for lowercase or uppercase name)
• Date number
• Day number
• Framerate
• Month name
• Month number
• Year
• YYMMDD
• MMDDYY
• DDMMYY
• Save presets for easy one click use
• Delete/Modify presets (including the stock examples)
• Restore Stock Presets
• Will reset the stock values if their values have been altered.
• Will add missing stock presets back to list if name was altered.
• Option to restrict organizing process to only selected project items.
• Option to ignore selected project items during organizing process.
• Included sample stock presets from industry artists
• Classic preset (the original classic organization layout)
• Hotsauce_and_Whisky preset (contributed by James Archibald)
• Finalfinalusethisone (contributed by Harry Frank)
• LabelColors (example of label color tokens)
• MissingAndUnused (sorts missing and unused footage)
• MoFo_lders (contributed by John Filipkowski)
• SIMPLE (contributed by Ludwig Tomaschko)
• Minimized mode
• Portable preset file
• After Effects floating window and dockable panel support
• Language localization for German