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Converting text layers into masks inside a script.
I’m trying to create a script that essentially does the same thing as right-clicking a text layer and clicking “Create Masks from Text”. I would like to do this in a script because I have to do this multiple times on text layers in different compositions. I also have to add a Stroke effect to the generated masks and animate it differently for each layer. I’m wondering how I accomplish that in a script. I couldn’t find anything in the scripting guide that showed how to do this. It may not even be possible but I figured that if it was, someone here could tell me how 🙂 Thanks in advance!
PS: If this is the wrong forum I am very sorry, I could not find a After Effects Scripting forum and thought that this was the closest thing.
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10 Replies
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This seems to work:
var myCommandId = app.findMenuCommandId(“Create Masks from Text”);
app.executeCommand(myCommandId);Dan
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Wonderful! Thanks a ton, if I may ask, where did you find that command? I don’t see it in the scripting guide but I have a feeling there are lots of things that are not included in that.
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I think it’s undocumented and I believe it was revealed in a post by the Adobe engineer that implemented scripting. Hard to say what else is in there. 🙂
Dan
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Is there a way to do this moving all the way through the project? For instance, I have a mac workstation and a pc farm. Because certain fonts don’t work on the farm, I need to outline all of the text in each composition of my current project.
I am thinking something like this
for(i=1;i<number of comps; i++){
for(o=1;o<number of layers in comp; o++){
if (o is instanceOf TextLayer){
var myCommandId = app.findMenuCommandId("Create Masks from Text");
app.executeCommand(myCommandId);
}
}
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In theory, something like that should work (although your outer loop would be searching through the project items looking for comps), but you might need AE CS6 because I think the comp will need to have focus for the menu command to work.
Dan
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Yeah it seems like there is no way to actually for AE to select each layer then run the command. Are you saying that Cs6 may fix this?
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One of the (very cool) CS6 scripting enhancements is control of the comp, footage, and layer viewers, which is the key piece to being able to solve your problem.
Dan
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Hey,
Not sure how to fix this error but when I run that script, I get an “app is not defined”.
Is this due to the changes in the script language? and if so would you know a fix to this?
Thanks
var myCommandId = app.findMenuCommandId("Create Masks from Text");
app.executeCommand(myCommandId); -
How are you running the script? It doesn’t sound like the script is targeting After Effects.
Dan
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I think you’d get that error if you tried to use that script as an expression. Is that what happened? If so, try running it as a script, from the File > Scripts > Run Script File menu, or from the ExtendScript Toolkit Editor.
Dan
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