• Adobe After Effects

  Is there anyway to get AME to inherit the bg colour of a comp from AE

  Posted by Sean Cox on March 7, 2017 at 3:25 pm

  Hello!

  So, I’m on a job where I have a huge number of png sequences with alpha channels. I have to render each of these as a new png sequence with a gray background. If I had less to do, I would bring them into After Effects, stick a solid behind them and be done with it, but I have hundreds of these to render. So essentially I’m wondering if there’s any way to either:

  Get AME to inherit the bg colour from the comp settings in AE (Which for all my looking around I can’t seem to be able to find a method for)

  or

  Maybe locate some sort of script which allows me to generate a solid of the same colour as the background of multiple comps at once.

  If anyone can help at all or has any ideas I’d hugely appreciate it. Don’t really fancy doing them all one by one!

  Thanks,

  Sean

  Walter Soyka replied 9 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Walter Soyka

  March 7, 2017 at 3:48 pm

  It cannot be done. You’ll have to add solids.

  Walter Soyka
  Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
  Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
  @keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]
• 

  Walter Soyka

  March 7, 2017 at 4:55 pm

  [Dave LaRonde] “Sometimes I don’t get peoples’ obsessions with automation.”

  I love automation. I believe computers should do repetitive things so I don’t have to… but I agree 100% that oftentimes, elbow grease is the fastest solution.

  All that said, here’s a script that adds a comp-sized solid that matches the background color of each selected comp in a project:

  // add a background-colored, comp-sized solid to every selected comp in the project

  app.beginUndoGroup("Solids... solids everywhere!");

  for (i = 0; i < app.project.selection.length; i++) {
  if (app.project.selection[i] instanceof CompItem) {
  comp = app.project.selection[i];
  solid = comp.layers.addSolid(comp.bgColor, comp.name + " BKG Solid", comp.width, comp.height, comp.pixelAspect);
  if (comp.numLayers > 1) solid.moveAfter(comp.layers[comp.numLayers]);
  }
  }

  app.endUndoGroup();

  Copy and paste that into a text editor, then save it as something like “Add BKG Solids.jsx”.

  To use it, select the comps you want to add the background solid to, then invoke the script from the File > Scripts > Run script file… menu.

  Walter Soyka
  Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
  Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
  @keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

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