AE Scripting! Pseudo Effect – Disable Properties

[Dan Ebberts]

I don’t believe there’s any way to do that with a Pseudo Effect. Plugins have access to the whole API, but Pseudo Effects have very limited control over the UI.

[Brayden Blythe]

Thanks for the insight Dan.

[Dan Ebberts]

By the way, if you were willing to ease into plugin development, creating a plugin that just provides effect controls (no image processing) is a relatively simple way to start.

[Brayden Blythe]

Good to know, Dan.

For context, I’m building a text animation script. The script itself is nothing fancy- it just creates some expression selectors on the active text layer and applies expressions that are linked to the Pseudo Effect. No image processing. The Pseudo Effect has dozens of different properties, but only a few are relevant based on which dropdown item is active. Being able to disable the ones that are not active would provide so much clarity to the user.

Would this be feasible (and simple) with a plugin- or does that seem like it would be overkill?

[Dan Ebberts]

If you’ve never developed a plugin, the first one will be a bit of work, just getting familiar with the SDK and the whole process. Not messing with the pixels makes it considerably simpler and would be something I’d consider if you plan on doing this often, where you need complex controls where the state of one control needs to enable/disable other controls. Personally, I try to get by with Pseudo Effects whenever possible and only rarely feel the need crank out a controls-only plugin.

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Another options is to use a ScriptUI which does support graying our controls that are disabled.
HTH