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Null Object 2.0
This post is more a suggestion than asking for a solution.
I often come to a situation where my compositions begin to be full of layers. Yes, I can precompose to make it all tidy but most of the times this solution requires A LOT of time. Mainly because when I precompose because a higher number of layers I have to “clone” all the movements of the camera in the new composition in order to keep the 3D depth movement between the layers that weren’t previously precomposed. And when I have to move elements or change the camera movements it becomes a nightmare. Specially with more than one precomp in the same situation.
The other solution would be parenting to a null but then it wouldn’t reduce the number of visible layers (the shy button should be handy but for the entire compo, not for a selected group of layers) and you cannot drop an effect that affects only parented layers (parenting an adjustment layer doesn’t solve the problem since the effect would affect all the unparented layers layers below)
In few words, null has the advantages that precomp hasn’t and all the disadvantages as well, and viceversa.
This could be easily solved using an evolved null object or a new grouping element. As I see it, it would be like a null object, you could animate its properties and drop effects on it and that would affect the parented layers only. In addition it would have te hability to collapse all parented layers making them disappear from composition and those layers wouldn’t have to be positioned in order (as you do when parenting to a null).
This would be a powerful and easy way to keep layers in the same 3D space and making large compositions easy to manage with an element that would unite the advantages of null objects, precomps and adjustment layers in a single item and affecting only a selected number of layers.
Imagine how powerful could be… Maybe I’m writing nonsense and maybe there’s a solution out there yet that I’m not aware of. What do you think?
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42 Replies
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There are quite a few folks out there looking and asking for the same or similar feature- make sure you submit this to Adobe, they have the good habit of listening to their users.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
[Carlos Zapater] “The other solution would be parenting to a null but then it wouldn’t reduce the number of visible layers (the shy button should be handy but for the entire compo, not for a selected group of layers)”
I highly recommend Zorro the Layer Tagger [link] for this specific bit of functionality.
For the rest, I’d suggest you submit this to Adobe as a feature request [link].
Some form of layer grouping is one of the most popular feature requests [link]. It’s a hard problem for a number of reasons, but they more clearly you can articulate what you’re looking for when you file your feature request, the more helpful it is for the Ae development team.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
The Collapse Transformations layer switch should get you 80% of what you’re asking for 🙂
Darby Edelen
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Darby, from the examples he used I’m pretty sure he understands what that switch enables. 😉
there are projects in which we NEED to apply effects without affecting blending modes… We NEED to have a matte masking several 3d layers at once…It’s this lack of nodal compositing capabilities that gets me enraged in some cases, there are only lame workarounds that involves duplicating and linking cameras. It has been asked before several times and its also in my wanting list.
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[Cassius Marques] “there are projects in which we NEED to apply effects without affecting blending modes… We NEED to have a matte masking several 3d layers at once…It’s this lack of nodal compositing capabilities that gets me enraged in some cases, there are only lame workarounds that involves duplicating and linking cameras. It has been asked before several times and its also in my wanting list.”
Hmmm, while I understand the NEEDs I’m not sure I understand why they would currently require a lame workaround. I’ve almost never come across a situation in which the only solution was duplicating and linking cameras.
Can you give a more specific example?
Darby Edelen
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I can, imagine hundreds of peoples photos coming in through Z forming up a logo, half is set to overlay and half to screen so they blend somewhat into the logo’s colors.
I want to take out this 500 layers out of my main comp to make it less cumbersome. So I precomp them and collapse. But then I decide it needs a glow to sell the effect when it settles in, So I apply it and bamm there goes the blending modes.
So…with this kind os situation, I usually have two choices. either I link some cameras with expressions or I precomp layers per-blending modes and set each comp again to their respective one.
It can be sometimes pretty straightfoward to solve the issues. But I’ve had 10-20 projects already that it’s complexity were a lot greater that it became a real puzzle to solve and on those 20, maybe 5 that it wasn’t possible to do what wanted.
A grouping function that would make effects/masking “global” to grouped layers would speed things up a lot with the way I tend to logicaly set my projects around.
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Thanks for all the feedback and letting me know that I’m not either alone or crazy.
Walter, I will sure use your link to send Adobe this request. Let’s see what they have to say.
By the way, the example that Cassius has explained reflects almost perfectly how often you begin a project and almost without realizing they can become a puzzle and this feature would help a lot.
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[Cassius Marques] “I want to take out this 500 layers out of my main comp to make it less cumbersome. So I precomp them and collapse. But then I decide it needs a glow to sell the effect when it settles in, So I apply it and bamm there goes the blending modes.”
If you’re specifically set on using the Glow effect in this manner then yes: you’re hosed. Personally I would simply use another method to get the same (or similar) result.
I don’t intend to argue that AE is a perfect animal. It is problematic that it doesn’t work the way that people think it should. However, every application I’ve ever used has its own idiosyncrasies.
Nuke isn’t a perfect animal either. For me the key is understanding the limitations and finding ways to work within them. Very often the same result can be achieved in a dozen different ways some of which may be possible in one application and not in another.
Darby Edelen
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I understand and agree with you Darby, we can almost allways do it differently and get close results. Though it will take us more time, unless we had plenty of time to think it through before.
But that’s just it. I want to do it faster with the least effort possible. There’s no downsides at having this kind of functionality and I do believe Adobe will introduce it to some extent sometime.
And to be reasonable I’ve never used Nuke nor I’m blamming AE for not having something essential but I understand the nodal concept, and it would be cool to be able to use something like that.
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[Cassius Marques] “I understand and agree with you Darby, we can almost allways do it differently and get close results. Though it will take us more time, unless we had plenty of time to think it through before.”
What I would’ve done in this specific example would be to duplicate the pre-comp, apply Glow to it and set its blend mode to Add. Not an overly complicated solution 🙂 I’m not sure how a nodal approach would help in the chosen example.
Of course there are downsides (or lets call them challenges) to implementing the functionality being described. Is it an entirely new feature or an extension of an existing one? How would the layers be organized within the hierarchy? When I have a group in a group in a group how do I get to the layer I need to access? If I apply an effect to the top group does it propagate to every group under it or only the non-group (top level) layers? What can I not do to this group (time remapping? material options?)? How are effects applied to the layers inside the group: is it like a pre-comp or is an instance of the effect applied to each individual layer? In the former case: what is the benefit over a pre-comp? In the latter case: what would that mean for compound effects like Displacement Map, Set Matte or Compound Blur?
Rather than simplifying things I see this potentially leading to complication beyond necessity.
Darby Edelen
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