Null Object 2.0

[Erik Lindahl]

[Walter Soyka] “I’d like to see arbitrary track matte layer selection, not just fixed “layer above” use.”
Agree! This with a “grouping” or “nesting” feature would make organsing the comp so much easier.

Group: Mattes
Group: Depth Maps
Group: Tracking

Instead of like some comps end up now – 100 layers+

There are also some funky limitations to how effects, mattes and layer masks correlate. I guess that’s what you’re getting at with “render order for dependencies of compound effects”. Again, having the ability to group layers would be such a huge boost.

I’ve said this to Adobe the past 5-7 years when I go to IBC. They are well aware of it – I think the problem is one of those “easy great ideas” that sadly hare terribad for the programmers to implement.

[Walter Soyka]

[Darby Edelen] “Rather than simplifying things I see this potentially leading to complication beyond necessity.”

Agree 100%.

I’m one of those nuts who doesn’t think that uber-twirl/grouped layers are a good idea. I think they’re trying to solve maybe a dozen different challenges at the same time, and that whole idea starts falling apart once you go beyond the most basic use cases.

Rather, I think that a lot of hypothetical uber-twirl benefits can be achieved through more targeted and flexible new features, like some kind of effects instancing manager, a more malleable render order for compound effects, and maybe some kind of bi-directional timeline marker system.

Maybe we can we brainstorm on this a little bit here and then write a couple good FRs. For the uber-twirl aficionados, what problems are you looking for it to solve? What other ways can we solve them?

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

[Erik Lindahl]

But the grouping of items in the timeline IMO is a very basic needed feature. Both Photoshop and Illustrator have them. Apple Motion has it. Why couldn’t After Effects have it?

[Walter Soyka]

[Erik Lindahl] “Not sure what “ETLAT” is.”

Edit this, look at that [link]

Personally, I think it would be greatly enhanced with live update. I also think this is probably easier said than done!

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

[Walter Soyka]

[Erik Lindahl] “Not sure why time-remapping would change from how it works today. You can time-remap elements in a pre-comp, this would be done in the same way inside a “pre-comp group”.”

Because a twirled-down group looks like it has the same clock as its comtaining comp, whereas a precomp very clearly has its own clock.

What happens in the UI for the keyframes of a twirled-down, time-remapped group?

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

[Erik Lindahl]

Ah, well ETLAT has it’s place yes, but that’s one really complicated thing to deal with if we’re talking “keeping things simple”: Grouping solves other problems as well, such as non-editable layers / data you want to hide but have available.

[Walter Soyka]

[Erik Lindahl] “But the grouping of items in the timeline IMO is a very basic needed feature. Both Photoshop and Illustrator have them. Apple Motion has it. Why couldn’t After Effects have it?”

Grouping is overloaded. Is it an organizational feature? Is it a compositing feature? Nope, it’s both!

Photoshop and Illustrator lack the element of time, and they have totally different (read: vastly more destructive, vastly less parametric/procedural) effects systems compared to Ae.

Grouping in Photoshop is not the same as instancing, like a smart object or an Ae precomp is. Is this the right (expected) behaviour, or the wrong one?

Apple Motion needs grouping because it allows only a single timeline in a project. As Darby lays out above, it gets complicated fast. The idea should be to ease existing limitations, not create new ones.

If we’re going to borrow any feature from Motion, I’d rather boost clone layers than groups — but I think we can do better than that, too.

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

[Erik Lindahl]

I do see issue can arise for sure but some kind of grouping / folding out of pre-comps is needed. But as you state it could potentially be a feature with a bunch of limitations connected to it.

I’m not exactly sure how Motions “Clone layer” works but if it’s like idéa of an “alias” or “clone” of another layer and these are always exact copies of one another – yes please.

[Walter Soyka]

[Erik Lindahl] “I do see issue can arise for sure but some kind of grouping / folding out of pre-comps is needed. But as you state it could potentially be a feature with a bunch of limitations connected to it.”

But if it’s going to be so limited that I can only use it in easy cases, there in my mind there is no point to adding the feature. I’d be better served with a set of more focused, less limited features that work very broadly.

That’s why I’m asking what problems you want to solve with grouping or uber-twirl. We might be able to come up with less obvious and better overall solutions.

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

[Darby Edelen]

[Walter Soyka] “Grouping is overloaded. Is it an organizational feature?”

Grouping as an organizational feature is something I could support, but I don’t know that it would make other people happy. The groups would not have any transforms, could not have effects applied and have no blending mode. They would exist exclusively for the purpose of collapsing several related layers into one layer slot on the timeline.

Darby Edelen