The new version of AE that’s coming out tomorrow (!) has a game-changing new feature

[Michael Szalapski]

They worked for me as advertised when I previewed them, yes.
It’s one of the biggest new features to hit AE in a decade. For some people, it won’t matter much, but for a lot of people it’s huge. I know some folks for whomthis will save days of work. Heck, I’VE had projects where this would have saved days of work.

As far as installing CC 2018 goes, why not? You can have it installed alongside older versions without issue. (Also, the article doesn’t say if this is a new version that would install alongside CC 2018 or if it is an update to CC 2018. Regardless, when this comes out tomorrow, you should install it and check out Master Properties. I think, as an old hand at AE, you’ll immediately see the benefits.)

Think about it, if you create graphics that go out to multilingual destinations (more and more folks have to do this on a regular basis), this is going to save a massive amount of time. Let’s say you have ten graphics – all the same comp, but different text. And you have ten different languages you need to deliver in (100 different comps). You produce everything and send it off. Then the creative director or the client comes back and goes, “The animation needs to be faster.” Instead of fixing the animation on ten layers in 100 different comps (that’s 1,000 layers of animation you need to fix), you just fix the animation in one comp and all the rest just reflect the change.

It’s ridiculous the amount of time this can save.

Heck, let’s say you just do one language. Still, say, the CD comes back and goes, “We need a different font.” You don’t have to go through all ten comps to change it, just change it in one.

– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Tero Ahlfors]

I can see this being useful. I can also see this being a thing where you can mess up a whole project really easily.

[Cassius Marques]

Thanks for the heads up Michael…

I can see this being usefull for the font changes, and all the things we didn’t have direct access (which is basically font/kerning stuff that I can think of right now). As for the rest, how does it differs from copy/pasting with properties links? Does AE works faster? Does the engine recieved changes or they just “hid the expressions” part?

Because in my workflow I usually have a “one composition controls them all” setup.

But still, I appreciate the updates, I’ll have to wait and see if its a game changer though.

Cassius Marques
http://www.zapfilmes.com

[Michael Szalapski]

It’s not like copying with expression links.

I mean, it kind of is inasmuch as you have a bunch of duplicates that match and follow one main one, but the key is that there aren’t really duplicates and you have a lot more control. You can add expressions, you can move keyframes around, you can make values wildly different and you can then push changes back into or pull from the original comp.

I mean, it’s out now, so you can update and try it yourself. ☺ (Unless you’re in the middle of a project – I usually don’t recommend updating in the middle of a project.)

– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

[Dave LaRonde] ” Who needs creativity?”

I think you’re missing the point. The Master Properties thing is going to save a TON of time we used to spend doing repetitive, non-creative stuff giving us more time to do the actual work of being creative.

– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[David Arbor]

I also got the opportunity to preview this feature, and Dave, after playing with it I suspect you’ll rethink whether this is just some nonsense feature to get automatic animation done (or perhaps not). Either way, this is a game changing feature that has already simplified my workflow.

Markety-sounding language or not, it’s true, and it’s easy enough to go find out now.

-David
http://www.davidarbor.com
Editor/Videography/Graphics

[Michael Szalapski]

The official blog post is up now with videos demonstrating the new features: https://theblog.adobe.com/effects-updates-spring-2018/

– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

This is an update to CC 2018…

– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Steve Bentley]

Actually 2018 hasn’t been too bad. Once we got used to the Purge requirement to fix little gremlins it wasn’t too much to sacrifice.
I much preferred having more control over the memory management than previous versions that wouldn’t release the ram even after app exit or worse, wouldn’t release the app even after exit. Having more control in this area more than made up for the occasional (ok, ok… frequent) purging of the ram.

[David Arbor]

As Michael said, it’s an update to CC 2018, but per your own guidance, you should be ready for this one, Dave. It is, in fact, the second major update to CC 2018 since last October. The first was 15.0.1, which had lots of bug fixes, and this is 15.1 with lots of bug fixes and now new features.