[Dean Gregory]

Hi Xavier,

Thanks for your reply. Was trying at my end as well and came up with this.

myText = “”;
for(i=1; i<=8; i++){
myText += “subject” + “\r\n” ;
}

It did the job but I’m not sure whether it is a roundabout way of handling the problem. Thanks once again!

Cheers,

Dean

[Dean Gregory]

Thanks Walter, this discussion has been quite enlightening. Will keep these points in mind. Tc.

Cheers,

Dean

[Dean Gregory]

Very interesting stuff here… I guess it’s about how you manage a project effectively. The current way we all follow seems to be the best tried and tested way.

We all want to work faster and better, so it would be interesting to find out better workflows. I have a few practices I have been following and they do help. Will share them in the next few days. However, if they are universally best practice methods, I do not know. Maybe I will start another thread and initiate a discussion there.

Scripts do help to relieve the tedium of doing things over and over again. I was able to do a little more research and find out that ROI is not accessible via scripting as of yet. Infact, a few others have put it on their AE wishlist on the Adobe site. So, I guess that matter ends things here itself.

A few years ago i.e. 2004, I was working on a project that had a mega-comp that had 9 SD rez screens in one. The output was then sent to 9 Plasma screens that were sync’ed together.

There were a lot of heavy effects so I could not render out the master for preview and then the sub-comps as it was taking up a lot of system time on the older machines.

A friend of mine then helped me with a Python script. What we did was to run the Py script on an ‘average machine’ and it divided the mega-comp sequences into their sub-comp sequences and into respective folders.

So you would have a Megacomp called Logo_anim and then subcomp folders called Logo_anim_screen01. The subcomp file names would read like Logo_anim_screen01_file#####.tga for a Targa sequence.

These would then be sent to an editing set up (the studio was using the ol’ Velocity edit system) to line up and check/preview in real time.

It worked well and we were able to meet the deadline.

So, Walter my question to you and the rest would be… would you consider using this sort of script idea (a post render script)? It does it pretty fast with no quality loss. I’m sure Python has developed its Imaging Libraries a bit more since 2004. Would like to know your take on this. Maybe if it makes sense, I could try and develop something like this for the community. (time permitting of course 😉 lol

Cheers,

Dean

[Dean Gregory]

Hi there,

A big thank you to Dave, Darby and Walter for replying to my query. Yes, as of now that is what I’ve been doing especially for triple-wide projects (simpler) and even 3D projection mapping and other multi-screen ‘Watchout’ projects where we have surfaces of different screen resolutions.

The reason I was interested in this is that in the overall project working with several animators, some do get confused or make a mistake in creating and rendering the screen-splits.

If we are able to script with ROI, then this is how I might choose to work.

Work in one large mega-comp. All animators work this way in the team. Several animations are created and then the script is run on each through a scriptUI panel.

It then divides the mega-comp into sub-comps based on inputs from the user (or hard coded for regular jobs). Inputs could range from number of screens, resolution for each screen, etc.

The script then adds all the sub-comps to the render queue for processing/batch.

Do you think this is a viable option. Would people like to work this way? A lot of artists like to see one canvas and not get confused with screen splits and spacing between LED panels, etc used in events.

My thought was to let the artist think creatively and leave the Math to the script.

But most importantly and work methods aside, can one really access ROI through scripting?

Do let me know what your ideas are. Thanks!

Cheers,

Dean

[Dean Gregory]

Hi Dan,

Thanks a ton for sending me the link. Have bookmarked it! Great help!!

Cheers,

Dean

[Dean Gregory]

Hi there Dan,

Was able to script it out. Got some clues from

https://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2010/04/scripting-changes-in-after-eff.html

the ‘.font’ works.
Able to set up other attributes as well. Forgot about the ‘setValue’at the end hence it wasn’t showing up.

Wish the new scripting guide would be out soon 🙂

Cheers,

Dean

[Dean Gregory]

Hi there Dan,

Thanks so much for your reply. The 2nd option does seem like a workaround.
But was toying with a similar idea in Photoshop and decided to use Math.random to randomly select some fonts from an array.

The code snippets are below.

However, when trying similar code in AE, I can’t seem to make it happen.

Is the “.font” possible in AE or is there another word for it like fontName or something?

var fontArray = [
"Tahoma",
"Verdana",
"Georgia",
"Courier",
"Default"
]

txtRef.font = fontArray[Math.random()*fontArray.length|0];