PRO TIP for After Effects users using AI Assisted Coding tools – here’s a short RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) context you can add to your First Prompt, System Prompt, or *.md file so your AI Coding Assistant writes compatible code.

The scripting language in After Effects uses Adobe’s ExtendScript, which is based on JavaScript <strong style…

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An MCP is a set of rules/protocols for apps to communicate with each other.

MCPs are designed to connect with an LLM on one end and with an app through a Server/Host/Client app.

So, an MCP doesn’t decide what can be done or how anything is done. These depend on the available APIs in the application and the features built into the Host and Server…

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Yup – it’s not align but distribute – so, yeah, align works kinda well in the Align Panel but distribute is awkward with differently-sized layers.

Noted on the lawsuits but I see these as outliers rather than widespread practice and you don’t have to use Firefly as it’s a feature and not the underlying tech for AEAI. Firefly will also cover legal…

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AEAI is now available in the Public Beta.

First thoughts – It’s not bad. It’s slow. It’s got a Token Gas Tank that runs out pretty fast – no gas tank indicator nor when it’s available again.

It can create Textures – uses Adobe Firefly
It can write Responsive Expressions
It can do alignments even with differently sized layers
It does multi-layer,…

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AEAI is now available in the Public Beta.

First thoughts – It’s not bad. It’s slow. It’s got a Token Gas Tank that runs out pretty fast – no gas tank indicator nor when it’s available again.

It can create Textures – uses Adobe Firefly
It can write Responsive Expressions
It can do alignments even with differently sized layers
It does multi-layer,…

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BRING IT ON BRIE !!!

Hi Mads, a COW get-together to chat about AI is a good idea and I’d certainly support it and make myself available.

BlackMagic Design are very much deploying AI so are The Foundry and Autodesk. Maxon got a lot of pushback when they wanted to add AI features into C4D – not sure how that’s coming along.

Adobe is certainly into it but AI is the tech…

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Adobe adds AI Assistant to After Effects – the AI Assistant is also in Premiere Beta. It’s an Invitation-Only Access but will be available in the Public Beta in due time.

The AI Assistant is an MCP – if this is new to you then it’s time to buckle up. It’s a tool and what it does or can do depends largely on…

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It’s the same issue with getting a Shape Layer’s mode – the pattern with the issue is when a Drop Menu occurs on the same and first line of the propertyGroup(). And the 3D Meshes too – the Mesh Options property.

IF I get back to it – moved on to other matters. My thoughts – since there isn’t an Expression to access it then the propertyGroup way would be the only option and you’re expert in this area. I’ll have to think of a roundabout way to do it OR file it away as “Unimportant”. 🙂

Greetings CowPokes – is there a way to get the mask mode selection via Expression?
maskModes exists for the scripting API but there doesn’t seem to be one for Expressions. I tried the propertyGroup() way but either it’s not possible or I’m not doing it right.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Bestest!

You need to set the timeline stack for a compositing task – see image below …

It’s going to take too long of a time for what I can offer now to post the AEP on my blog or at the COW. Hopefully the screen grab below provides enough clue for you to get productive OR DIG IN!!!

😀

Hi David, looks like copying from the forum creates CURLY QUOTES in the expression instead of normal quotes. So, look at the expression in your Expression Textbox to see if there are any of these and change them to normal quotation marks.

Let me know how it does. I was going to drop an AEP and host it on my blog – may do it sooner than later but…

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Mary, thanks for letting us know how you solved this issue.
Always good to hear when someone solves an issue on their own or with assistance from others.

Best Wishes

You can’t access composition settings to work automatically with a MoGRT.

If you need a MoGRT to be used in different frame sizes, frame rates and with interlacing, you have to set up the MoGRT accordingly in AE.

In AE, each ‘final’ composition is placed into a composition which will be exported as a MoGRT. In this composition, you create a Drop…

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Here’s the expression to apply to the brightness parameter for Lens Flare –

// Flare Brightness driven by pixels directly under the Flare Center point

// PLACE THIS EXPRESSION INTO THE Flare Brightness parameter

// Grab the Flare Center (2D point inside the effect)

flareCenter = effect(“Lens Flare”)(1); // change name if you use Optical Flares

//…

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This is where Mocha’s Unlink Tracking feature is useful.

Take a look at this tutorial – https://youtu.be/7UQcPRNKoiQ

TIP – Unfortunately, the green board doesn’t have a texture – so, draw a tracking spline to cover the left edge of the board and include parts outside of the board’s left edge. Hopefully, there isn’t any parallax to throw off the…

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sourceRectAtTime() expression method is the building block and the Null Points feature saves you one step. Also, look at purchasing scripts directly from developers – most have a store on Gumroad and purchasing directly from developers earns them a lot more than making a purchase from aescripts who make a 30%. So, help developers by purchasing…

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Responsive Design Time in MoGRTs produces iffy/maybe/meh results, at times. This is my experience. Then, it’s designed for stretching only the head and tail of a MoGRT but what you’re trying to achieve is beyond the feature’s design.

An option is to deliver the MoGRT as part of a PPro Project file with a sequence set up with two copies of the…

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Free Adobe After Effects script –

Convert Overlay Values in Text Layers from using String Concatenation to one that uses Template Literals (String Interpolation).

Overlay Values are Cool.

Video Link –

https://youtu.be/tVZaZYqody0

Download Link –

https://www.broadcastgems.com/post/creating-dynamic-overlay-values-in-adobe-after-effects

In PPro, its Frame Hold feature works well with AeMoGRTs. Pair that with edits on the AeMoGRTs at strategic points is far more productive and PPro Editors are accustomed to these tools – edit and Frame Hold tools.

I’ve never found time-stretched AeMoGRTs to work reliably in PPro. Instead of time-stretching in PPro, use cuts/edits in PPro on the AeMoGRT. Then ALT+Drag to create a duplicate and adjust accordingly. This will of course not work if you have elements within the AeMoGRT that animate continually.

HTH

Render Time is not accurate – agreed – too many dynamic variables at play but it is a quick way to for identifying bottlenecks.

The issue with inconsistent results is with AE using its cached results. So, the best tests are those that start off fresh, with no cached data – purging cache data prior to starting a preview is a good starting point for conducting tests.

BTW, do your Expressions use the valueAtTime() method? And is there a reason not to bake the Expressions into…

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You’re welcome.

On the Opacity setting, I use the Render Time column in the timeline to do my checks – it’s supposed to be accurate AFAIK to check if processing is being done to a layer. How are you doing your checks?

Windows 11 Pro, I9 Intel 14th Gen, NVidia 4090 and 128GB RAM

I’ve got a blog on this – https://www.broadcastgems.com/post/how-to-write-performant-expressions-in-adobe-after-effects-developing-intelligent-bespoke-motion

Thanks Dan. I just noticed the strange character insertions and yes, The “http://” insertion was WILD! LOL

Thanks for tidying it up. 👌

I wrote an AE Script to provide a decent level of protection for Expressions – https://broadcastgems.gumroad.com/

It’s called AeXpressions Encrypter

It does name scrambling of your variables. And if you have a complex set up, it will work well. it will work better if you also scramble your Effect Control names.

You may also want to place the source…

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You’ll occasionally have to overlay a layer’s name in your After Effects comp. If you didn’t know better, you’d have 1 Text Layer for each Layer.

BUTT there’s a better way …

Apply this to the Source Text Property of a Text Layer –

// Start of Expression

let layerNames = “”;

for (let i = 1; i <= thisComp.numLayers; i++) {

if (i === index)…

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Does anyone know if characterBounds() is still supported and if so, what’s the syntax to get it to work?

TIA

I’m not familiar too BUT I would look at using System/Script Prompts to proceed to the next stage.

Today’s After Effects Modern Javascript Expression is the Spread Operator.

The Spread Operator provides a shorthand way to write out an array. It’s also easily readable and works well for find the Minimum or Maximum values in an Array.

// Start of Expression
const tableValues = [250,500,200];

// Use spread to pass the elements of sliderValues as…

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This video rundown on the Range Selector should be helpful to AE users. It’s been the cause of a lot of guesswork and even tutorials that were supposed to explain them have gaps. This video and the Table should provide more insights.

Hopefully, there’s time for a full-on tutorial where I can cover additional groundwork as well as go through a few…

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This Adobe Live video was supposed to provide a solution using the new Null Positional Feature but I can’t understand these two nor did I see all the new features. I could have missed something. Perhaps others may get more mileage –

https://youtu.be/gyZWVkWKbgs

Nothing wrong with Expressions and sourceRectAtTime() – 200% user error, for sure and x-height is not the answer. If it works, it’s because it got lucky. It’s a ‘maybe/iffy solution’. I’ve seen that website and it offers little to nothing in terms of actual, professional output – lots of supposed solutions not only from this site (which is…

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I’ve updated/upgraded the Article. Fixed typos. Added LLM Prompt and its results for search to include non-integer and negative numbers. Lots of useful stuff.

After Effects Expression Blog Post – this one is on the match() and replace() Methods and why you should consider using match() instead of Layer Index and the split() Method.

https://www.broadcastgems.com/post/here-s-an-excellent-after-effects-expression-you-should-have-in-your-expressions-library

There are a few useful Expressions and two embedded…

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The Original Blog has been updated with lots of good stuff AND it’s on the COW.

More details. Additional Expression to select a single word or phrase with support for search-match based on instancing and partial word…

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I’ve written a Blog – you get to watch 3 tutorials from exceptional individuals and a Text Expression Selector that helps you select specific letters/numbers; specify if all of its occurrence or only one or more specific occurrences is to be selected and if you want the search/match to be case-sensitive.

It’s all fun and joy.

Read the Blog, check…

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John Martin for President!!!

:-D🍾

Hi Paul, I crafted a script with my pal, Chad von GPT.

1 – select the Originating Text Layer
2 – in the UI, input number of duplicates
3 – select font size from the Font Menu which populates the Font Menu using the listing from the Most Recently Used Font List which includes Family Font/Weights

4 – Click on Create Duplicate(s)

Duplicated Layers will…

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Amazing to have a Fontastic Client!!! 😀

Another option is to write a script to duplicate the First Layer – of course, if budget and time are willing. You could also automatically set the Font for each duplicate. If you’re good with prompting, an LLM could write such a script quite quickly. Perhaps this is something you may to to look into when…

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The Paragraph Text Layer’s size is not exposed to expressions.

Two things come to mind –
1) you having to duplicate the Second Layer shows a strong possibility you have a convoluted/unnecessary workflow. So, perhaps you want to share more on what your end goal is

2) Use a Text Reflow expression which usually hooks up Paragraph Width to a Slider.…

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You can’t change between Point Text and Paragraph (Box) Text using Expressions – it’s only doable via a script.

What’s preventing you from manually changing the Text Layer type in the second layer?

I recently used Google’s NotebookLM to help me produce a Podcast to introduce After Effects users to the world of Scalable & Responsive Motion Graphics Systems.

The source material for the Podcast were selected class recordings (Sept-Oct 2024) from my LIVE Online Course – Develop Intelligent Design Assets for Motion Design Systems (RSPSV 1001).

I…

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There aren’t many AeMoGRTs out there that allow you to dynamically adjust Paragraph Width.

Resolve just released V20 and it has this issue.

And so should you! 🙂
This AeMoGRT supports –
– Multiple Paragraphs
– Enable/Disable Blinking Cursor
– Adjustable Blinking Speed
– Real Time Playback on a Decently Powered System

Download at my Gumroad…

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I think the MographAE script can do this.

HTH

Yup! A universalized code; for all Selector Types.

sourceRectAtTime() is definitely what you need as part of your solution.

I’d look at measuring the Text Layer’s length and then dividing that by 105 pixels to let you know how many squares you require. Id’ be looking at using a formula such as this –

const numberOfSquaresRequired = 1 + Math.floor(theSourceRectAtTimeWidthOfTheTextLayer)

HTH