hey ae script junkies…
if you develop (or want to develop) scripts for after effects, what do you want to have in a scripting reference and other learning materials, besides the well-known need for more examples? what format of delivery (pdf, web pages, print, etc.) would work best for you? any particular preference for the organization of content? ok to focus on cs3? etc. i’m interested to hear what’s important to you and your workflows.
thanks!
austin says:
28-Oct-2007 @ 2:54 am
personally, i’m a big PDF fan, and really hate the trend of html docs with specialized viewers. That said, web delivery is usually fine. Most of the time, I’m reading docs in a web browser. PHP (the user comments are great), Yahoo UI (love the examples and PDF cheatsheets), O’Reilly Safari Bookshelf - all well organized and easy to use. As long as it’s searchable…
The biggest complaint I have with the AE stuff is that it’s so spread out. I’m in the AE CS3 guide, the general Adobe scripting guide, the ECMAscript guide, the O’ Reilly Javascript Book… and then I still end up googling redefinery and aenhancers, or just searching my own script folder for samples.
Whatever format you put it out in, I’ll buy it
-a
redefinery says:
28-Oct-2007 @ 3:25 pm
hey austin… thanks for the pointer to the Yahoo UI stuff; i’ll check it out. i’ve tried the O’Reilly Safari stuff before and it was useful. when i was doing more PHP development, their developer docs were very helpful.
one of the balances i need to find is providing a decent intro material for folks new to scripting or ae scripting, but also provide robust reference material that hardcore script authors can use on a daily basis. searchability, updateability, and portability (easy to put on a laptop and use disconnected from the network, but also use on a desktop) are also important.
Chris G says:
28-Oct-2007 @ 6:57 pm
Hi. Perhaps I can get back into the scripting world. I’ve been busy with other things and have neglected my AE scripts site, among other things. Oh, the horrors of spreading oneself thin!
Anyway, I happened to catch this and feel the need to opine.
Usually, when I’m looking for answers to scripting questions, I look to what I suppose you could call the two extremes of the process: the most general hierarchy of objects, and as many examples as I can find. So for me, I tend to look at a particular object (a property, for example), and study its parents and children. Then I try to find and study code examples and experiment and torture the system as much as possible (usually looking for shortcuts and efficiency).
How’s that for two cents?
Thanks for this and everything else you contribute!
-CG
redefinery says:
28-Oct-2007 @ 7:21 pm
hey chris… thanks. yeah, i am planning an object hierarchy with examples of everything.
can you clarify what you mean by looking for shortcuts and efficiency? are you referring to trying to find alternate ways of accessing info or performing tasks?
Dale Bradshaw says:
29-Oct-2007 @ 8:52 am
Lots of code examples. I’m a pick it apart kind of guy.
Live Docs with comment ability.
Best practices for current version with decent editing of old workarounds once they’ve been outdated.
Atomic says:
29-Oct-2007 @ 9:42 am
There should be lots of example code and downloadable projects with everything types in for you. The examples should be robust and give you a little more than what you need kind of like the way the Microsoft Visual Studio Help files were in the late 90’s before is all crapped out.
Please avoid the Flash style documentation. The flash help system is so bad. I could be looking at the exact word I am searching for and it does not find it. Also their help system assumes you already know how to program and simply need a “light” refresher to complete something.
Assume all end users know nothing and need complete help.
Please avoid the esoteric kind of documentation that looks like gobbly gook. It should be in plain english and tell you what to type and where to click and take into account any abberations in the IDE that might pitfall the reader of the document.
redefinery says:
29-Oct-2007 @ 11:06 am
hey dale… thanks for the feedback. this query is for a side (non-work) project, so i’d need to find something akin to LiveDocs.
hey atomic… thanks as well. my scripts have a good amount of comments, but sounds like you’ll also prefer a different type of breakdown. one of the plans for this site was to have a section where i could give a deeper analysis of a script’s logic/flow, but i might start doing that for this project.
Dale Bradshaw says:
29-Oct-2007 @ 2:16 pm
Jeff,
Ahh. I see. For a side project, I’d think anything that builds community and feedback is a win. Do you know who the audience is yet? Beginner, intermediate, expert?
You’re a geat mentor and I think you’d break down steps for beginners really well, but I also think you’d have a lot to offer on detailed professional workflows. I think stuff like Stu’s rebel forums and pixelcorp are models. A great book or training series with live help and mentoring as a follow up.
Jonas Hummelstrand says:
29-Oct-2007 @ 4:31 pm
The Scripting Guide is far to “manual-ish” and I miss tons of code snippets with break-downs. AE scripting is really hard even for someone like me that has scripted for years and is comfortable with AE’s expressions. I spent hours just trying to move comps into a folder, and the scripting guide didn’t help me one bit even though it was my first stop every time I had a question.
If AE scripting is to take off (i.e. more than 100 users world wide that actually does anything with it) we need a script listener like in Maya or at least a script-recorder like in Photoshop.
redefinery says:
29-Oct-2007 @ 11:23 pm
dale… initial thought is to focus on intermediate, with some beginner and expert. i’m not a pixelcorps member so can’t analyze their forums; i try to check stu’s rebel cafe from time to time.
jonas… thanks for the feedback. i do intend to include not only a beefy reference for learning about methods and properties, but also lots of examples that describe _how_ to automate operations. as for improvements to scripting itself (script listener/recorder), it’s best to submit a feature request (http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform&product=57) if you have not done so already. i doubt this side project will be able to solve that.
Chris G says:
30-Oct-2007 @ 6:38 pm
can you clarify what you mean by looking for shortcuts and efficiency? are you referring to trying to find alternate ways of accessing info or performing tasks?
Hi again.
Hm. Well, I tend to obsess over making things as fast and efficient as possible (unless I’m being lazy … or I’m short on time … or I’m being stupid … or … ). I became an AppleScript whiz way before trying my hand at ECMA, which meant I was always battling quirkiness (if you don’t know AppleScript, then it would probably take too long to explain what I mean by this) and speed issues. [When I worked at Rocket Science Games (long gone now) I worked on the asset management system there. The first task was taking the main game engineer’s existing scripts and making them (by his estimate) about 27 times faster.]
Anyway, an example of this is when I took an existing AE script — it was some ’sort layers by some property’ script — and adapting it so it could handle hundreds or even thousands of layers quickly - it just needed to use an built-in JS sort function, which I had to learn in order to utilize it. The technique ended up in my ’sort by z’ and ‘3D camera track preflight’ scripts. Not sure how this would have any bearing on what you’re doing, except for the occasional “helpful hint” box that alerts reader to snafus and tricks.
redefinery says:
30-Oct-2007 @ 10:32 pm
chris… i think it might fall under best practices, which i hope to describe as the primary way to do things. (yes, i use JS’s sort() function as well for my Kinda Sorta script.) thanks.
david van brink says:
16-Nov-2007 @ 3:41 am
Just found your site. Great stuff.
For the most part, as a proficient engineer, I find Adobe’s AE scripting doc *pretty good*… but there’s huge room to do better. So my wish list — for a nonbeginner — might include:
(-1 — PDF at least, but books are sometimes nice… if they’re nice.)
0. Obviously (?) only cover ExtendScript.
1. Fit each class fields and methods on fewer pages, for super fast expert reference. Also, adobe’s pdf’s don’t include the class on the page header/footer… bad nav.
2. For each class, say “where you’d get one”. Like a layer comes from a comp.layers (or whatever, I may be talking photoshop here.
3. A cheat sheet for common JavaScript stuff; a page for Math.*, a page for String.*. These are just reminders — not tutorials! — for those of us who are switching all day long between, you know, Java, Perl, Bash, and Fortran, before coming home to AE Scripting.
4. For value-add, not merely examples, but well-considered reusable libraries.
I guess overall, for this user, I’m fantasizing for an excellent optimized reference source, rather than warm guidance for my first do-loop.
redefinery says:
16-Nov-2007 @ 4:31 am
hey david… welcome, and great feedback!
re: 0… yes, the parts of ExtendScript/ScriptUI supported by AE.
re: 1/3… i like the idea of quick ref cards / cheat sheets, so i might do it for the advanced users out there.
re: 2… yes, i hope to address this in a couple of ways.
re: 4… this was my original intent for the rd: utilities stuff, but never got around to refine/extend it. i have been toying with the idea of revisiting it for this project, though.
thanks!
Alex says:
20-Nov-2007 @ 1:25 pm
Im a fan of expressions but have yet to dive into the world of scripting. i am looking forward to it though. One thing that trips me up in my first couple attempts were the initial steps you need to make before the meat of the script. like settting up the undo brackets (i got that one) and explaining how it works to do a simple transform command on selected or all layers in a comp. i guess explaining the skeleton of scripting seperate from the meat of the scripts.
i look forward to seeing what you come up with
redefinery says:
20-Nov-2007 @ 8:35 pm
hey alex… thanks for the feedback. i do intend to include coverage of common stuff like processing current/select/all layers, comps, etc.
lou says:
24-Nov-2007 @ 5:51 pm
Hi Jeff,
Thank you so much for posting all of your scripts. It’s very generous and they’ve been immensely helpful in my own development. I’d dying for a fleshed out AE script reference and I’m particularly interested in building UI’s. Thanks again!
redefinery says:
25-Nov-2007 @ 12:21 am
hey lou… you’re welcome. yes, i do intend to have a section on building UIs, probably focusing more on using resource strings for layout (requires CS3). thanks for the feedback.
Zarxrax says:
04-Dec-2007 @ 5:51 pm
What I would like to see in a scripting reference? Ok, here goes:
First, I’d want it to be in html format. I don’t understand why anyone would want PDFs (ew!) because html is so much more flexible and easier to use!
I would like a reference to start off with the basics of how a script works. Show an example script, pick it apart and explain in detail whats going on.
Then talk about some of the more important scripting commands, give examples of their usage, and talk about situations where it can be useful.
Then have a number of more complex scripts, and explain what they are doing and how they work.
Finally, it would have details on more obscure things, and give examples for each.
redefinery says:
04-Dec-2007 @ 11:59 pm
hey Zarxrax… thanks for the feedback. i guess i’m not as averse to PDF (single condensed file on disk), but i understand your concern. i have not decided on the delivery format(s).
Idetrorce says:
15-Dec-2007 @ 8:24 am
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce