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!

another new one in the lab is rd: Pre-compose, a variation of the built-in Pre-compose command, but with the ability to specify head and tail handles for subsequent trimming. this one was requested by Gary Jaeger back in january, but has been on simmer until now (i.e., until i had an excuse for releasing labwork ). as usual, feel free to leave your feedback (input, requests, bug reports, etc.) in the comments.

new in the lab is rd: Masks to Shapes, a script to convert a layer’s masks to a shape layer with shape paths. as usual, feel free to leave your feedback (input, requests, bug reports, etc.) in the comments.

seems like labwork is popular these days, so why not have a “labs” section for my scripts in development (or at least ones that i feel comfortable releasing for input). being a one-man shop, one “lab” is all i can handle.

first up in the lab is rd: Shapes to Masks, a script to convert shape paths on a shape layer to mask paths. this is a bit early, but i wanted to get something out for Rob, Trish, and others on the AE list. feel free to leave your feedback (input, requests, bug reports, etc.) in the comments. thanks!

if you are trying to integrate dockable panel support in your existing script, you might have noticed some example code in the “The Window menu and ScriptUI Panels folder” section of the After Effects CS3 Scripting Guide. however, if you use it, you’ll get an “Unable to execute script at line n. show is undefined” error when the script is launched from the Window menu. unfortunately, the show() method is not available for the Panel object. as such, you need to check that your script is using a Window object (which is used when the script is launched from the File > Scripts > Run Script File menu command, or other non-ScriptUI Panels folder way), e.g.,

if (myToolsPanel instanceof Window)
    myToolsPanel.show();

my recent CS3 script updates use this type of conditional check to support dockable and non-dockable UIs in the same script.