This new cycle scheme allows the plabt (the connoisseur name of the AE dev team) to build bigger, stronger features between 2 major releases, while also staying up-to-date with fancy stuff for the .5 one.

CS5 was a major step forward mainly thanks to the 64bit jump. Sadly, while being huge and important, this “feature” was almost overseen because it needed a 64b OS, which was not a standard by that time, and because users didn’t know how to really take advantage of it. Worst, it broke all your 3rd party plugin.

After Effects CS6 also have a major new “invisible” feature that might not be as sexy as 3D shiny stuff, but that will make you work faster and wish to never come back to an older version: the Global Performance Cache.

Global Performance Cache

Behind this unsexy name is hidden the biggest overhaul in the recent AE history: the caching system. To put it simple: it rocks. Why ? Because now, the cached frames are persistant, even between sessions. Just imagine, it’s the end of the day, you ram preview your heavy comp, and then close AE. The next morning, you boot-up your computer, launch AE, and BOOM: AE loads all your previously cached frames and your RAM preview is still here, ready to play.

Better: You do a ram preview of your comp, then tweak some settings and redo a ram preview. You don’t like the settings so you undo and go back to the previous ones. You know what: your former ram preview is reloaded, no need to recalculate them.

Even better: Your precomps can be cached in the background while you work, and modifying layers on top of them won’t need a rerender of their content. Plus, if your using the same precomps in different projects, once cached, the frames will be available for all of them !

Even even better: If you have visually identical frames repeted in your project (like in loops for exemple), once AE cached one, it will fill all the others.

This is the most time saving, workflow enhancing feature you’ve seen in AE since… since a very long time. It will litterally kill your coffee breaks. It’s a first step toward real time in AE. Now testing and tweaking settings in AE have never been so rewarding.

The other (fancy) new features

On top of this brilliant caching, AE CS6 has a lot of new features as well:

A 3D Camera Tracker: based on the same technology as the WarpStabilizer introduced in CS5.5, AE now have a 3D camera tracker built-in, and the best thing about it: it doesn’t suck.

Variable Mask Feathering. Yes, after so long you lost faith in seeing it coming to your favorite compositing app, but they did it, for real.

Rolling Shutter Repair: Like the 3D Camera Tracker, this effect is built on the same tech as the WarpStabilizer introduced in CS5.5. Fast and Efficient.

Ray traced Texts and Shapes. Yes, 3D is coming in After Effects. No, you won’t be able to import meshes or objects from 3D software (not even from Photoshop). But even if it’s limited to Texts and Shape layers, the raytracing engine, optimized for GPU, is very powerfull and is a solid starting point for more to come (at least I hope more will come). And even if it sounds limited, it comes with another new nifty feature: you can now convert Illustrator layers into shape layers… Oh yes, repeaters, animators, etc etc… You’re gonna love it. The ray tracing engine also allows you to have environment map layers, and to bend/distort our usual 3D layers.

More effects in 16bit and 32bit, including the Cycore effects.

Dropped in CS6

Sadly, not all the features of CS5.5 made the cut, so before jumping into the CS6 bandwagon, let’s have a minute of silence for the beloved one we lost:

Pixel Bender support, so all your Pb effects are gone.
Photoshop 3D support
Photoshop Video layers
FreeForm

As you may be aware, After Effects CS5.5 included a very convenient automated stereoscopic rig to help us work smoothly with stereoscopic projects.

I thouroughly tested this new rig while writing my book about Stereo in AE (sorry guys, once again it’s in french) , combined with a revamped 3D Glasses effect to see how cool and hip it was. The journey was a lot of fun, as it’s quite simple to use this rig for most of my stereo needs. But when came the time for me to export my 2 views separately, I was stuck.

The 3D glasses effects allows you to display your stereo comp in stretched Side-by-Side, Up-Down, and a large amount of Anaglyph modes. This is sufficent for uploading projects on youtube, but for Post Production work in big facilities, it’s not sufficent. We have to export the full picture for both eyes.

That can be done quite easily by going into the original comp where the rig created both cameras for you, but, there is one case where this workaround falls apart: it’s when you use one of these 2 3D glasses parameters: converge and vertical align. If both are at different than 0, you can’t just render the left and right preview camera.

After a few hours of unsuccessfully workarounding inside AE, googling and surfing, I eventually contacted the AE Team. Amir Stone, the engineer behind the stereoscopic workflow inside AE replyed me with this very usefull workaround.

This is the direct quote of his mail:

Ok here is a wonky workaround. Its unintuitive, but it should do the trick.
Create a black solid.
Set the 3D glasses to difference mode.
Set the right view to the black solid (leave the left view) and render out the comp to get the left eye.
Set the left view to the black solid (leave the right view) and render out the comp to get right eye.

It’s not as unintuitive as it sounds and pretty straight forward. I’m confident that the effect will be updated in future versions, but that’s my wild guess.

I hope that it will help all my fellow Stereoscopic workers in AE.

Broadband not only allowed mass sharing of video content, it also helped mass learning in video content. Sharing knowledge, and getting skills have never been so easy.

But before giving us the privilege of watching your new piece of art, please, follow these few advices.

Videocopilot

In the mograph community, we all know videocopilot.net and all the main tutorial websites. So before posting you new cool video, asking us to share/like/comment, make sure it’s not a lame barely touched tutorial project file. You have no idea the backlash you’re gonna have.

Copy, Steal, Paste

The other bad idea is to re-create a very look-a-like effect (not to say a rip-off) of something you just saw online that is trendy. Remember thoses tasty Apple iPod ads ? Well it got old before everybody riped-it off.

If you are inspired by something you just saw, it’s cool, stay inspired and take the idea, bake it with your own sauce, and push it to the next level.

Motion to the Music

Rythm is the key in music. You’ll probably put a music on your soon to be masterpiece. Ok, then don’t forget to keep the animation to the beat. If you’re not easy with that, buy some plugs like SoundKeys for After Effects.

Default Particles

We all love particles, so cool when you make 3D camera moves. All this sudden depth, these gorgeous animations… We basically eat particles for breakfast. So be imaginative and don’t stop working after clic this preset button. Presets are good as a starting point, but are bad for anything else. And just changing the particle color doesn’t count. Be creative, and don’t overuse particles. If you don’t need them, don’t use them.

Comic Sans Ms

Well, if you’re gonna put some texts, animated or not, be sure not to use the dreaded Comic Sans Ms. Just sayin’…

Lense Flare

Lense flare are a real plague nowadays. Thanks to the nifty and affordable plugs like Optical Flare. But don’t be J.J. Abrams. Don’t put lense flares everywhere, we are all fed up with that. And go beyond the presets please.

Presets

Already told this twice in this article, but we are never too carefull. Presets are only starting points, not end of the line. Pros don’t stop on presets, so you shouldn’t.

Bokeh

Bokeh is that lovely shape defining your cute looking depth of field. Since DOF made a great comeback thanks to DSLRs, don’t forget that all shots don’t need nor have it. If you put that everywhere, even on wide lense shots, it won’t meaning anything anymore (except that you blured your backgrounds just to hide low quality stuff)

Make it look easy to do

The more easy to do it looks, the more impressive it gets. I can’t tell you why, I have no idea.

Finish it

Last but not least, don’t release a Work in Progress version prior to your final version. We don’t care how you did it until it becomes the new trending topic on twitter. Don’t build hype on nothing. Do your video, finish it, publish it and promote it.

Then you’ll have plenty of time to show us how you did that incredible scene.

If you follow these simple guidelines, all you’ll need to have is a brilliant idea, and time to make it happen.

It was the most visited page of the site until yesturday, when it went offline to give room for the new blog. But that was just a temporary move, as I compiled a brand new 2011 list which will be outdated in less than 3 months from now. The beauty of the Internet even allows me to publish this new list on the old list url. Hooray for forward compatibility !

This list is based on my daily use of scripts, and in no way is a “best-of” list. A lot of very cool and huge scripts are not mentionned here simply because I don’t use them.

All of the scripts in the Top Ten are available on Lloyd Alvarez’s aescripts.com. It’s a great ressource for scripts (mine included). Other than having my scripts hosted there, and owing Lloyd a few beers for the help he provided me through all these years of scripting, I’m not involved in aescripts.com. That was for the mandatory disclaimer. Now, let’s have a deeper look at that list.

10 – 3D Extruder

3D Extruder is so convenient when you don’t have 3rd party plugs to create 3D / Extruded logos. It uses a well known hack workaround to give that fake look, but with it’s speed and ease of use, you finally get some extra time to fine tune your titles.

09 – Smart Baker

Sharing projects including Expressions can become really messy if you open After Effects in a different language than the one used to create them in the first place. To workaround this problem, AE have a neat option “Convert expressions to Keyframes”. Well this option is neat until you use it. It clutters your expressioned properties with keyframes on every frame, even if your expression is simple like “use value from this property”. That’s where Smart Baker comes handy. It will analyze your expressions and create the needed keyframes only.

08 – Stereo 3D Toolkit

Stereo 3D bubble may have burst because of greedy producers, you’ll probably have to work on Stereo projects for the years to come. AE isn’t really helping you that much, and finding the perfect workflow is kinda trial and errors. Stereo 3D toolkit helps easing the process. So sad it went out after I finished writing my book about Stereo in AE (Yes self promotion is lame, but as it’s written in french, the odds you’re gonna buy it are pretty low anyway. And I really wanted to include it, but it was really too late !).

07 – rd: Kinda Sorta

You know how it starts, you try to keep things clear in your comp, but as you go back and forth with your client, and this deadline way beyond your schedule, it gets so messy that you feel a bit lost. Well this happens to me sometimes, usualy on 3D comps with tons of layers. That’s where Kinda Sorta comes into play. It will sort for me all my layers (by z-pos, starting point, and so on…) and my comp will shine again.

06 – Comps from Spreadsheet

This script is so useful when it comes down to lowerthird and titles. Fill a spreadsheet, create a template project, open the script and watch the magic happens.

05 – Save Comp as Project

Ok, this is one I’ve developed, but still, one of the most usefull I’ve ever used. As the name implies, it saves the selected comps as new projects, and even reduce them on the fly.

04 – pt_ExpressEdit

I’m a big fan of Expressions, and even wrote a book about it. Paul’s scripts is a real time saver when dealing with large amounts of Expressions.

03 – Immigration

Working with file sequences is not handy in AE. Immigration turns it into the best experience you can expect. You can replace, reorder, browse faster than ever all your picture sequences and manage them like a breeze. Definitively a must have.

02 – Zorro: The layer Tagger

Zorro is such a smart idea that I wonder when the After Effects team will introduce it natively inside AE. Zorro uses the often left aside layer comments to fill them with tags you choose, and then allows you to easily hide / show / solo your layers based on their tags with a single mouse click.

01 – BG Renderer

Back in 2009, BG Renderer was on the top of this listt, and today it still shines as the most useful script in my workflow. Only now it’s bigger and better. While you can still easily render your comps in background as the name suggest, Lloyd added so much extra cool features that you’ll have to test it to believe it. You can have the script send you an iPhone notification, an SMS or a mail whenever the render completes. I told you you wouldn’t believe me.