Hello,
I would like to create a simple After Effects Plugin using C#. The plugin will have a small screen with a couple simple controls . This plugin will run in After Effects on a Windows machine.
I am new to Adobe After Effects .
Can you point me to a SDK , tutorials etc ?
Thanks a ton,
Peter
I have a midi (Mackie compatible) controller (jog wheel, sliders, encoders, display’s), and I want to control Adobe after effects with it.
The way I see it:
[MIDI CONROLLER] <===> [MY PROGRAM] <===> [After effects]
So my program needs to communicate bidirectional with the midi controller and after effects.
My main programming experience is Delphi (pascal language), and would like to develop the program in it. But if this is not possible or another language is more suitable than I’m willing to develop it in another language. I’ve some experience with C, Javascript, Php, Phyton.
The [MIDI CONTROLLER] <===> [MY PROGRAM] communication won’t be a problem, I’ve done this before and there is enough information on the internet.
The problem is communication with After effects. I don’t know where to start and I would really appreciate it if someone could give me some pointers how to handle it. I won’t mind if I need to run a script inside after effects to communicate with my program, but I don’t want the script to talk directly to the midi controller. (In a later stage I want to make the program compatible to other applications as well.)
There are several programming options inside after effects. You have the basic expression scripting, but these only affects the scripted layers (design elements). You also have scripts, and maybe this can communicate with a secondary application outside after effects. And I believe there is some kind of api, but I really don’t know nothing about it. The information and sample’s on the internet is sparse about this topic.
What do I need:
I want to know and control thinks like:
- the current timecode
- the opacity of selected layer
- the rotation of selected layer
- the scale of selected layer
- Preview / slice layer / select layer etc.
And it would be great if I can get some interrupt if one of these changes.
In my search I found a new device that can control these parameters:
That’s exactly what I want to create, only instead of a closed controller, I want to use universal midi controllers. So it seems possible, I only need to know how they did it.
Is it possible to retrieve the text justification of a text layer using AEGP suites ?
The jsx equivalent is
var just = layer.property("ADBE Text Properties").property("ADBE Text Document").value.justification;
Thanks
Hello,
I was going through Panelator sample plugin code and saw that they are creating dockable panel using OS Controls. I was just trying to check if i can add code for handling any drag and drop on that panel. So i modified the code in that like this..
PanelatorUI_Plat::PanelatorUI_Plat(SPBasicSuite* spbP, AEGP_PanelH panelH,
AEGP_PlatformViewRef platformWindowRef,
AEGP_PanelFunctions1* outFunctionTable) : PanelatorUI( spbP, panelH, platformWindowRef, outFunctionTable)
{
WindowRef hostWindow;
hostWindow = (WindowRef) HIViewGetWindow(platformWindowRef);
Boolean t = true;
OSStatus status = SetAutomaticControlDragTrackingEnabledForWindow(hostWindow, t);
static const EventTypeSpec kDrawEventSpec[] = { { kEventClassControl, kEventControlDraw },
{ kEventClassControl, kEventControlDragEnter },
{ kEventClassControl, kEventControlDragWithin },
{ kEventClassControl, kEventControlDragLeave },
{ kEventClassControl, kEventControlDragReceive }
};
OSErr err = InstallEventHandler (GetControlEventTarget ( i_refH), // 6
NewEventHandlerUPP (S_EventHandler),
5,
kDrawEventSpec,
(void *) this,
NULL);
}
and in the EventHandler func i'm checking if the eventKind is kEventControlDragEnter. My problem is what ever component i drag on the panel, it is not sending kEventControlDragEnter event to EventHandler func. Can please anyone tell me why it control doesn't come to EventHandler func.
Hello,
I need my plugin to handle the drag'n'drop events. I was wondering if there is a way to drag a composition/layer from the composition item list onto the custom Qt widget I'm creating inside the AE panel? Does the AE API support drag and drop like this or should I use the OS's native drag'n'drop API?
Thanks in advance
Would like to enquire about "SLICK DEBUGGING TRICKS" in After Effects SDK Guide (in pdf) for AE CS5 (version 10). Perhaps somebody is successful following the steps!?
I see a few problems as follows:
1) AE application keeps a file lock on Filter plugins (or plug-ins)
even if one could overwrite an effect plugin when AE process is running...
2) Purge All (in menu Purge -> All or Ctrl - Alt - key '/' on the numpad) does not reload the plugin; in fact this is being called in the following order:
PF_Cmd_FRAME_SETUP,
PF_Cmd_RENDER,
PF_Cmd_FRAME_SETDOWN,
no request for PF_Cmd_GLOBAL_SETUP or PF_Cmd_GLOBAL_SETDOWN is made. also this thread already mentions it: http://forums.adobe.com/click.jspa?searchID=3907456&objectType=2&objectID=1798812
3) VS does not allow Edit & Continue or x64, and CS5 seems to be x64 only - how could you make use of this functionality? or documentation does not seem to be updated completely for SDK for CS5?
Greetings
mike
Premiere Elements 9 (MAC) is finding my plug-in "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Plug-ins/CS5/MediaCore" and I can see it on the spash screen when loading.
But I can't find my plugin anywhere in Premiere Elements.
I tried putting the EffectPreview file in with the plug-in, but that didn't work.
Where do the EffectPreview .png files go?
Are they named the same as with Premiere Elements 8 on Windows?
Hello, I try to make my first plugin. Firstly, I need insert a camera, how can I do that in code? Is there some special function for it?
I have a plugin that has a Layer param so that I can select a layer to use as a secondary source. However, if I move around the layer that was selected in the layer param, my plugin always reads from the upper left of that layer rather than from the upper left of the composition frame. I'm not interested in the parts of the layer that are not within the frame, though.
Similarly, if I had my plugin on an adjustment layer and I resize and move around the adjustment layer, it still read from the upper left of the selected secondary source layer instead of reading a region that corresponds to the size and position of the adjustment layer. Now, I've figured out that I can read the position of the adjustment layer from the EffectWorld's offset_x and offset_y members. This was enough for me to fix the problem with the adjustment layer being moved around. I thought I would be able to apply the same trick to fix the issue with the secondary source layer being moved around, but the offset_x and offset_y of the layer returned from the layer param seems to always be zero.
How can I figure out the position of the layer selected by the layer param so that I can grab the correct region rather than always the upper left?
As an aside, how can I determine the composition size?
Hello all. I'm just getting started with writing AE plug-ins. I;ve lloked through the SDK manual and built a couple of the sample projects.
I have some basic questions about plug-ins:
If I want a plug-in to work with AE CS5 and CS6, can I just build it with the CS5 SDK, or do I need to buiild a 2nd version using the CS6 SDK?
Once I have a working plug-in on Windows, how much work is required to get it working on the Mac?
How do I decide if I should write an AEGP or Effect plug-in? If the plug-in works with multiple layers in a composition, then I'm thinking that it should be an AEGP rather than an Effect, is that right?
Regards,
Jeff
This might be a fairly naive question, but I've fumbled through putting together my first plugin through these forums, the sdk and sheer brute force at times ... however one thing I noticed on Keylight that I can only assume is not part of the out of the box params is shown in the following screenshot. I was wondering if anyone has looked into doing this type of thing before, and if so how you went about doing it. I have just have been wondering about this for a while and figured I would ask as I am almost done with my plugin.
I'm writing an exporter and need to know whether I have a rectangle, rounded rect, or an ellipse in a shape layer. How can I get this information?
If I can't, how do I get the geometry?
Thanks.
Hi guys (Hi Sachar ;-)),
For effects I can get the current version of After Effects from PF_InData but I wanted to know if there was a way of getting it from an AEGP using suite functions.
The only one I found in the guides (CS5 to CC) that seems to deal with host version is AEGP_GetDriverSpecVersion ... but it doesn't seem to exist. I guess the correct syntax is AEGP_GetDriverImplementationVersion, is that right?
But is this the best way of checking for the host version? It should return the same thing for CS5 and CS5.5 for example.
Thanks