AE 7

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byronnash
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I just read Mylenium's review of AE 7. -> http://tinyurl.com/bhax5

He mentioned a little about expanded scripting and a toolkit. Does anyone have any more specific information? Do they have something like the scriptlistener plugin for PS? I'm curious to know how we scripters made out in this upgrade.
davestewart
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I just found this in the "What's New" document as well:

http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffe ... ts_new.pdf

Page 7...
davestewart
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And I googled "Adobe Script Toolkit" to find this about PS CS2 scripting. I guess they're pretty much the same thing (no sense re-inventing the wheel, right?)

http://photoshopnews.com/2005/04/20/wha ... scripting/
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redefinery
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byronnash wrote:Do they have something like the scriptlistener plugin for PS?
I'm not familiar with scriptlistener, but if it's for recording your actions as a script, that functionality is not available. ExtendScript Toolkit (ESTK) is a very handy tool for developing scripts, and I have migrated mostly from TextPad, because of what you can do with it.

I've created a bunch of new scripts for AE 7 (using ESTK), and they're now available on my site (see http://www.redefinery.com/ae/).

Jeff
byronnash
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The scriptlistener recorded what you did to a text file. It was very hard to read, but was possible to pull out sections and paste into a script. Softimage XSI has a nice scripting panel that logs a script line for every command you execute, making it very easy to build scripts. I believe other 3D apps have something like that too.

redfinery, Does AE7 have better options for UI elements like drop down boxes? Also, it looks like CS2 scripting has event triggers to run scripts. Did AE get that too?
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redefinery
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byronnash...Yes, you can now create drop-down list and list box controls; multi-select in list boxes is also supported. Check out examples on my site (http://www.redefinery.com/ae/)... For "dropdownlist", see rd: Commentron, rd: Expression Tweaker, rd: Render Layers, rd: Shifter, and rd: Split Render. For "listbox", see rd: Marker Navigator, rd: Script Launcher, and rd: Statesman.

If by "event triggers" you mean launching (via callback function) based on some change made to the project, unfortunately no. There is a scheduleTask() function for running script code for delayed execution (with repeatability), but nothing that fires based on some other event, such as when a layer is moved or comp settings are changed. I've wished for that as well.

Jeff
vidpat
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Oh my, list controls, scheduleTask()... my mouth is watering.

Aside from the ESTK and auto-rewriting named references in expressions, are there any other new scripting (or expression) features that may prompt me to upgrade now?
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redefinery
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vidpat...I haven't done a diff between the 6.5 and 7 functionality, but there are a few new attributes, some existing attributes that are now writeable, some changes (e.g., TextLayer, CameraLayer, and LightLayer objects), and continued improvements (duplicating comps/layers/RQ items, time/timecode conversion functions, etc.) I definitely prefer coding scripts for 7 mainly because of ESTK and the additional functionality.

Jeff
Impudent1
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Joined: June 12th, 2004, 6:40 pm

As for ones not mentioned that effect my old scripts..

you can now use system.callSystem(); vs writing a bat file and executing. Creating folders is now simpler.

another nifty new addition is iconbuttons

I should have my scripts tested/updated/uploaded over the next few days. The big upside is that we now can do things like render and shutdown cross platform :)

Imp
Colin Braley
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Since I don't have AE 7 yet and can't seem to find the new scripting guide online, anyone care to tell me what iconButtons are? Also, what is this system.callSystem() you mentioned in your previous post? Thanks for the info.

~Colin
vidpat
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I presume icon buttons are buttons that can contain an image, rather than (or in addition to) text.

I imagine that system.callSystem() takes a string argument that is a command to be executed by the system's command interpreter, as if it were typed at the system shell. Previously, as Impudent alluded to, to execute a command on the system, the command had to be written out to a file by the script as a batch file/shell script. Then, the script would call the undocumented execute() function on the file to run it.

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Are there still problems with drawing the entire contents of a container object when the object extends beyond the containers bounds? I was trying to create a scrollable panel in 6.5. While I appreciate the existence of the scroll bar, and wired it up to scroll the panel, it was unusable because the contents were drawn all over the window.
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