Next Gen: enhancing the AE interface

[davestewart]

I work a lot with 3dsmax, and we've been used to customising the interface for years now. We can add menu commands, toolbar buttons, scripted utilities, right-click menus, quad-menus, pop-ups, activeX controls (tree views, lists, etc) - essentially ANYTHING in the interface. It's very, very useful... but with AE we're limited to running scripts from a command line, the file menu, or a palette button (are there other ways?).

Does anyone know how this will change in the next version, or if there's any way we can influence how things shape up?

Perhaps we could start buidling a list of ideas for submission here?

Cheers,
Dave

[byronnash]

AE could certainly use a customizable interface. I'm on XSI here and I can tweak and change to no end it's interface. I think AE would step up to the truly "pro" status when it gains this ability. I'm not slighting AE's usefullness, but I'm saying that it would be a lot more useful to be able to set it up for your workflow. Especially the ability to put scripts on buttons somewhere in the interface without having to have one of those hard to maintain palettes.

my $.02

[davestewart]

Off topic, but I've just added a right-click command in Windows Explorer to run a jsx directly. (I usually run scripts from Crimson Editor, as I'm constantly in development)

1. Open Windows Explorer
2. Tools > Folder Options
3. File Types > JSX > Advanced > New...
4. Action: &Run (the & sign ties the shortcut key "R" to the command)
5. Application: "C:\<your application path>\AfterFX.exe" -r %1

Quite useful on this occasion. Might see if I can export a registry hive to add a one-click install.

Anyway - keep the new ideas coming...

[byronnash]

That's a great tip Dave, thanks!