Duplicate Comp and all SubComps as UNIQUE

[cdinic]

I need to alter the text of a layer deep within multiple subComps. I can do this just fine with one comp, killing the original. However, I need to duplicate an entire comp and all of its subComps many times. Currently AE doesn't seem to allow me to make a UNIQUE duplicate of a comp AND the subComps within it.

If I have a textLayerA in SubCompA, which is inside MainCompA, I need to make unique duplicates of all three while maintaining their relationships. Result: textLayerB in SubCompB, which is inside MainCompB.

Is this parent/child relationship exposed to scripting?

I'm thinking I need to duplicate the AE project file for each iteration, then import them all into a new empty project.

Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks!
-C

[cdinic]

Any ideas on this? Its looking more and more like I'll need to build a complicated parser to build up a multi-dimensional array of the nested composites hierarchy.

*banging my head against the wall...
-C

[Paul Tuersley]

I think you're right that saving then reimporting the project multiple times is the best way to do it. Even if I did it with a script, I'd try doing it the same way first. It should be possible to get a script to duplicate each comp, then correctly relink any precomp layers to create separate heirarchys, but I think that approach would be more complicated.

Paul