Between naming things in a project and keeping organized, and also trying to get the work done may drive you to let one of those things lapse. Even at my best, I find that when I open an AE project more than a month old, I have no idea what is happening in it – and its my project.
Are you a messy motion graphics artist? Sort your project panel, nice and neat.
A new script form 3d Animator/VFX Artist Alan Eddie can help us all in this area. TidyUp is a script for AE that will let you instantly and easily sort your After Effects project window offering a variety of ways to do that.
TidyUp seems like a really simple little tool, and it is, but it is also pretty handy. Being able to sort project items by type into folder which you can then name yourself, according to your own naming conventions.
Using TidyUP you can choose to tidy only certain types in the project panel. This is a great tool for isolating missing footage, or linked vector files in After Effects. There are also tools to remove unused footage, or all items that contain a certain input that you can specify.
In all TidyUp seems like a handy thing to have around if you are less than diligent about keeping your project window filed neatly. TidyUp can be found on aescripts+aeplugins for the minimal price of $9.99.
TidyUp for After Effects can
- Sort project items by type into folders which you can name
- Tidy only certain types, eg. Isolate missing footage or vector file
- Focus Tidy – Tidy within selected folders, none selected tidies everything
- Focus Tidy – Ignore selected – tidy everything except the selected folders
- Tidy Pre-Comps – Based on name, for instance all comps starting with ‘Pre-‘
- Remove unused footage button / Reduce project button / Remove missing footage button
- Remove all items containing text (input by user)
- Folderize all items containing text (input by user)
- Create My Folders (Create your usual folders-separated by commas)
