Useful Assistants Tour Automate tasks in Adobe® After Effects®
This page describes the main functionality in Useful Assistants.
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Using Assistants
Asistants are listed in the UA Assistants palette, and are categorized by function.
Click an assistant to determine if it’s ready to run (“Ready” appears in the status bar). If it has prerequisites, such as needing a selected layer or an open composition, a short message appears in the status bar (see example in this figure).
Double-click an assistant to run it. |
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Customizing an Assistant’s Behavior
Some assistants run immediately, while others have settings that you can change to modify the assistant's behavior.
After you run an assistant, you can run it again to change its settings (double-click) or run it again with its last-specified settings (Alt- or Option-double-click).
If you need more information about the assistant or its settings, Useful Assistants has several help features that you can access. |
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Assembling Sequences of Presets
If you need to use an assistant with specific settings often or in future After Effects sessions, create a preset (an assistant with defined settings). Presets are listed in the UA Presets palette.
To run multiple presets at once, create a sequence for those presets. This figure shows an Exploding Cube sequence and the steps (separate presets) used to assemble an exploding cube. Double-click a preset to run it, or double-click a sequence to run its presets in listed order.
Organize presets and sequences into folders, and also place folders inside other folders. Share favorite presets (or sequences and folders) with other Useful Assistants users by saving to a presets file that can be loaded on another machine that also uses Useful Assistants. |
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Upgrade It Yourself!
Registered owners will be able to download more assistants from the Profound eXchange area of the Profound Effects Web site. Here’s an example of the Create Footage Gallery assistant, which creates a Web-based contact sheet of all or the used footage in a project.
Of special interest to the technically minded or those in larger companies, Useful Assistants is radically customizable. Learn more. |
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