If you work with After Effects, chances are you’ll have seen people mentioning After Effects scripts before. But exactly what are after effects scripts?
Well, After Effects Scripts are incredibly useful tools that extend the functionality of After Effects in some way, usually saving the user time and effort when performing particular tasks.
Quick navigation
- How a script can automate repetitive tasks
- Where to buy After Effects scripts
- What's the difference between scripts and expressions?
- Are After Effects scripts safe to use?
- Free vs paid After Effects scripts
- FAQ
To put it simply, After Effects Scripts are basically like a set of instructions that After Effects will carry out for you, these instructions could be something simple like: “Add this easing to my keyframes” for example, or they could be: “Shift all my layers by 10 frames” - whatever the instruction, After Effects scripts automate the process so that all you usually have to do is click a few buttons and the script will do all the heavy lifting.
There’s an incredible variety when it comes to the After Effects scripts out there, for example: there are scripts designed to perform complex calculations quickly and efficiently, there are scripts that automate repetitive tasks that would usually take a lot longer when done manually, and there are even some After Effects scripts out there that add features to the interface that perhaps should be included as standard within the software.
How a script can automate repetitive tasks:
To illustrate how an After Effects script works, let’s take the Loop Numero script as an example. This script automates the entire process for creating a sliding number counter in After Effects, and produces the following effect:
To produce this effect manually you would have to take the following steps yourself:
- Create a new text layer with the numbers 0 - 9 in a column format
- Duplicate the text layer multiple times for the required number of columns
- Move each text column layer into the correct position
- Animate each layer manually, or write an expression to produce the correct number counting effect (column 2 only moves up when column 1 has reached #9)
- Precompose all the layers created
- Create a matte layer that matches the numbers
- Apply the correct track matte settings
All these steps may not seem like much, but they can be quite tedious and repetitive, especially if you need to create more than one counter in a project.
This is exactly where a script can be used to save time and hassle, when you press the button on the Numero script panel, what you’re effectively doing is telling After Effects to run through the steps from 1 to 7 above.
The Numero example shows how an After Effects script can produce a specific effect through automation, RubberHose is another script that produces a specific effect - in this case the script automates the incredibly complex task of creating bendy limbs for characters in After Effects.
After Effects scripts aren’t limited to producing specific effects though, there’s scripts like Flow for example, which helps bring a more intuitive interface to applying easing to keyframes in After Effects, it also provides the option to automate applying specific easing styles at the touch of a button. The user could create these easing effects manually, but again the script helps save time and effort that can then be spent elsewhere.
Ultimately, After Effects scripts exist to help the user in some way, whether that’s improving the interface of After Effects, automating particular processes, or creating specific effects that would usually take a lot longer when done manually.
Hopefully that answers the question of what are after effects scripts?
The next thing we’ll look at is where to buy After Effects scripts…
Where to buy After Effects scripts
After Effects scripts are available from a variety of sources online, ae scripts is perhaps the most well known marketplace for them, and of course there’s also our very own After Effects scripts right here on Loop, one of which we’ve already mentioned above.
There’s also a whole host of individual motion designers and software developers who create and host their own scripts, the site: Gumroad has become a great place for script developers and creators to sell their scripts directly to motion designers.
When you download an After Effects script, it will usually come in the form of a .jsxbin or a .jsx file, these files then need to be placed in the right folder so that After Effects can recognise and use them. Take a look at our guide on how to install after effects scripts to find out where you need to put your scripts.
What's the difference between After Effects Scripts and expressions?
Expressions in After Effects are little snippets of code that can be applied to particular parameters of layers within After Effects like the position values for example, or any other value that can be keyframed.
Expressions, although powerful, are limited in the actions they can perform because they’re confined to the layers and compositions that already exist within a project, an After Effects Expression can’t create a new layer within your compositions for example.
After Effects Scripts on the other hand can perform most actions that you can do by hand within the interface, like creating new layers for example, or applying effects to layers and changing values within them. After Effects scripts can even add, edit, and manipulate keyframes to produce or refine animation.
Crucially, if you need to remember the difference between expressions and scripts you should note that scripts can apply expressions to layers, but not the other way around.
There’s such a variety of scripts out there for all manner of purposes, that the phrase “there’s a script for that” has become quite popular with motion designers - if you’re trying to do something complex in After Effects, then chances are there’s a script that will take care of things for you.
Are After Effects scripts safe to use?
Reputable After Effects scripts are safe to use, but as with any third-party software it’s worth being sensible about where you download them from. A few things worth checking before you install a script:
- Does it come from a known developer or marketplace, rather than a random file-sharing link?
- Does the product page clearly state which version of After Effects it requires?
- Is there a way to contact the developer if something doesn’t work?
Scripts can’t do anything to your system that After Effects itself can’t already do - they run inside the application and interact with your project, not your operating system. If a script asks for anything beyond that, treat it with caution.
Free vs paid After Effects scripts
Plenty of great After Effects scripts are free, often released by individual developers or studios as a way of giving back to the motion design community. Our own free After Effects scripts page has a collection of these you can download right now.
Paid scripts tend to solve a more specific, polished problem, and usually come with proper support, documentation, and updates for new After Effects versions. Numero (sliding number counters), Highlight (animated underlines), and Focal (camera lens blur setup) are all examples of paid scripts built to solve one specific, tedious problem properly rather than being a general-purpose tool.
Want every Loop script in one place?
The Complete Medicine Cabinet includes every Loop script, extension, preset and template, from £12.99/m.
FAQ: After Effects Scripts
Do After Effects scripts work with every version of After Effects?
Not always. Most scripts list a minimum required After Effects version on their product page - always check this before buying, since a script built for a recent feature won't run on much older versions.
Can I write my own After Effects script?
Yes - After Effects scripts are written in ExtendScript (a version of JavaScript), and Adobe provides documentation for it. Writing your own is possible, but building something polished, bug-free, and UI-integrated takes considerably longer than it might seem.
Do scripts still work after an After Effects update?
Usually, but not guaranteed - Adobe occasionally changes things that can break older scripts. This is one of the advantages of buying from an actively maintained source rather than downloading something abandoned years ago.
So there we are, if you were asking yourself what are After Effects scripts? Hopefully this post has given you the answer. If you’ve enjoyed this post, use the share links to pass it on!