In New Text Scripting Hooks starting After Effects Beta 24.0×14 by Adobe’s Sébastien Périer we learned that Adobe added 42 new scripting hooks for text and font manipulation to the After Effects Beta app. The goal with these new hooks is to match in scripting what is available in the UI. You can see the full list at the After Effects Scripting Guide, along with documentation for the new hooks and objects. Remember, these scripting hooks are currently in Beta and are subject to change. Note that there’s also a demo script panel available that exercises all of the new hooks. You’ll need to rename the file’s extension from .jsx.txt to .jsx to run it inside AE.

Insider Tips: Find What’s Causing Slow Renders in After Effects by Laurence Grayson at Adobe’s frame.io, helps you identify potential bottlenecks for your particular project and system.

Paul Del Vecchio shared a little video on How To Change The Adobe Premiere Interface Color.

Ryan Summers aka @Oddernod recommends a @_johnfischer product for FUI (fake user interfaces for film) — nearly 3.5GB of UI + data design goodness. This includes 39 C4D files, 12 vector files, 5 bonus PSD’s, the After Effects project used to build the promo, and the main comp used to bring it all together.

School of Motion posted Create Animations For The Web With LottieFiles and After Effects. Motion design has become a big part of web and UI design in the last few years, and LottieFiles are one of the reasons why. In this video, see how to create and optimize After Effects animations and turn them in to web friendly code with LottieFiles. There’s a free AE project file too.

Several months ago, Creative Dojo posted After Effects: Digital Screen Tutorial, which shows you how to get a finer details for a more convincing result. For a further stylized effect, see an older tutorial from Ben Marriott, Create a VHS Effect in After Effects | CRT Screen Tutorial.

Color Management Part 18: Bit Depth, a video and article by Chris Zwar here on PVC, looks at how After Effects projects, plug-ins, and output bit-depth settings work.

Boone Loves Video helps you Create an Indiana Jones Map in After Effects (NO PLUGINS).

Peter Quinn shared a bunch of ways to animate type in a short video.

A bunch of ways to animate type.
A collection of little type experiments, movie references and ways I like to move type around. What references did you spot? #typography #type #motiongraphics @peterquinstagram pic.twitter.com/wFPGJiMlXA

— Peter Quinn (@_PeterQuinn_) June 19, 2023

Julian @typographae announced that his free preset Line Sizer is live!

Free preset! https://t.co/avYVufCswm

— After Effects Portal (@aerich) July 24, 2023

Motion By Scott squeezed 52 Essential After Effects Tips I Wish Knew Sooner! Into 14 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KPV7ekvHBA

Ben Marriott shared his choices for The Best Motion Design & Animation of 2023 (So Far…). There were similar videos this year from Will Paterson, Yum Yum Video Explainers, and Envato.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09xntNW45lg

MotionXP shared Motion Design Tunnel! Yes, w’re risking exposure to bad jokes and avoiding the Gradient Circle tut, but…

A trending tutorials topic is arrows, and among them is 3 Arrow Animation Techniques in After Effects | Tutorial, by the popular and prolific Manuel does Motion. He creates scribbled arrows with the Turbulent Displace effect and basic expressions, and builds an arrow animation rig using expression controls. It seems to be a teaser for his new course, Learn how to animate with expressions in After Effects!

10 Effect Ideas For Adobe After Effects (and how to make them) — mostly beginner friendly stuff — was posted by the even more popular Max Novak.

Getting started with MOCHA AE (After Effects Tutorial) is part of a SternFX series on tracking methods in AE.

Cinecom baits you in Almost NOBODY knows about THIS feature in After Effects! They demo KIRI Engine to scan real objects using any phone and then import the models into Adobe After Effects Beta.

Kris Kashtanova shared How to write a script for After Effects with GPT-4, although just now learning animation with After Effects.

How to write a script for After Effects with GPT-4

I'm learning animation with Adobe After Effects and AI helps me learn it faster. I haven't written a script before and I asked GPT-4 to help me write a particle system one.

Here're the steps how I did it: pic.twitter.com/gMzSvJrWwL

— Kris Kashtanova (@icreatelife) July 23, 2023

Is Generative AI for Video Ready for Prime Time Production? by Noah Kadner is the latest missive and roundup on tools for video — this time from Adobe’s frame.io.

AI Tools Part 3: The Current State of Generative AI Tools by Jeff Foster, here on PVC, is his industry update through June 2023. Be sure to check in with his ongoing updates in AI Tools: The List You Need Now! Jeff has a new article too, AI Tools: Animations with Midjourney & After Effects.

SiliconThaumaturgy says that SDXL 1.0 blows away Stable Diffusion 1.5. And here is the testing to prove it. Others say that the Elon Musk phone product line will bankrupt Apple this year!

10 Free AI Animation Tools: Bring Images to Life, from Obscurious, discusses free AI image-to-video tools that allow you to animate your images. Of course, we already have our favorite tools that offer more overall.

Matt Wolfe has more standard approaches in his recent Use AI To Turn Images Into Videos!

AIAnimation posted Animate MidJourney Images – Full AI Animation Workflow, which should be familiar to AE users.

Matt Wolfe excels at news roundups; see his AI news roundups Tons of AI News That You Probably Missed and You Probably Missed This AI News This Week! Cool stuff in the video area, even if Matte seems a bit too trusting of Lore, the emotionally unbalanced brother of Data in STNG.

Easy Full Body Tracking Just Got WAY BETTER! + New Quest Features from Thrillseeker covers some news in VR and AR.

Mini 3 Pro – Keep it or Upgrade to Air 3?, from the useful FlytPath, asks if the DJI Mini 3 Pro still worth it, now that the new AIR 3 is released? He considers 5 reasons why the Mini 3 Pro is still in the bag.

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Please note that these roundups are for quick review and comparison — and After Effects Portal can only skim the surface of what’s out there.

There’s almost always vital information from the originating authors at the links provided, and often free presets, projects, or stock footage too.
@aerich