Ep. 07 moveToFolder Free Function Friday
It’s friday again, which means it’s time for another episode of Free Function Friday. This week we go over a simple function called moveToFolder. If you have ever needed to clean up your project panel, or someone else’s for that matter, then you’ll love this function. moveToFolder is actually one of the core functions that I originally built to be used in my Organize Project Assets script. You may also notice that I referred to this script two weeks ago in Free Function Friday Episode 6 article. That function was for collecting a specific type of project asset, precomps. As an example, if you were to use that function together with this one in a single script, you could have a simple script that collects precomps, and places them into their own project folder.
These two functions collectAllPrecomps and moveToFolder are just the first sample of how this tutorial series can and will become more and more useful. As we get further along, you will see more samples of how to assmeble functions we’ve already created to make quick scripts for everyday tasks. This should then help you get more comfortable with using functions. Also being aware of breaking down your script ideas into step by step processes, can help you tackle building more complicated After Effects scripts.
If you haven’t done so already there is a Free Function Friday introduction video located here that has some important information pointing to a few resources that will come in handy when scripting for After Effects.
Episode 7 moveToFolder:
Legal note: The Adobe ExtendScript code talked about in this article and accompanying embedded video(s), and/or graphic images are not guaranteed to be compatible with every version of After Effects. David Torno, ProVideo Coalition, and Diversified will not be held liable for any misuse or incorrect use of the provided ExtendScript code. Use at your own risk.
All of the code I provide in this series, has been created and tested in After Effects CC 2014. Unless otherwise specified in the episode, the code should be compatible with After Effects CS6 through CC 2015. I’ve done my best to avoid depreciated code (code that Adobe removed at some point), and made these functions as compatible as possible. There will however be the occasional piece of code that is brand new as of a certain version of After Effects and therefore will not be backwards compatible from that version. I will mention these if that is the case.
With that said, all the code I provide in this series is open source and free to use in your scripts. I highly encourage you to expand and improve upon the code I provide and start making your own custom functions as well, but please do not repost the code I show in this series as is and claim it as your own. If you use any of the code provided in this series please give credit where credit is due. This series is meant to provide, what I feel is useful code, as well as to hopefully further explain ExtendScript and it’s quirks. While the functions we build throughout this series can perform a task all on their own, they are not meant to be a solo script. How you combine them together and expand upon them is when you will gain the most from these functions.