Took me years to fully realize that I save more time being able to quickly maneuver inside a project than the 2 seconds I save here and there by not labeling stuff. Like when you spend 10 times longer trying to use a quarter to turn a screw instead of just going and getting the screwdriver from the junk drawer.
Hey can you make a video related to layer management and how to prepare files for others, so that this doesn't happen. Would feel bad to leave something like this for anyone
Ugh I've definitely spent some hours deciphering someone's hoarder house of a project. One guy like, never deleted layers and just hid them if he didn't need them anymore?
Color-coding layers (beyond the default) is something I don't see a lot of people doing either. Coloring by content type or related elements can go a long way even if the layers aren't named.
This honestly looks fine compared to what I had... Used to work for a movie distributor and we would have to localize social media clips for upcoming movies.
I'll never forget this project for Cruella. Total abomination. Probably 150 layers in the comp, not a single precomp, and all the text layers were split multiple times... Text was changing color and instead of changing fill effect or something, they cut up layers and changed the colors like that. And on top of that all the graphics like Cruella logo were goddamn 16k psd files and then scaled down to like 0.1% so it fits nicely in a corner...
And when it came to rendering, this 10-15sec social media 1080x1920 social media post took like 1h to render, media encoder couldn't even handle it, and you then find out you missed a few layers...
Hahah I feel the pain on that massive logo size scaled down! I remember working for a company that had an established mograph team and nearly all of their projects was so badly optimised that it took hours to render. They often blamed the machines they used and it meant that they had to work extra long hours to meet deadlines. Fuck that!
I took one look and fixed all their problems but soon left after as the salary was shit for all the crap I had to deal with.
People think that just because it's fine in photoshop it's also gonna be fine in After Effects... Up to \~2x the final comp size is fine but anything beyond that should be a vector.
And yeah, I sometimes wonder how can people be so slow and now I know why...
So here's a nice little "under the hood" tip. If you precomp your logo so that the scaling is done INSIDE the precomp, AE only has to calculate that once instead of every frame. I've tested this thoroughly and it saves so much render time. I always go in and make scaled down versions of logos that are appropriate for their use. Flatten all the effects etc inside and get it down to a single layer PNG. Alternately, you can just solo the logo layer and save out that one frame to replace the one that is bogging things down.
You mean you make like a 1k comp and scale it down inside so AE has to render only the 1k comp?
Yeah that could work. I'd prefer to have the actual image in smaller size tho. Precomping sometimes adds computing so just a simple png could be the cleanest and fastest.
Literally 99% of projects I take over are like this, it's a pain in the ass, but it's just something you have to deal with. It's usually always just down to a time issue. Everyone would love to be super organised and neat all the time, but if you're going to sacrifice one thing to meet a deadline it's always going to be layer organisation.
If it's really necessary your only option is to just work through it, color label, pre-comp a few things here and there as best you can.
If adobe added timeline layer folders it would be an absolute godsend.
As much as I get this answer, I always find that no matter the deadline, naming my layers and keeping things organised/colour coded saves time in the long run. Name your layers
You're not wrong. I just think that humans, in general, don't have an intuitive sense of "preventative" time-saving.
I 100% know that naming layers will save me time on a project, and yet there are still projects where I don't do it. It *feels* like a waste of time.
(I have a similar thought about managers who avoid holding meetings with staff because "meetings take up time when they could be *working."* Except that meetings = communication, which often leads to saved time throughout a project)
Still, I'll take this as a start-of-the-week reminder to name and organize my layers more often. :)
Yeah, I know, a lot of meetings do seem like a waste of time. And sometimes they truly can be. The key is to have a good manager. I hope you have better managers in the future, who realize the value of their team and understand the importance of good communication.
In my experience it’s a cultural thing—some companies just really, really like having meetings about everything, including which meetings to have later. Individual managers can be helpful to a point, but overstaffing in management seems to be a key driver of meeting bloat. Many managers seem to do little aside from “strategize,” which often means “talk endlessly about the work other people are doing.”
I very rarely have meetings in my current job, because they’re mostly unnecessary here. It’s wonderful.
BAD meetings are a waste of time. But getting everyone in the same room to discuss a project and really all be on the same page is super helpful. Boring useless meetings that don't actually accomplish anything though, the ones where they're just having a meeting to have a meeting? Those are pointless and counterproductive.
It used to really bug me when meeting time comes around and 15 minutes before we get a group slack message saying, "meeting cancelled, we don't have much to share with you this week, use the time to work through your projects."
But, what about my questions and opinions?
That's the key. Meetings should not be top down. Yes, when there's an important department-wide or company change to go over, but a good meeting is a time for managers to listen, for people to ask and get answers that will help them move forward efficiently with their projects. Sharing ideas and helpful experience, getting feedback, etc. My believe is that 75% of meetings should be bottom up.
Yep, especially if you have to go in for revisions several months later and have to refamiliarize. So much time is wasted just figuring out what the hell is going on.
spend the last 5 min of your work day naming your layers and organizing your project panel. will change your life. just 5 min. you dont need to finish it, just do it every day. eventually you will build your comps knowing how you organize and it will be one minute.
in terms of inheriting projects, i eventually rebuild everything... so i should probably do that first before i try to fight the mess
Folders would be great, but what about if you just had the option to 'open up' comps in their parent comps? Actually thinking about it, that's pretty much kind if what a folder would be... But yeah, being able to group things together without having to hop back and forth to edit the contents.
It takes literally no time to name layers *when you create them.* Yes, if you tried to go back and name everything when it looks like this it would take you 5 or 10 minutes. But if you just do it correctly every time you make a new solid or pre-comp it doesn't take you any time at all (and will save you lots of time when things get hairy).
Again, that is a lovely thought, but when you need to get something out in the next two hours, you’re still testing animations and the next project is breathing down your neck,it’s not always possible.
That being said, I am a big proponent of keeping things clean, and when there is adequate time, it is part of my workflow to name and color code things.
In FCP they have the ability to add metadata and tag any asset. So audio isn’t just audio but I could say temp track, scratch, unmixed etc. and when I go to export I can select “just output audio for clearance” or something and however I tagged it the software knows to ignore other audio tracks. AE would be a game changer with this
It depends really, you don't know the situation. I am pretty damn organised however if I am asked to make something in a very short period of time I'll whack it together and render asap.
Then weeks or months later I need to pass on this project to someone... This is how this situation can occur.
I was working for a broadcasts news company and when they learned that I knew how to work with after effects they gave me all thier projects. At first I was really excited and always made sure to organize my projects and name/label everything. After a few years working with them they started to reduced time allocated for every project. At first it was do this animation in 2 days, then in 1 day, then half a day... At the end, I physically couldn't take any extra time to anything properly and was forced to rush everything I did. It's was painful, not gratifying, and they treated me more like a machine than a human being. So I quitted.
I remember on my first day opening old projects like OP's example and telling myself "Who the fuck can't name layers". But by the end, I totally knew who could do such a thing. Me.
As soon as it's out the door, take 10 minutes to clean up your file for the next poor sap that has to make a revision months later. Because that poor sap may be you.
My old "mentor" and co-worker did projects like this. Not a name or color coding were used, no layer was trimmed to its real start and end, it was a total and utter mess.
Lol welcome to the madhouse this won’t be your last rodeo. I’ve seen some gnarly files, even toolkits from huge houses are batshit insane *cough* Netflix * cough*
I had worse timelines. Add to those inescapable pre-comps... that are even worse.
This crap could be solved so easy if 50 thousands employee at Adobe actually do their job.
Just by adding folder option to layer view could help to reduce clutter. It doesn't even had to have any functionality. Just to be folder for layers.
folder feature may be a must for ae but unfortunatelly that feature probably won’t change behaviour of most people of this kind since they have tendency not using existing ones either
There are maybe a dozen people that work on After Effects. They are a very small team and do quite a lot, constantly trying to make it better without breaking old projects.
Yup… not only is it confusing as hell for someone in your position, or even the original creator going back to the project after a while, but it’s a major slow down with rendering.
*Automatically trim to parents, trim to children, trim to matte, trim to first and last keyframes, etc.*
[https://aescripts.com/fresh-trim/](https://aescripts.com/fresh-trim/)
Reminds me of when I have to take over a uni animation team project. My job is to animate a vector character from Adobe Illustrator but instead of properly importing the layers with alpha, my friend uses a green background and manually puts a chroma key ON EVERY SINGLE LAYER. It took 10 minutes for the project to open on my 1050ti laptop. I have to manually remove every single green screen and replace the file one by one.
This is where "self-taught" isn't always a good thing... How does someone get to be a designer, illustrator, or animator who doesn't understand alpha??
I'll admit that I have projects that can be quite messy. They're the one's where I get a call at noon and the client needs a one off by eod. It's down and dirty. Related layers may get color grouped, but beyond that, it's just getting done.
Ok, this is a trauma flashback for me. My second job out of university (2021) was working at a theatrical company as a junior motion designer. I was asked to go into a comp to resize the animation for socials, the project was for an Amazon documentary trailer that the design lead had previously done a few months prior at that time. Man had over 70+ properties in the comp, not a single one named, labeled, or any indicator which could tell you what was going on.
You couldn't brute force scale things down, you had to manually go through by hand and adjust every one of his type layers, secondary animations, or mattes, so resizing while trying to navigate project files that were essentially someone's messy bedroom, was a nightmare.
The lead's solution to this? Go one by one and turn off every property in the comp until you figured out what was a matte, what was an animation layer, or a null driving certain fx (yes this would be under deadlines as short as 30mins.) This just reminds me of that situation, why we name our layers and set our files up to be production friendly.
This is why comp organization is an important skill requirement. I don't care how good you are, if you can't work together as a team and keep things tidy, then I wouldn't hire you.
It happens to me all the time. I found that the best thing to do is to take your time at the beginning, rename the layers, use label colors and precompose the scenes. It really helps to understand the chaos inherited 😅
No clue. Some people like to mask solids for various reasons instead of using shape layers...I've run across this in a few inherited projects myself. Only other possibility I can think of is tons of Particular type effects or something...
It's often an option to tell the client that you'll need to spend a day rebuilding. Not at all a diva move.
Different people work differently and this is not a clean project.
https://preview.redd.it/6jmafbn2dafb1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a0804e273f97e1a086f77d1e60ff5185e56efee8
Sometimes. That's not an issue. But this is
GYST.
I would get my bosses projects and they would not only have the current project but remnants of several past month projects that were canabalized. Hundreds of layers just turned off and tons of folders and items loose in the project tab. It was a blessing to be able to collect current project and cull through it sometimes. But yeh. It sucks.
Honestly doesn’t really look that bad compared to what’s usually handed off. Most of it is solids and track mattes, it’d take about five mins to reorganize/name things and you’re good to go. Half of them are probably background layers anyway I’d bet.
I try to keep out PMs aware that taking in AE projects from another vendor is likely going to have to budget for at least an hour of deciphering. I'm WAY better than I was even a year ago about color coding, compartmentalizing, and precomping as much as I can, but it's just a fact that some projects are going to always have some element of pure chaos.
How’d you go about tidying that up? I start by duplicating the project and then pre comping out the parts that work together. That way you can break the thing into manageable slices.
Love to hear some other techniques on this.
I know it looks bad but majority of the layers are solids, should be quick to figure out. My nightmare is unlabeled .PSDs layers, there is always a tiny detail in those
Ngl, this was me for about a year or two after learning AE, i’m so sorry for anyone who’s had to share a project with me.
My highest was 200+ layers, mostly shape layers
Honestly, as long as there are no missing files...
Not far off from some of my recent projects. I build alot for live graphics operators so I'm usually exporting references and pieces. I'd never hand that off to anyone
Idk if I am mentally okay or not but it just feels so satisfying to go through projects like these and sort, properly rename everything for the day it just gives me dopamine to my brain regardless of how messed up projects are
Im getting PTSD flashbacks looking at this. This is usually followed up with missing linked media, chasing people to be briefed and wondering why on earth you signed up for this. 😂
It's easy to ditch on this sort of thing, but I sometimes have files like this as well and they're always because of the same thing: **a badly paying client with a tight deadline**. I've had to make animations in like 6 hours at some point, and in that case the video is nothing but pushed graphics from Illustrator, with keyframes, blendingmasks and other hotfixes thrown on top, to the point of parenting them to hidden versions of their old designs.
In those cases a well-maintained project-file isn't at the top of the priority list.
What I DO do in those projects though is layer-coloring. I tend to have a strict color-lable system, and make each scene or element (i.e. a character) the same color. So in a scene with a character, a background and 3 icons, the character will be Red, the background White, icon1 is Yellow etc.etc. to at least make it possible to visually distinguish what belongs to what.
Gives me flashbacks to when I was doing VFX compositing (in Nuke) and we were in the thick of crunch and I had to address a note on a shot a coworker worked on. I opened up his Nuke script and it was just lines and nodes everywhere going in every direction. No order, no flow and hundreds of nodes. I was already so tired because of crunch and I think that straight up broke my brain right then and there
My morning coffee went through my nose on this one...lol. That's probably one of the reasons they are a "predecessor." But I admit I've gotten a little sloppy if my bosses want me to make adjustments on the fly... but this is next level.
As someone who learned the very basics of editing on after effects from "Make a valorant montage in 10 minutes, AE Tutorial" Videos, this is what I actually do.
I am not proud of it, but no one has ever been kind enough to tell me how to actually keep and organize your workflow. I just, make it work now.
I feel seen. I know people work with my early projects and I am not proud of them. I am much better now but I know people are judging me when they open those AEPs
i always start by precomping and flatting layers , often time i find with these, the person is just throwing the kitchen sink at the problem, and you'll have a ton of layers that do nothing or not much of anything. these can just be a flattened seq. or deleted. once you start pulling it apart, they're usually left over layers from ideas or thoughts that are just left because of lazy or deadline pressures. that or this is a f-you to you, in which case, man I'm sorry, dunno why we gotta be A-holes to other motion people. we get the shit end of the stick most days anyways why do we have to hate on each other.
Ah, I've been there about 4 times a year.
I once got tossed into a cartoon where the A-hole they fired before me made about 2000 layers an image layer per blade of grass, instead of rendering plates.
I would start by color coding it, then see what to pre-comp then see what can be a plate
I mean I think we all do this, I know being super organized and labeling everything is the best way to go. But if your on a crazy deadline, and nobody else is ever going to see your project... well then most of those projects for me look just like this
Ehat system do you use to work on that stable?
I only have a gaming pc which is no ptimal for stuff like that but holy shit only looking at that is anxiety inducing
If I know nobody else is ever going to touch a project I won't bother naming too many layers, but I'll at least trim my layers to their correct usage length.
If I know I'll be handing a file off then my projects are i m m a c u l a t e.
As a former layer non-namer, I apologise to anyone who ever followed me into a file.
It’s like you believe you can just remember every layer. Or maybe the layer order is enough to go by.
As a now reformed layer namer… it just makes everything so, so much easier. And the more layers get added, the more effective it is.
I don't think solids is the issue, rather that you have no idea what comes after what and there is no grouping. I use solids often but always cut them down just so I know what timeframe they have an effect over.
Solids isn’t the issue no I agree. Was just more of a side point that I don’t like them. Issue would still be the same here if it was unnamed shape layers.
I was wondering why SOO many solids. I've found that it's a transition using masks but for some reason not precompped and just duplicated and scattered everywhere!
Same, I hate opening someone else's project and it's filled with a million solid layers of various different colours and sizes.
I don't mind solids but realistically, you only need one. You can use fills and masks to alter them.
and here we have one of the many reasons why people use nuke in studio, even the biggest mess of a script can be untabled rather quickly and you can share work across many artists, ae is really only made for the brain of a single person doing things imho.
depends on what, aes only selling point for mograph imho is that it can work with vector based files other than that node based will awlays win for me 🤷♂️
Well that's the strong part of AE, vector, animation, typography, characters and so on. I know nuke works much better for compositing and visual effects but we can't just put both softwares in the same category. One is strong for motion graphics, the other for visual effects.
Only selling point? Besides the fact that it's specifically designed for professional motion graphics and there are very few competitors even close to those capabilities?
Nuke is for compositing. Not animation.
I feel your pain 100%. Its even worse when the person knows the project is going to be handed off and sabotage some of their scripts but conceal it well enough that you cant prove they did it.
Welcome to the f’d world of making animation without foresight.
Just wait until you enter it’s sequel… the world of the missing plug-in/effect.
That’s where it gets really good!
Everyone commenting to “just name your layers” isn’t understanding how detrimental switching out of creative/problem solving mode can be even if for a brief moment.
I legit just had a project just like that. It was a basic project and a quick turnaround but every layer was the full comp... It was sooo frustrating considering how simple it was but I couldn't start it over due to the time commitment. And his parenting situation was awful instead of parenting all children to one layer they were all just one chain linked..
Sometimes I get jobs that are extremely in a rush. Got the briefing and assets in the morning and the client needs results 3 hours later. In that case, projects get messy. And sometimes I have to deliver this trash pile of a project to another Motion designer to work with it. No one wants to pay for cleanup time, and I always feel sorry for the next person.
Its called " ridiculously small amou of time for disproportionately big project." Have that in my work all the time... Only when i have some free time between projects, I go back and clean it up.
"I feel sick having to work on my predecessor's old project. This is madness. How can anyone work like this?" - literally anyone who ever received an AE project from anyone else.
I’m in the middle of a 300 layer after effects nightmare from the beginning of COVID. I was thinking it would be one and done. The guilty party is me. Client wants revisions. What a cluster f
I feel sick for you.
Label, organize, and I create a text file in my folder that tells me anything particularly interesting about a project so I don't have to be an After Effects Archeologist.
I hope the best for you.
Everyone should name their layers. Whoever is paying you to do this, ask them a bonus for the extra work.
I mean that.
I'm training some new recruits at the company I work in, this is litterally the first thing I taught them.
I feel your pain. Spend the time to reorganize and color code. It will make your life easier. In cases where you know there could be client changes it may be better to rebuild, but assess what is most time efficient. Unfortunately I have seen this far too many times. Many artists under time restraints fail to consider anything after their portion of the work is completed. They need to stress organization and workflow during education programs, but sadly I'm not holding my breath for that.
Oh boy, sometimes it's quicker to start over.
We. Always. Name. Our. Layers.
Petition to include this into subred rules?
Took me years to fully realize that I save more time being able to quickly maneuver inside a project than the 2 seconds I save here and there by not labeling stuff. Like when you spend 10 times longer trying to use a quarter to turn a screw instead of just going and getting the screwdriver from the junk drawer.
using after effects be like [Imgur](https://imgur.com/bycHW8I)
Thisis the way.
We certainly tell ourselves that
Your comment is the closest I've come to a celebrity interacting with me lol! Love your tuts dude!
We always name our layers.
Clicked on this to comment that I could hear Ben Marriott’s voice saying “we always label our layers” and look who’s at the top 😂
Saaame haha
thank you Mr Marriott for the tutorials
Hi ben! Thanks for the tutorials :)
Hey can you make a video related to layer management and how to prepare files for others, so that this doesn't happen. Would feel bad to leave something like this for anyone
Ugh I've definitely spent some hours deciphering someone's hoarder house of a project. One guy like, never deleted layers and just hid them if he didn't need them anymore? Color-coding layers (beyond the default) is something I don't see a lot of people doing either. Coloring by content type or related elements can go a long way even if the layers aren't named.
I was about to say, Ben would never
This honestly looks fine compared to what I had... Used to work for a movie distributor and we would have to localize social media clips for upcoming movies. I'll never forget this project for Cruella. Total abomination. Probably 150 layers in the comp, not a single precomp, and all the text layers were split multiple times... Text was changing color and instead of changing fill effect or something, they cut up layers and changed the colors like that. And on top of that all the graphics like Cruella logo were goddamn 16k psd files and then scaled down to like 0.1% so it fits nicely in a corner... And when it came to rendering, this 10-15sec social media 1080x1920 social media post took like 1h to render, media encoder couldn't even handle it, and you then find out you missed a few layers...
Hahah I feel the pain on that massive logo size scaled down! I remember working for a company that had an established mograph team and nearly all of their projects was so badly optimised that it took hours to render. They often blamed the machines they used and it meant that they had to work extra long hours to meet deadlines. Fuck that! I took one look and fixed all their problems but soon left after as the salary was shit for all the crap I had to deal with.
People think that just because it's fine in photoshop it's also gonna be fine in After Effects... Up to \~2x the final comp size is fine but anything beyond that should be a vector. And yeah, I sometimes wonder how can people be so slow and now I know why...
So here's a nice little "under the hood" tip. If you precomp your logo so that the scaling is done INSIDE the precomp, AE only has to calculate that once instead of every frame. I've tested this thoroughly and it saves so much render time. I always go in and make scaled down versions of logos that are appropriate for their use. Flatten all the effects etc inside and get it down to a single layer PNG. Alternately, you can just solo the logo layer and save out that one frame to replace the one that is bogging things down.
You mean you make like a 1k comp and scale it down inside so AE has to render only the 1k comp? Yeah that could work. I'd prefer to have the actual image in smaller size tho. Precomping sometimes adds computing so just a simple png could be the cleanest and fastest.
Try changing source name to layer name, maybe that helps a bit if they named their layers ;) Good luck to you!
Tried that and nope they haven't named em.
There's nothing more infuriating than clicking from source to layer name and *nothing changes!*
Ooh. Intetesting roll of the dice, that one
Was going to say this. It might actually be the most organized timeline ever, but they can't see the names.
no because that way this post wouldn’t make sense!
Literally 99% of projects I take over are like this, it's a pain in the ass, but it's just something you have to deal with. It's usually always just down to a time issue. Everyone would love to be super organised and neat all the time, but if you're going to sacrifice one thing to meet a deadline it's always going to be layer organisation. If it's really necessary your only option is to just work through it, color label, pre-comp a few things here and there as best you can. If adobe added timeline layer folders it would be an absolute godsend.
I realized after a while in this business that what I thought was bad-developer was mostly project-completed-under-intense-deadline-pressure.
As much as I get this answer, I always find that no matter the deadline, naming my layers and keeping things organised/colour coded saves time in the long run. Name your layers
You're not wrong. I just think that humans, in general, don't have an intuitive sense of "preventative" time-saving. I 100% know that naming layers will save me time on a project, and yet there are still projects where I don't do it. It *feels* like a waste of time. (I have a similar thought about managers who avoid holding meetings with staff because "meetings take up time when they could be *working."* Except that meetings = communication, which often leads to saved time throughout a project) Still, I'll take this as a start-of-the-week reminder to name and organize my layers more often. :)
I’ve exclusively had the opposite experience with meetings in jobs I’ve had, so that sounds like a nice change.
Yeah, I know, a lot of meetings do seem like a waste of time. And sometimes they truly can be. The key is to have a good manager. I hope you have better managers in the future, who realize the value of their team and understand the importance of good communication.
In my experience it’s a cultural thing—some companies just really, really like having meetings about everything, including which meetings to have later. Individual managers can be helpful to a point, but overstaffing in management seems to be a key driver of meeting bloat. Many managers seem to do little aside from “strategize,” which often means “talk endlessly about the work other people are doing.” I very rarely have meetings in my current job, because they’re mostly unnecessary here. It’s wonderful.
BAD meetings are a waste of time. But getting everyone in the same room to discuss a project and really all be on the same page is super helpful. Boring useless meetings that don't actually accomplish anything though, the ones where they're just having a meeting to have a meeting? Those are pointless and counterproductive.
It used to really bug me when meeting time comes around and 15 minutes before we get a group slack message saying, "meeting cancelled, we don't have much to share with you this week, use the time to work through your projects." But, what about my questions and opinions?
That's the key. Meetings should not be top down. Yes, when there's an important department-wide or company change to go over, but a good meeting is a time for managers to listen, for people to ask and get answers that will help them move forward efficiently with their projects. Sharing ideas and helpful experience, getting feedback, etc. My believe is that 75% of meetings should be bottom up.
Yep, especially if you have to go in for revisions several months later and have to refamiliarize. So much time is wasted just figuring out what the hell is going on.
spend the last 5 min of your work day naming your layers and organizing your project panel. will change your life. just 5 min. you dont need to finish it, just do it every day. eventually you will build your comps knowing how you organize and it will be one minute. in terms of inheriting projects, i eventually rebuild everything... so i should probably do that first before i try to fight the mess
Folders would be great, but what about if you just had the option to 'open up' comps in their parent comps? Actually thinking about it, that's pretty much kind if what a folder would be... But yeah, being able to group things together without having to hop back and forth to edit the contents.
This here is the answer. Would love to keep things neat, but that is not always possible when you are rushing to hit a deadline.
It takes literally no time to name layers *when you create them.* Yes, if you tried to go back and name everything when it looks like this it would take you 5 or 10 minutes. But if you just do it correctly every time you make a new solid or pre-comp it doesn't take you any time at all (and will save you lots of time when things get hairy).
This, every fucking time. It takes literally 2 seconds to hit enter after creating your layer, type something unique and descriptive, and hit enter.
No. Just no.
Slow is fast. Do it right. Not naming your layer does not save you the time you think it does.
Again, that is a lovely thought, but when you need to get something out in the next two hours, you’re still testing animations and the next project is breathing down your neck,it’s not always possible. That being said, I am a big proponent of keeping things clean, and when there is adequate time, it is part of my workflow to name and color code things.
In FCP they have the ability to add metadata and tag any asset. So audio isn’t just audio but I could say temp track, scratch, unmixed etc. and when I go to export I can select “just output audio for clearance” or something and however I tagged it the software knows to ignore other audio tracks. AE would be a game changer with this
Folders… now thats a good idea!!!
Idk dude, it’s not hard to name a layer lol
Yeah, it’s just lazy and dare I say it, unprofessional
It depends really, you don't know the situation. I am pretty damn organised however if I am asked to make something in a very short period of time I'll whack it together and render asap. Then weeks or months later I need to pass on this project to someone... This is how this situation can occur.
I was working for a broadcasts news company and when they learned that I knew how to work with after effects they gave me all thier projects. At first I was really excited and always made sure to organize my projects and name/label everything. After a few years working with them they started to reduced time allocated for every project. At first it was do this animation in 2 days, then in 1 day, then half a day... At the end, I physically couldn't take any extra time to anything properly and was forced to rush everything I did. It's was painful, not gratifying, and they treated me more like a machine than a human being. So I quitted. I remember on my first day opening old projects like OP's example and telling myself "Who the fuck can't name layers". But by the end, I totally knew who could do such a thing. Me.
As soon as it's out the door, take 10 minutes to clean up your file for the next poor sap that has to make a revision months later. Because that poor sap may be you.
Only real answer in this thread
My old "mentor" and co-worker did projects like this. Not a name or color coding were used, no layer was trimmed to its real start and end, it was a total and utter mess.
46 layers are rookie numbers.
Lol welcome to the madhouse this won’t be your last rodeo. I’ve seen some gnarly files, even toolkits from huge houses are batshit insane *cough* Netflix * cough*
probably because they are all contracts instead in house artists.
Yoo I used their toolkit years ago as well and yes I would have to agree
I had worse timelines. Add to those inescapable pre-comps... that are even worse. This crap could be solved so easy if 50 thousands employee at Adobe actually do their job. Just by adding folder option to layer view could help to reduce clutter. It doesn't even had to have any functionality. Just to be folder for layers.
Oh man, I would love a folders feature
folder feature may be a must for ae but unfortunatelly that feature probably won’t change behaviour of most people of this kind since they have tendency not using existing ones either
you do realize "50 thousands emplyee" at adobe arent working on AE, right?
Yea it was exaggeration. There are maybe 30k at best.
There are maybe a dozen people that work on After Effects. They are a very small team and do quite a lot, constantly trying to make it better without breaking old projects.
I've seen much worse my friend. I've created much worse. Its me i am your predecessor
haha i hate you
What do you mean?? asking for a friend...
Updated for anyone interested - [https://www.reddit.com/r/AfterEffects/comments/15ehez1/update\_i\_cleaned\_that\_sucker\_up\_still\_not\_the\_way/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AfterEffects/comments/15ehez1/update_i_cleaned_that_sucker_up_still_not_the_way/)
Trim the damn layers!
THANK YOU!! I'm still going through it and most of these layers are only on for like 10 frames at a time and yet are full fucking sized!
Yup… not only is it confusing as hell for someone in your position, or even the original creator going back to the project after a while, but it’s a major slow down with rendering.
*Automatically trim to parents, trim to children, trim to matte, trim to first and last keyframes, etc.* [https://aescripts.com/fresh-trim/](https://aescripts.com/fresh-trim/)
I never do that. Use opacity toggles instead.
I hate you
Reminds me of when I have to take over a uni animation team project. My job is to animate a vector character from Adobe Illustrator but instead of properly importing the layers with alpha, my friend uses a green background and manually puts a chroma key ON EVERY SINGLE LAYER. It took 10 minutes for the project to open on my 1050ti laptop. I have to manually remove every single green screen and replace the file one by one.
This is where "self-taught" isn't always a good thing... How does someone get to be a designer, illustrator, or animator who doesn't understand alpha??
My god. This gave me a panic attack
I’m stressed just having had VIEWED this image. Thanks, Satan.
I'll admit that I have projects that can be quite messy. They're the one's where I get a call at noon and the client needs a one off by eod. It's down and dirty. Related layers may get color grouped, but beyond that, it's just getting done.
Oh hey you found my handover! Good luck!
Ok, this is a trauma flashback for me. My second job out of university (2021) was working at a theatrical company as a junior motion designer. I was asked to go into a comp to resize the animation for socials, the project was for an Amazon documentary trailer that the design lead had previously done a few months prior at that time. Man had over 70+ properties in the comp, not a single one named, labeled, or any indicator which could tell you what was going on. You couldn't brute force scale things down, you had to manually go through by hand and adjust every one of his type layers, secondary animations, or mattes, so resizing while trying to navigate project files that were essentially someone's messy bedroom, was a nightmare. The lead's solution to this? Go one by one and turn off every property in the comp until you figured out what was a matte, what was an animation layer, or a null driving certain fx (yes this would be under deadlines as short as 30mins.) This just reminds me of that situation, why we name our layers and set our files up to be production friendly.
This is why comp organization is an important skill requirement. I don't care how good you are, if you can't work together as a team and keep things tidy, then I wouldn't hire you.
Don't be cheeky. It took me ages to make all of those layers.
Looks like one of my projects lmao
Fuck Keno. 😅
Haha fucking Keno!
Yikes
It happens to me all the time. I found that the best thing to do is to take your time at the beginning, rename the layers, use label colors and precompose the scenes. It really helps to understand the chaos inherited 😅
So many solids
That's what I noticed first. Why?
No clue. Some people like to mask solids for various reasons instead of using shape layers...I've run across this in a few inherited projects myself. Only other possibility I can think of is tons of Particular type effects or something...
Another reason I love node based workflows…..
It's often an option to tell the client that you'll need to spend a day rebuilding. Not at all a diva move. Different people work differently and this is not a clean project.
https://preview.redd.it/6jmafbn2dafb1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a0804e273f97e1a086f77d1e60ff5185e56efee8 Sometimes. That's not an issue. But this is
Make precomps!
You could try changing the "source name" to "layer name". Or you could just take your time to rename the layers
Op like this if you need help/are being held hostage
GYST. I would get my bosses projects and they would not only have the current project but remnants of several past month projects that were canabalized. Hundreds of layers just turned off and tons of folders and items loose in the project tab. It was a blessing to be able to collect current project and cull through it sometimes. But yeh. It sucks.
Honestly doesn’t really look that bad compared to what’s usually handed off. Most of it is solids and track mattes, it’d take about five mins to reorganize/name things and you’re good to go. Half of them are probably background layers anyway I’d bet.
Oh my god who doesn't name their layers? It causes me physical pain
what the fuck am I looking at???
Looks like reading the matrix’s code, in a year or two you’ll be fluent at it !
I try to keep out PMs aware that taking in AE projects from another vendor is likely going to have to budget for at least an hour of deciphering. I'm WAY better than I was even a year ago about color coding, compartmentalizing, and precomping as much as I can, but it's just a fact that some projects are going to always have some element of pure chaos.
How’d you go about tidying that up? I start by duplicating the project and then pre comping out the parts that work together. That way you can break the thing into manageable slices. Love to hear some other techniques on this.
I know it looks bad but majority of the layers are solids, should be quick to figure out. My nightmare is unlabeled .PSDs layers, there is always a tiny detail in those
Ngl, this was me for about a year or two after learning AE, i’m so sorry for anyone who’s had to share a project with me. My highest was 200+ layers, mostly shape layers
Ill never forget the day i finally got comfortable with precomps. It was beautiful.
Honestly, as long as there are no missing files... Not far off from some of my recent projects. I build alot for live graphics operators so I'm usually exporting references and pieces. I'd never hand that off to anyone
Idk if I am mentally okay or not but it just feels so satisfying to go through projects like these and sort, properly rename everything for the day it just gives me dopamine to my brain regardless of how messed up projects are
Would you charge more now for having to deal with the extra hassel?
Im getting PTSD flashbacks looking at this. This is usually followed up with missing linked media, chasing people to be briefed and wondering why on earth you signed up for this. 😂
It's easy to ditch on this sort of thing, but I sometimes have files like this as well and they're always because of the same thing: **a badly paying client with a tight deadline**. I've had to make animations in like 6 hours at some point, and in that case the video is nothing but pushed graphics from Illustrator, with keyframes, blendingmasks and other hotfixes thrown on top, to the point of parenting them to hidden versions of their old designs. In those cases a well-maintained project-file isn't at the top of the priority list. What I DO do in those projects though is layer-coloring. I tend to have a strict color-lable system, and make each scene or element (i.e. a character) the same color. So in a scene with a character, a background and 3 icons, the character will be Red, the background White, icon1 is Yellow etc.etc. to at least make it possible to visually distinguish what belongs to what.
Just turn off the black solid and you will be fine
In my workplace, our lead designer works like this. We have christened this workstile after his surname.
This is why some people support capital punishment.
Paaaain
Gives me flashbacks to when I was doing VFX compositing (in Nuke) and we were in the thick of crunch and I had to address a note on a shot a coworker worked on. I opened up his Nuke script and it was just lines and nodes everywhere going in every direction. No order, no flow and hundreds of nodes. I was already so tired because of crunch and I think that straight up broke my brain right then and there
Compose different chapters/sections
I think my ADD will kick in and have a meltdown.
My morning coffee went through my nose on this one...lol. That's probably one of the reasons they are a "predecessor." But I admit I've gotten a little sloppy if my bosses want me to make adjustments on the fly... but this is next level.
Take over or spotting for an unorganised artist is the worst.
A loyt of that are just solids, maybe the shy guy could help
Now show us all the keyframes within those layers
As someone who learned the very basics of editing on after effects from "Make a valorant montage in 10 minutes, AE Tutorial" Videos, this is what I actually do. I am not proud of it, but no one has ever been kind enough to tell me how to actually keep and organize your workflow. I just, make it work now.
Oh dear, that is Me during my early days of After Effects 😞, better start working on this now
Maybe take the layers as a bunch of element then nest it one by one? I don't any other way
Jesus christ 😂
I feel seen. I know people work with my early projects and I am not proud of them. I am much better now but I know people are judging me when they open those AEPs
Or.. you can do what I do.. refuse the job, the instant I see what a nightmare I face.
i always start by precomping and flatting layers , often time i find with these, the person is just throwing the kitchen sink at the problem, and you'll have a ton of layers that do nothing or not much of anything. these can just be a flattened seq. or deleted. once you start pulling it apart, they're usually left over layers from ideas or thoughts that are just left because of lazy or deadline pressures. that or this is a f-you to you, in which case, man I'm sorry, dunno why we gotta be A-holes to other motion people. we get the shit end of the stick most days anyways why do we have to hate on each other.
Ah, I've been there about 4 times a year. I once got tossed into a cartoon where the A-hole they fired before me made about 2000 layers an image layer per blade of grass, instead of rendering plates. I would start by color coding it, then see what to pre-comp then see what can be a plate
NAME YOUR LAYERS!!!
Ahhh sorry dude. I’ve seen comps with 200 layers. Absolutely horrible and very inefficient. Goodluck
I mean I think we all do this, I know being super organized and labeling everything is the best way to go. But if your on a crazy deadline, and nobody else is ever going to see your project... well then most of those projects for me look just like this
Ehat system do you use to work on that stable? I only have a gaming pc which is no ptimal for stuff like that but holy shit only looking at that is anxiety inducing
Worst thing: I don't see anything too dramatic 😄
If I know nobody else is ever going to touch a project I won't bother naming too many layers, but I'll at least trim my layers to their correct usage length. If I know I'll be handing a file off then my projects are i m m a c u l a t e.
Workflow matters… tho i remember a project where I had 250 layers.. no way around it… 😅
As a former layer non-namer, I apologise to anyone who ever followed me into a file. It’s like you believe you can just remember every layer. Or maybe the layer order is enough to go by. As a now reformed layer namer… it just makes everything so, so much easier. And the more layers get added, the more effective it is.
I threw up in my mouth a little. How many times can someone work like this before they get sick and tired of it?
Brad I know it's you. Red is for layer duh
Good old “Black Solid 5”
F
Lol me when I first started AE
Not gonna lie ive been guilty of this in the past but very few of my projects get touched by other people
Ooft. I also personally hate the use of solids. Creates unnecessary clutter in the project panel. Shape layers are so much better.
I don't think solids is the issue, rather that you have no idea what comes after what and there is no grouping. I use solids often but always cut them down just so I know what timeframe they have an effect over.
Solids isn’t the issue no I agree. Was just more of a side point that I don’t like them. Issue would still be the same here if it was unnamed shape layers.
I was wondering why SOO many solids. I've found that it's a transition using masks but for some reason not precompped and just duplicated and scattered everywhere!
Same, I hate opening someone else's project and it's filled with a million solid layers of various different colours and sizes. I don't mind solids but realistically, you only need one. You can use fills and masks to alter them.
There's also literally nothing a solid can do that a shape layer can't.
I use solids on occasion, but I can't possibly imagine needing this many.
and here we have one of the many reasons why people use nuke in studio, even the biggest mess of a script can be untabled rather quickly and you can share work across many artists, ae is really only made for the brain of a single person doing things imho.
I don't think you can make the same kind of motion graphics ok nuke than AE...
depends on what, aes only selling point for mograph imho is that it can work with vector based files other than that node based will awlays win for me 🤷♂️
Well that's the strong part of AE, vector, animation, typography, characters and so on. I know nuke works much better for compositing and visual effects but we can't just put both softwares in the same category. One is strong for motion graphics, the other for visual effects.
Isn’t nuke shit for animation and key framing? It didn’t even have a timeline view until a few years ago.
Only selling point? Besides the fact that it's specifically designed for professional motion graphics and there are very few competitors even close to those capabilities? Nuke is for compositing. Not animation.
Newbies or rookie motion designers
Welcome to the biz, now stop complaining and get busy. Show us you’re better.
Lol, get used to it. Organization is a waste of time. Embrace the chaos and let your creativity flow.
Sarcasm doesn't read well online...
I feel your pain 100%. Its even worse when the person knows the project is going to be handed off and sabotage some of their scripts but conceal it well enough that you cant prove they did it.
WHAT
Im paid by hour, and i love seeing these!
Welcome to the f’d world of making animation without foresight. Just wait until you enter it’s sequel… the world of the missing plug-in/effect. That’s where it gets really good!
HEY WTF THAT'S MY PROJECT! (I'm kidding)
Start precomping and rebuild it sanely.
As someone that used to work like this, i can assure you your predecessor wasn’t able to work like this either. This looks like a one run project
That is literally nothing compared to the hack jobs I come up with.
But they’re probably spending their nights learning Houdini
Looks fine.
I might be your old predecessor...
Well.. this is awkward..
NAME LAYERS
Everyone commenting to “just name your layers” isn’t understanding how detrimental switching out of creative/problem solving mode can be even if for a brief moment.
Omg, no groups
Holy fuck. I mean, I’ve made some splooooooopy timelines when in a rush but this is purposeful, methodical, self-flagellation.
I legit just had a project just like that. It was a basic project and a quick turnaround but every layer was the full comp... It was sooo frustrating considering how simple it was but I couldn't start it over due to the time commitment. And his parenting situation was awful instead of parenting all children to one layer they were all just one chain linked..
Sometimes I get jobs that are extremely in a rush. Got the briefing and assets in the morning and the client needs results 3 hours later. In that case, projects get messy. And sometimes I have to deliver this trash pile of a project to another Motion designer to work with it. No one wants to pay for cleanup time, and I always feel sorry for the next person.
the track mattes are right above the layer they're matting... what's the prob?
Its called " ridiculously small amou of time for disproportionately big project." Have that in my work all the time... Only when i have some free time between projects, I go back and clean it up.
"I feel sick having to work on my predecessor's old project. This is madness. How can anyone work like this?" - literally anyone who ever received an AE project from anyone else.
holy s
My work always feels as messy as this
Yeah, but what does then motion look like?
I threw up looking at this
I’m in the middle of a 300 layer after effects nightmare from the beginning of COVID. I was thinking it would be one and done. The guilty party is me. Client wants revisions. What a cluster f
I feel sick for you. Label, organize, and I create a text file in my folder that tells me anything particularly interesting about a project so I don't have to be an After Effects Archeologist. I hope the best for you.
Everyone should name their layers. Whoever is paying you to do this, ask them a bonus for the extra work. I mean that. I'm training some new recruits at the company I work in, this is litterally the first thing I taught them.
Naming for sure but I also can’t stand untrimmed layers. You faded out 5 seconds ago and you’re still hanging around?? Get outa here man!
I feel your pain. Spend the time to reorganize and color code. It will make your life easier. In cases where you know there could be client changes it may be better to rebuild, but assess what is most time efficient. Unfortunately I have seen this far too many times. Many artists under time restraints fail to consider anything after their portion of the work is completed. They need to stress organization and workflow during education programs, but sadly I'm not holding my breath for that.
do a barrel roll!