Welcome to the After Effects ExtendScript Script Writing Training series. My name is David Torno and I will be taking you through the process of creating scripts using Adobe’s scripting language called ExtendScript. This is a weekly series focused on teaching you, the After Effects artist, how to create scripts using the ExtendScript programming language. Scripting can drastically improve workflows, speed up repetitive tasks as well as capture and output project information. If you have never tried ExtendScript or wanted to, but just couldn’t find enough info to help you get started, then this series is for you. Seasoned programmers looking to understand how ExtendScript works could also benefit as well.

To begin this series I will show you some helpful resources for ExtendScript, reveal helpful tips to get started as well as teaching you the basics of javascript. This foundation will get you started with programming in general and will help you familiarize yourself with the process. As we progress in the series, I will be showing you how to create some very powerful and useful code. We will get into accessing different areas of After Effects, changing composition and layer properties, building graphic user interfaces (GUI for short), and even create documents containing information from our project. It should be a great learning experience and hopeful you’ll be ready to explore creating your own custom scripts by the end of this series.

Let’s get started.

In this episode:
– General goal of series
– Software used
– Workflow tips
– Difference between Expressions and Scripts

In this episode:
– Comments
– alert()
– Arithmetic Operators
– Comparison Operators
– Variable
– Array()

In this episode:
– If(){}else{}
– for(){}
– while(){}
– try{}catch(){}
– Additional Resources