After Effects project organization
Creating and organizing are quite different skills. Good habit of organization will improve the workflow and will make you happier. Proved by many.
New Project Template
Simplest approach is to start the project with your own Structure Template.
This will give each of your new projects some stability. The template can be improved and
adapted during the time, so it will be more useful.
Labels and comments
Label colors can help with marking the steps of the production.
Some columns can be easily removed with the left mouse click and by choosing Hide This (like in this screenshot - hiding unused Tape Name column)
Some can be added, for example column Date - I didn’t know about it, but it can be handy when you’re trying to find the needed composition within a project and creation time can help in this. So you’ll be sure which version was earlier, if the naming doesn’t reflect that.
I've found that the Comment column can be especially helpful in finding the right composition or footage. Like tagging, but you can even drop a task description here. Even pages of text can be stored in this tiny text box. Just needed to put a plain text without new lines (when hitting Enter), for example whole paragraph without brakes <br>. So you can type any unique word to this composition and it will show all comps containing this word in naming or comments.
Color Labels are simple and efficient tools for marking some necessary comps or footages, but it can be easily forgotten what you’ve wished to mark with them in the next project. Just probably similar types of comps. Like all text holders are marked as Red. But it’s much easier to state the TEXT word somewhere in the name or in the comment. And later to search it within a second.
Overall Any Own approaches to organizing the project are helpful.
Frequent cleanings of the project
Using the Main Comp which holds all necessary compositions it’s easy to remove all garbage that’s not used in the work.
Folders structure and naming is needed to be the same as your project folders on the disk. So you’ll not be falling into the guess universe, when you open the project after a long break.
Every template folder should be renamed, composition taken for work - also renamed, organized. All unnecessary source projects, footages and template folders - better to remove, so they will not be messing with working files and folders anymore. Renaming and deleting is a much more valuable skill than using the Graph Editor for animation. Sounds funny, but nobody laughs when you’re missing the deadline, by doing super-tweaked animation for each layer, and then simply cannot find the right revision for an update if the client asks to change something at the last minute.
But the project structure is not always about the deadlines. When you put everything in places, where you can find it fast - it just speeds up the workflow. You’re not spending time locating the necessary layer or video. It allows you to use more shortcuts, faster and more precisely use the mouse or tablet.
By creating a new composition it’s so easy to hit Enter and skip the naming step. Comp 1, Comp 2, so much of interesting information in these words. Naming takes some seconds, but it creates a blueprint, a small plan of how this composition will be living, and what it will be holding. And moreover it prepares you for making what’s written in the name of the composition, not a random mix of something. It’s a process of focusing on something, and this way increases the pressure of your effort. So it will be possible to create more in the exact needed direction with the same amount of time or action.
We could shorten it up to just one necessary piece of advice, like always type more than you do it. But, it obviously needed to pay more time for thinking ahead, when you create all this city of big and small objects within a project. Most of the time it’s better to limit compositions in the project so the project will be dedicated to some particular task. But it also can lead to problems with versioning, when some art elements are updated, but also it’s needed to re import them into all projects.
Just to sum up everything, I strongly recommend spending some time planning the structure of every new project you start. Even if it will be less productive in the beginning, it may grow into a super time-saving skill in the future.
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