Blender(2.8) to After Effects Exporter

I’ve been working with the script linked by nBurn above, and it works, except for one thing…
The camera exporter does not take into consideration if you have a “percentage scale” set to other than 100% for the Resolution x/y dimensions in the Output tab.
It will always export with the Resolution numbers you have and does not adjust based on a percentage value you have set.
Just something to keep in mind, and/or submit for an update.

Im doing a smartphone commercial at the moment and after doing my screens in Blender with Emission Nodes (since I only want 1 file for the whole commercial, I mixed the Inputs for the screen with mixRGB Nodes and animated the FACs…), I got fed up with it and wanted do the screens in After Effects, a little bit like it is possible in Cinema4D combined with AE.

Okay, so here is what I have tested: I exported the scene with that “Export to After Effects” unofficial add-on and got the null point of my smartphone animation and the camera animations into After effects. Then i rendered my animation as exr with cryptomatte. I tried to match my UI screen with the smartphone, didn’t work tho.

Then I placed the camera with a top-down view to my smartphone to match the UI Screen properly in After Effects. Then linked the UI with the null.

Then went back to my animation, placed the cryptomatte as a mask of my animation and: it didnt work because the information of the Null Object or the camera from the imported blender data is wrong as it seems

This is how it should look like when i do it with blender

There must be some kind of way to change what the screen is showing without changing materials and then render the rest. Why is this such a pain in the ass (Blender 2.82 and AE19)

To anyone looking for the Blender-to-After-Effects addon if it isn’t showing up in Blender 2.8x:
The script probably hasn’t been released with official builds yet (it still hasn’t been at the time that I write this). You can download it and install it manually at https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/BAC/ (this is where not-ready-for-official-release addons are housed and worked on). Go to that link and search “after” and you’ll find it. Download the .py file and install it through the blender preferences window.

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Wait a minute… Did you actually just post your comment 1 hour ago? I literally just started Googling for a way to import the Blender camera to AE and stumbled upon this thread and it turns out after months of silence the solution was posted just a moment before I was starting to look for it :astonished:

Oh thankyouthankyouthankyou! I needed that for work today.

For anyone still interested, I made an update for this add-on, which fixes a couple of bugs, brings back the scale option, and most interestingly enables plane meshes export to solids or images. (Compare the footage in the two following screenshots: one was rendered in Blender’s 3D view, the other is the AE composition.)

This version may be found here as a diff to apply on the addons_contrib repository, and directly as a script to download.

Feel free to report bugs and inconsistencies, or leave feedback at the Blender Developer website! If this is robust enough I may try to submit it again for inclusion in the main add-on repository shipped with Blender.

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Hahaa, first when i looked at the word Exporter, Exploiter came into my mind.

Hello man! Can you please explain to me how to export correctly. When i export my jsx file and upload it into after effects all i get are lines of incorrect data for my objects. Also the objects are invisible and scaled down. How do i fix that.

Hello @NOISIA_Official ,

  • Have you tried it with the older version, and if so, did it work?
  • How did you import the jsx into AE? The old wiki page has a How to use section, which is still mostly up to date, but basically once you’ve exported the jsx file, you open the AE destination file, and either double-click the jsx or select File > Scripts > Run Script File… and select the jsx. This should create a new composition and set it up according to the Blender scene.
  • Could you post a screenshot of what you’re seeing?

Thank you so much for updating this plugin! I use it on a regular basis in my freelance work! I just downloaded it and it seems to work fine in 2.91.

That’s great to hear! Have you used the image and solid export as well? That’s the part which needs the most feedback. :slight_smile:

Oh wow! I didn’t realize you could even do that! I just did a quick test and it seems to work perfectly. I’m using AE v16, so I’m one version back. Blender 2.91.

I’ll play around more this weekend.

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Thanks for updating this! It’s a really valuable tool for what I do. I’ll be giving it a workout I am sure :slight_smile:

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Hi!

Recently I jumped into blender and I´m trying to get it into my workflow. I´ve tried the addon in a scene with some simple animations, just an object that translates and rotates and , despite maybe I´m doing something wrong, I might say that the addon is not translating animation correctly.

I checked scene size, camera lens and film size, framerate… everything matches. Also tried using empties and planes for exporting point references to after effects and none of the options seems to work. Everything gets imported, but the aniamtion doesn´t match.

I´m using latest version of AE and Blender 2.92.

I can upload my scenes, cause I´m not really sure what is the issue but I think it´s related with rotations. Not sure if its switching Z and Y rotations or maybe using a different rotation order.

I´ll be happy to help testing things or whatever I can do.

Thanks

Well. I managed to find the problem at least for this particular scene.

The aspect ratio of my scene was Vertical 9:16 (1080x1920). In my blender scene the sensor fit was set to Auto. The script translated into After Effects as horizontal, setting it manually to vertical fixed the problem. Just in case someone runs into that problem.

Thanks

Hello @ClumsyFingers,
this is an interesting one! I was sure I’d fixed this problem. Could you tell me where you downloaded the AE exporter add-on from? Is it the latest version from Blender’s Add-on Contribs?

If so, I’ll try to find a bit of time in the coming days to investigate.

Hey @piOverFour,

To be honest I´ve tried several versions of the script. But I just made a new test using the one you attached and the behaviour is the same. The camera that came from blender was set as 36mm horizontal and setting it to 36mm vertical fixed it. Apart from that, the script works perfect!

If you need anything else, just let me know I´ll be happy to help.

I just looked at the code and I suspect I did something really stupid :smiley:

I’ll have a look when I can access AE. Thanks for letting me know of this problem!

Hello again @ClumsyFingers, could you try this new version?

io_export_after_effects.py (45.6 KB)

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Hey! I just tried and it works perfectly.

Thanks man!

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