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Folders in After Effects timeline

Timeline folders. We have them in Animate, Photoshop, Illustrator... precomps can utterly ruin your work and is NOT an alternatives to having a simple folder hierarchy - especially when dealing with shape layers or anything that requires continual rasterization.

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  • Mike Lisii commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This feature is actually so requested, but its broken in a lot of smaller request like Grouping or TImeline folders or other keywords.

  • Jaap Nauta commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Adobe!!! hellooo! anybody there? Quick fix wanted by users. Timeline folders please...Thank you....

  • Giorgio Calandri commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    https://aescripts.com/workflower/
    If a dude on aescripts could do it, you could do it. Or at least hire him! I love ae, but really: essential properties is of no use in a workflow with 150 layers or more. One thing is having priorities, one thing is organizing things. Subfolders are really a simple thing, as well as groups and layers. Please add it!

  • Doug Lapsley commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    It's crazy isn't it. This is SUCH a simple feature, but would make a huge difference to complex timelines. At the very least they could add some stronger colours to the layer colour options too. The only one that really stands out is yellow. These are such basic things Adobe. It's really time you put folders in. Esp since development seems to have been quite light on AFX over the last few years. It's as if you're just doing the bare minimum now.

  • burst miner commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Its almost end of 2021 and covid, but still nothing about simple folder structure... Why can't Adobe work the way clients want and instead generate new sh*t by themselves and make it more complicated... i guess they will "Discover folders feature" when they will run out of ideas

  • Влад Курс commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    when you stop paying for a subscription, then adobe may think about it and start to improve something, and so continue to beg them, nothing will change from this

  • AdminDacia Saenz (Quality Engineer, Adobe DVA) commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Hi Giorgio,

    Good news!! Have you heard of Essential Properties (formerly called Master Properties)? You can add parameters from the timeline of a Primary Comp (and any nested comp within) into the Essential Graphics Panel and organize them into groups and sub-groups.

    At that point, nest the Primary Comp into a new comp and twirl open the layer. You'll find all of the groups and subgroups that you've created in your timeline! This means you have access to whatever parameters you want to focus on, AND it also means you can create multiple versions of your Primary Comp using this method too. This allows you to Push and Pull any changed values back up to or from the Primary Comp.

    Here's a little breakdown video of how these work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1ZsiQy764Q

    And check out the attached image to see how the Groups and Sub-groups look in the timeline.

    Hope this helps!
    Dacia

  • Giorgio Calandri commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Ps has it. Ai has it. InD (your other composition buddy) has it. Please give us a way to organize other than precomposing, please.

  • Karl Ackermann commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Hey everybody, give Cavalry a try to see what a folder-filled life could be like. It's sort of like what Figma or Sketch is to Illustrator but for After Effects. Not a full replacement but in the right cases really powerful and productive, and did i mention it has layer folders?

  • Javier Melendez commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    For the love of God, this question is from 2019 and summer of 2021 we still don't have this simple fix. Really hoping Adobe can address this.

  • Ian Pham commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Agreed - why is this absent from After Effects?

    I just want to organize my layers without doing precomposition/merging/whatever.

  • Jason Fisher-Jones commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    To be honest I’d happily pay for a plug-in to enable this.

    Obviously I shouldn’t have to, but it would revolutionise my workflow.

  • Jaap Nauta commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Indeed a quick improvement of the application. And that would really be something, if adobe actually listened to the users that already pay the subscription. I do not hope that Adobe will fulfill this improvement like they do in illustrator. To edit curves other than like 30 years ago you have pay for a plugin...

  • Łukasz commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Adobe, why is adding such a simple function and at the same time significantly improving the animation process such a difficult challenge for you? Neither precomposition nor shy layers are the solution when it comes to sorting out a mess with multiple layers. To avoid chaos and a headache, the timeline must allow you to group selected layers and open only the selected ones with one click, without going into a separate composition.

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