After Effects automation - Full guide (With tools to use)

What is After Effects automation?

After Effects automation is the process of using scripts, expressions, data sources, or specialized software to programmatically control Adobe After Effects, build projects, and generate video variations without manual editing.

The exact process will vary depending on the project and the tools used. But generally speaking, you start by deciding what you want After Effects to automate. Then, you set up the instructions it should follow, whether through an expression, a script, or the settings in an automation tool. If the task depends on external data, you connect that data to the relevant parts of your project, too.

To paint a picture, you could have layers resize when the text changes, generate compositions from a spreadsheet, or batch render in After Effects using an external automation tool. Once the setup is ready, the software follows your instructions and repeats the process whenever you run it or a specified trigger fires.

For a full visual walkthrough, watch our After Effects automation tutorial.

What can you actually automate in After Effects

The exact actions depend on whether you use native expressions, a script, a plugin, or an external platform, but from a global standpoint, you can automate:

• Project setup - Create compositions, set dimensions and frame rates, duplicate a master composition, import assets, and organize the project structure.
• Text - Replace names, headlines, prices, dates, and calls to action. You can also adjust font size, color, alignment, and text scaling so longer copy fits the layout.
• Animation - Use expressions to link properties, repeat movement, and make animations respond to data. A chart, for example, can change its bar heights when the numbers change.
• Images and footage - Swap product photos, logos, backgrounds, or a video clip.
• Audio and sound - Replace music or voiceover files and adjust volume or timing.
• Layer logic - Show or hide a layer, change its position, modify an effect property, or switch scenes based on a data value.
• Rendering - Add compositions to the Render Queue, apply output settings, name files, and batch render variations.
• Asset management - Collect dependencies, relink assets, check missing footage, and organize outputs.

Despite the vast use cases, After Effects automation is most commonly used for creating data-driven videos. More specifically, it’s used to turn data from a spreadsheet to video variations at scale.

After Effects automation tools at a glance

For those who don’t have the time to read the full article, here’s a quick overview of all of the tools, their pros, cons, and use cases:

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1. Use After Effects automation software: Plainly Videos

We’ve built Plainly Videos with one thing in mind: to help you render hundreds of videos automatically in a matter of minutes.

It’s a video automation software that connects After Effects templates to data and renders video variations in the cloud.

All you have to do to make that possible is:

• Create a template in After Effects and upload the zipped project to Plainly
• Define the dynamic elements, a.k.a. layers with data you want to change across versions. You can also use layer scripting to automatically scale text and images or adjust layer timing so your template can handle different content without manual fixes.
• Connect the data source to Plainly (CSV file, Google Sheets, Excel, Airtable, Zapier interface forms, or another available integration.)

And that’s it. The platform will automatically render the videos. Once they are ready, you can export them as a batch or automate the delivery via Google Drive, Dropbox, and YouTube, among else.

For more advanced workflows, Plainly also has an After Effects API that lets you trigger video creation from your own applications and databases.

It’s particularly useful for ongoing video production, since it removes rendering from the equation and lets you focus on templates and data instead.

2. Use an After Effects plugin: Templater by Dataclay

Templater by DataClay is the most popular automation plugin for After Effects that gives you the ability to create a dynamic After Effects project. All you need to do is select a text or footage layer inside of a composition and dynamically change it by referencing that layer in a Google Sheet.

It’s cost-effective, the setup is very quick, and it lets you use a spreadsheet as a data source, so it’s a good fit for one-off projects. 

The main thing to account for is the rendering setup. You still manage the After Effects machines, fonts, plugins, and other dependencies needed to produce the videos. So, while Templater automates the changes within your project, maintaining the rendering environment remains your responsibility.

3. Use automation scripts: CompsFromSpreadsheets

One of the most famous After Effects automation scripts is compsFromSpreadsheets. It allows you to create different variants of the initial video simply by creating a spreadsheet and mapping the data and assets from your local machine to the After Effects layers.

One of the major advantages is its flexibility. Instead of manually creating each composition and making tedious adjustments, CompsFromSpreadsheets lets you add a spreadsheet, and it will automatically create all of the compositions with the different values. All you have to do is match the layers from After Effects to values in the spreadsheet.

Alas, it’s not a very robust solution, and there are a lot of things that it lacks. It’s pretty rigid because it’s not dynamic (if you update your spreadsheet, it doesn’t reflect in AE), you can’t use other data sources except for a spreadsheet, and you can’t link files stored online.

4. Build your own After Effects automation system: Nexrender

Nexrender is an open-source system for rendering data-driven After Effects projects. It requires coding knowledge, so it’s primarily built for developers who want to control how jobs are created, processed, and delivered.

Nexrender uses Adobe’s aerender executable to render a project. You define a job in JSON, including the project location, target composition, replacement assets, and any processing actions. Nexrender provides building blocks for this process, too, including a server and workers for distributing jobs. You can run workers on your own machines or suitable cloud infrastructure.

That said, we recommend this route when you have the know-how or developers on your team who can build and maintain the service. If not, you’re better off with a less technical solution.

Things to bear in mind when it comes to After Effects automation

Whatever option you choose to go with, you should make sure that your template is fully optimized so it renders fast, and that the referenced assets look nice in the final render. The two main things you should pay attention to are:

1. Optimizing render speeds

If you want to fully optimize render speeds you want to pre-render any layers that won’t be dynamic. This means if you have any layers that are using plugins like Particular or Plexus, you should pre-render them.

‍How to pre-render in After Effects?

Pre-rendering is a process that converts any heavy layers into a .jpg/.png sequence or a video file. The video/image file plays much faster because After Effects doesn’t have to calculate every frame for that layer as it was already rendered beforehand.

Pre-rendering in After Effects is a helpful technique to speed up your workflow and improve performance. To pre-render, you essentially render a portion of your composition and save it as a new, temporary file. This allows you to work with a lighter, pre-rendered version of your composition, which can be especially useful for complex or computationally intensive projects.

To pre-render in After Effects, select the desired composition you want to pre-render. Then, go to the "Composition" menu and choose the "Add to Render Queue" command. In the Render Queue panel, you can customize the settings, such as output format, destination folder, and quality. Once you're ready, click on the "Render" button to start the pre-rendering process.

After Effects will begin rendering the selected composition, generating a new file with the pre-rendered content. Once the pre-rendering is complete, you can replace the original composition in your project with the pre-rendered file. This allows you to work with smoother playback and faster response times, as the heavy processing has already been done.

2. Adding auto-scale to images/text

When you create dynamic videos, chances are that some of the text you want to input is too large, or that some of the images are too big (or small). This is especially true when you’re creating fully automated workflows referencing cloud storage, or when you are enabling non-video people to create videos.

For the final result to look nice, you should add auto-scale expressions to your text and image layers. You can search the internet for these expressions, or you can take a look at Plainly documentation, where you can copy-paste them and find instructions on how to add them to your template.

How to add expressions to layers in After Effects?

Adding expressions to layers in After Effects is a powerful way to automate and control various properties of your layers. It allows you to create dynamic animations and behaviors that respond to changes in values or conditions.

To add expressions, first select the layer you want to apply the expression to. Then, locate the property you wish to control. You can reveal the property by twirling down the layer in the timeline panel and expanding the desired property group.

Next, you'll see a stopwatch icon next to the property name. Click on the stopwatch icon, and this will open up the expression editor for that property. Here, you can write or paste your expression.

Once you've written or applied an expression, the property will be driven by the expression logic instead of keyframes. This means that the property will update dynamically based on the rules you've defined in the expression.

Expressions can control various aspects of a layer, such as position, scale, opacity, rotation, and much more. They can also interact with other layers or properties, allowing for complex animations and interactions.

Turn your After Effects template into a repeatable workflow

Getting a video template right takes time. Once you’re happy with the design and animation, changing the product image or price across another hundred versions can turn into hours of work.

But as we’ve covered, you have several ways to automate that work. Scripts and plugins can handle changes inside After Effects, while the open-source solution gives you the option to build your own system. Whichever route you take, make sure you prepare your template to keep rendering efficient and your variations looking right.

Speaking of rendering, Plainly lets you connect your template to data and render entire batches of video variations in the cloud while you keep working on your next project. Want to see how we make that possible? Book a demo with us, bring your own project, and we’ll show you firsthand!