BluBluStudios
  ------------------------
  BluBluBar introduction
  \[Podtytuł dokumentu\]

+--------------------+
| Filip Barankiewicz |
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| \[Data\]           |
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Introduction
============

Hi! My name is Filip and I'm here to introduce you to BluBluStudios' new
After Effects extension -- BluBluBar. It's an all-in-one toolbar
tailored to be useful in as many common MoGraph situations as possible.
Thank you for your interest in BluBluBar -- we've been working hard on
it and believe it will make your life as an animator easier. Let's get
to it!

This is the BluBluBar's graphical interface. All functionalities are
divided into logical sections, each with a blue header. As you can see
up here, the functionalities are divided into 3 categories: Basic,
Keyframes and Shapes. Let's talk about them one by one.

Basic
=====

This is the 'basics' category. In here, you will find the most useful,
bread&butter functionalities that will boost your everyday work, no
matter the project. Whether you're working with VFX, compositing or
MoGraph, you should find something for yourself in here!

Essentials
----------

The 'Essentials' functionality is a group of easy-to-use effects you can
apply on a layer or a property. From top to bottom we have:

-   Spring -- A simple overshoot effect controlled by expressions. When
    you apply it on a layer, you will see 3 Slider Control effects on
    it. You can control the overshoot force, fade out speed and
    frequency. Remember, you have to have a property selected for this
    functionality to work.

-   Wiggle -- A simple wiggle expression. How much time do you use daily
    on writing them by hand? Now you can add one with a single click!
    You can control the wiggle with Amplitude and Frequency sliders.
    CTRL-Click will apply a looping version of the expression, in case
    you need your wiggle to be loopable. In this case, you also have the
    ability to control the loop time with a 3^rd^ slider.

-   Stretch -- An automatic Squash&Stretch preset that you can apply on
    both shape layers and AV layers! The preset analyzes the position
    path of your layer and lets you scale it in the direction of it's
    movement rather than just a simple X/Y scale. You can control the
    effect with 4 sliders: Amount lets you control the squash and
    stretch -- setting it below 100 will squash the layer, setting it
    above a 100 will stretch it. You can also add a Y offset and
    rotation offset. If you need to tone down/spice up the whole effect,
    you can use the Global Multiplier slider.

-   Auto-Orient -- An automatic preset that orients a layer along it's
    position path. After Effects comes with this feature by default, but
    it doesn't work well on 3D layers, while our preset has no problems
    there. You can also control the rotation offset with a dedicated
    slider.

-   Null -- A well-known and loved feature. It allows you to select a
    group of layers and parent them to a null.

Composition
-----------

The 'composition' functionality bundles a couple of functions that
modify compositions. Let's talk about them one by one:

-   Crop time -- Have you ever precomposed a bunch of layer without
    thinking about their length before? Often times, specially during
    character animation, we found that to be problematic. When we wanted
    to make the character comp shorter, we effectively had to also
    change the length of every pre-comp inside it -- and it was a pain.
    This functionality remedies that. It crops the 'whitespace' from the
    composition. You can use it on your active comp, or you can select
    some comps in your project view. You can also CTRL-Click to crop
    only the end of the composition, without cropping the beginning. You
    can also Alt-Click for the function to ignore any locked layers that
    are in composition you want to crop. You can combine Alt and Ctrl
    click as well!

-   Crop space -- this function is very much like 'crop time', but
    instead of times, it crops the composition in space. When you have a
    composition that's much bigger than what's going on in it -- this is
    the function for you! You can also specify a padding for the crop,
    so that it still leaves some space around your layers.

-   Decompose -- this function is a reverse of a precompose. When you
    select a pre-comp and click on it, it will take all the layers
    inside the precomp and throw them back to the parent composition,
    without changing their relative transform properties. If you
    CTRL-click this function, it will only decompose the selected layers
    in your precomp.

-   FPS -- This function lets you modify the FPS value of many
    compositions at once. You can use it in 3 modes:

    -   When you have your Layers Panel selected, but no pre-comps
        selected on your layer list -- the script will modify the
        current active comp's FPS (Just like a regular Ctrl+K would do)

    -   When you have your Layers Panel selected, and some pre-comps
        selected on your layer list, the script will modify the FPS of
        all the selected precomps

    -   When you have some compositions selected in your project view
        and it is active, the script will modify the FPS of all the
        comps selected in the project view. You will need to use
        CTRL-Click to use this mode.

-   Size -- this function is a twin of the previous one, but it modifies
    the size of the comp instead of it's FPS. You can use also use it in
    3 ways. You also need to CTRL-Click to use the 3^rd^ way.

Anchor Point
------------

On the right side there is an anchor point control. You can select as
many layers as you want and change their anchor point placement with a
single click. With 9 possible placements, you have a lot of control over
where the anchor point lands. In case the layer you want to modify has
keyframes on it's position, a regular click on one of Anchor Point's
buttons will ignore them and simply set a new keyframe on current time,
whereas a CTRL-Click will move the whole position animation so that it
accommodates for the new anchor point placement.

Renamer
-------

Another feature on the 'Basics' tab is a renamer. Just as you would
think, it lets you rename objects in you project. As seen before, this
feature operates in 3 modes:

-   A regular click will simply rename layers selected in your currently
    active composition

-   A CTRL-Click will rename the selected Shape Groups in your currently
    active composition

-   An ALT-Click will rename selected objects in your Project Panel.

You can write a custom name for your layers and choose one of the
separators.

Layer Translate
---------------

This feature lets you move layers in space in an organized fashion. In a
lot of ways it's similar to the 'Sequence Layers...' option natively
available in After Effects, but it works on position rather than
StartPoint of the layer.

-   When you use this feature with only 1 layer selected, it will simply
    move this layer by a specified vector of values

-   When you use this feature with 2 or more layers selected, it will
    move each layer by a multiple of the values entered in X, Y ,Z
    fields.

Layer Mirror
------------

This very simple function mirrors the layer in one direction (you can
either press X, Y or Z axis). It is equivalent to simply changing the
given scale value X to -X. It was added to shave off a couple of seconds
that would take you to click on a layer, click S and enter the value
manually. Try it out!

Keyframes
=========

The second tab is dedicated to working with keyframes -- one of the most
crucial part of After Effects as a whole. This tab offers a multitude of
useful features that will make your work with keyframes smoother and
faster. Let's look at them:

Speedgraph
----------

This feature lets you control the keyframes' in and out forces very
easily and intuitively. You have 3 sliders. Any change on those sliders
(like moving them) will result in modifying the currently selected
keyframes. You have 3 sliders: Changing the 'I' slider will modify the
'In' force of the keyframes, the ' I/O' Slider will modify both In and
Out forces to the same value, the 'Out' slider will modify the 'Out'
force of your keyframes. There are also 2 text input fields: one for In
force value, and one for Out force value. You can input your custom
In/Out values there and click the 'Apply' value to apply your custom
forces vector on your keyframes. You can also modify the interpolation
type of your keyframes with this tool: setting the In slider to 0 will
change the interpolation to Auto Bezier, settin the I/O slider to 0 will
change the interpolation to Linear and settings the 'O' slider to 0 will
change the interpolation to Hold. As you can see, in those 3 sliders and
2 input fields hide a powerful multitude of ways to affect your
keyframes' incoming and outgoing influences.

Sequencer
---------

This is one of the first features we've written while creating
BluBluBar. It allowes you to sequence layers in a much simple and more
intuitive way than the one offered natively in After Effects. There's a
lot of settings to go through:

-   Value -- this is the most important one. It's a text input field
    where you put in your desired value, by which you will want to
    sequence your layers. What's more powerful about it compared to the
    native 'Sequence Layers...' feature in After Effects is that you're
    not bound to use integer values here! Feel free to sequence you
    layers with, for example, 1.5 frames intervals.

-   Mode -- you can choose of the modes in which the sequencer will work
    on your layers. You can either choose 'As Selected', which will
    sequence your layer in the same order as you selected them,
    'Upwards' which will always sequence them upwards, 'Downwards',
    which will always sequence them downwards and 'Random' which will
    randomize the order in which layers will be sequenced.

-   Measure -- you can choose to sequence your layers with respects to
    seconds on frames. Some use cases require the level of precision
    that only frames will give you, while other can be easily sequences
    with seconds in mind.

-   Type - you can choose on of 2 types of sequencer. 'Delay' is the
    simple and obvious mode in which every layer will be sequenced by an
    additional value that you put into the 'Value' input field compared
    to the previous layer. But you can also use the 'Duration' type
    which will make it so that the whole sequence is exactly 'Value'
    Seconds or frames long! For example, if you set your measure to
    seconds, value to 60, mode to 'Duration' and apply it on 10 layers,
    each layer will be delayed by 6 seconds from one another, so that
    the whole sequence will take 60 seconds. The sequence interval will
    be calculated by the script in this mode. This is a very powerful
    mode that will do a lot of work for you, so that you can focus on
    creating and having fun with your work!

> After you've decided on your settings, selecting the layers you want
> to sequence and clicking the 'Delay' button will do the work.

Interpolation
-------------

This is a much more straight-forward feature that lets you quickly
modify the temporal and spatial interpolation type of your keyframes.
You simply choose if you want to modify the temporal or spatial
interpolation, choose the type you want to change your keyframes to and
press 'Apply'! This feature saves a lot of time in our studio -- in our
MoGraph work we often need to modify the interpolation of our keyframes,
but natively in After effects it takes at least 4 clicks and 1
additional pop-up to do that! This way is much easier and faster.

Keyframes
---------

This feature lets you clone or mirror your keyframes. If you ever worked
with keyframes, you know that, for example, copying keyframes across
many layers is a pain in After Effects. This feature allows you to do
just that! You have you 'copy' button that will take all the keyframes
that are currently selected in your active composition and copy them to
your current time marker. A single click, but so many possibilities! You
also have a 'mirror' button that operates in 2 modes:

-   A regular click will take all the selected keyframes and copy their
    mirrored version to your current time marker.

-   A CTRL-Click will mirror all the selected keyframes in-place.

Shapes
======

The last tab is dedicated to shape layers. Here you will find features
that are specifically tailored to boost your work with shape layers. As
you can see, there are fewer features on this tab than on the other
ones, but we think they're also more powerful. We have:

Shape Layers
------------

This function aggregates 3 basic features, that no motion graphics
artist who works with Illustrator can live without. I'm talking about:

-   Explode -- this function will take every shape group in your
    selected shape layer and put them in a new layer, respecting the
    relative position and other transform properties of the shape. This
    functionality is a true life saver -- When you use the native
    'Convert to shape layers' functionality in After Effects, it bundles
    the whole layer into one shape layer. With this one button you can
    save yourself minutes of tedious work! A Ctrl-Click will
    additionally remove the source layer.

-   Merge -- this function is a reverse of 'explode'. After clicking on
    it, it will take all the shape layers that you selected and merge
    them into a new shape layer. This works great if your composition
    gets messy, or if you want to apply the same shape layer effect on
    many layers. A Ctrl-Click will additionally remove all the source
    layers.

-   Remove artboard -- this function is intertwined with the other two.
    Everyone who tries to combine illustrating in Illustrator and
    animating in After Effects knows that when a layer goes out of the
    bounds set by an Illustrator, it will create a very big layer with a
    lot of redundant space around it after converting it to shapes. This
    functionality takes care of that. It will remove the redundant
    artboard and leave you with beautiful, uncut shapes, just like they
    were meant to be.

Transform stroke
----------------

This function aggregates a few quick tools that you can use while
working with strokes of any kind. We have:

-   Transform cap buttons -- this functionality lets you modify all the
    caps and joins on your strokes. It can get very tedious to have to
    go through a couple of drop-down menus to get to your line cap
    drop-down. That's why we made sure that you can change it now with a
    single click! A regular click will modify your line cap, while a
    CTRL-click will modify the line join. Please note that this feature
    is context-aware. If you only select some layers and no properties,
    it will affect all the stroke in every layer you selected. However,
    you can also only select some specific strokes. The feature will
    affect them only in such case.

-   Dashes -- this functionality lets you add and remove new dash groups
    to your stroke. Just like the caps and joins, adding and deleting
    dashes can be a cumbersome task, specially if you need to do it on
    many layers at once. But now you can just select a shape layer and
    add or remove a dash with a single click, without having to search
    for the specific drop-down. Please note that adding a new dash will
    also put a null keyframe on your newly added dash, so that you can
    easily find it with U After Effects shortcut. Please note that if
    you only have layers selected, this feature will add a dash to every
    stroke it will find in those layers. Hovewer, if you only select
    some strokes, it will only add a dash on those selected strokes.

-   Trim paths -- this functionality will add a 'Trim Path' Effect on
    your shape layer with a single click. We found that, from all of the
    available shape layer effects, this is by far the one we use the
    most. It's specially useful when creating small accents. But adding
    it requires far more clicks and keyboard strokes than we like, so we
    put it in our script. This feature will add a 'Trim Path' effect on
    your layer and add a basic 0 to 100 keyframes on your 'End'
    property, so that you can boost your work even more. You can use
    this feature in 2 modes: a regular click will apply a global 'Trim
    Path' on the whole layer, whereas a CTRL-Click will only add 'Trim
    Paths' on shape groups that you have selected when clicking (or if
    no groups are selected, it will add trim paths to each and every one
    of the shape groups in the layer)

Conclusion
==========

We've now gone over all the functionalities of BluBluBar. There are
quite many of them, aren't there? I hope you found our work interesting
and potentially useful for yourself. We've put a lot of work and love in
it and we really believe in it. If you have any further questions
regarding BluBluBar, you can contact us at:
[[hello\@blublustudios.com]{.underline}](mailto:hello@blublustudios.com)