Starting with After Effects scripting can seem like a daunting task. To help develop your abilities good resources are essential. There is a small but very tight nit community of After Effects programmers that have created loads of amazing After Effects scripting resources. Apart from this amazing website, here’s a list of the majority that I know of:
Collection of docs for all Adobe Products
Docs For Aobe - A list of the best docs for all the Adobe Products.
After Effects Documentation
Interactive documentation - This is the main documentation that I use, here you can find all the different classes that are specific to After Effects. This is great to have next to you while programming so you can look-up what the possibilities are of each After Effects object that you use within your script.
NEW - Adobe’s JavaScript Tools Guide – A new really big collection of information created by the AEnhancers team. This is a gold mine tbh.
Adobe's Introduction To Scripting - A 52 page PDF file with a lot of beginner information about scripting.
API documentation by YEARBOOK - This API documentation contains the different ScriptUI classes and JavaScript classes that are available within ExtendScript. Unfortunately it doesn’t include all the After Effects classes.
Forums
Adobe’s After Effects Forum – On the left hand side you can filter on topics, select scripting for great scripting posts.
Aenhancers – A dedicated forum for programming for After Effects, it’s not very active but there are great articles.
Script UI
Peter Kahrel’s ScriptUI for Dummies – The best resource for learning how to write ScriptUI.
API documentation by YEARBOOK – Again the YEARBOOK documentation, select ScriptUI in the left drop-down to see all the classes that are available.
Joonas Pääkkö’s ScriptUI builder – If you’re just starting out and don’t know how to use ScriptUI or if you’re just lazy you can use this tool to build custom ScriptUI panels. Actually learning the language is of course a better option if you want full flexibility.
Free Scripts
Redefinery Script Bundle – A absolutely amazing scripts bundle with great scripts to pick apart and learn from. The Gimme Prop Path is great to use while scripting, it gives you the location of the property you select within the After Effects program. Note of 2022 - the redefinery website is down but search the internet on 'Redefinery Script Bundle' and you will find a download
Crgreen scripts – A long list of scripts that can be picked apart and analyzed to learn how they work.
Scriptlets by Zack Lovatt - Zack Lovatt is such a OG in the AE Scripting world, and still a very active member in the community. Here is a list of his scripts.
MotionScript - Dan Ebberts’ AE Expressions and scripting resource
HTML 5 Panels
Adobe-CEP GitHub – For the more advanced programmers among us, a guide on creating extensions with HTML 5, CSS and After Effects scripts.
Adobe’s short guide – A short guide to HTML 5 extensions.
JavaScript
Mozilla Javascript Basics - the MDN web docs are very handy for everything web development.
Eloquent JavaScript – Free E-book like website with in-depth content on the basics of JavaScript.
w3schools – Hands on JavaScript tutorials.
Podcasts
School of Motion Ep. 18 - I really love this episode with Zack Lovatt, it gives insight in where After Effects scripting could take you.
Articles
Building Dokyo by David Hawkins - This medium article is a great introduction into HTML 5 panels and Extensions.
Thanks for reading! Be sure to use these After Effects Scripting resources for your new projects, it will speed up the process 😉