Create Nulls From Path - OMEGA EDITION
So I was looking around for an easy way to render out pretty anchor points and bezier handles in After Effects but I couldn't quite find a nice solution for that specific use case anywhere. That's when I got recommended Create Nulls From Paths Extended by Crunchy Creatives. There is an option to "Use Locators" that creates shape layers that follow the bezier handles and anchor points of the selected path, and that works great to visualize them! But if you want to render out pretty animations with them on, there is a few issues:
- It creates the layers as Guide Layers, which means you have to manually un-guide layer them if you want them to be render-able.
- There is no color control to the anchor points and handles, so you're stuck with the default or manually recoloring them one by one.
- There is no size control to the anchor points, handle strokes and end of handles.
This is where Create Nulls From Paths - OMEGA EDITION comes in. I needed an easily editable, easily customizable visualizer for shape paths and thus, I had the brilliant idea to work on this, and by work on this, I mean use A.I to edit the code for me because I do not know how to create ScriptUI Panels scripts. Here's hoping that the bot didn't make too much janky code - but it seems to work fine on my end. If you're a ScriptUI panel connaisseur and want to fix up the potential jank code to update the script, let me know! And thus OMEGA EDITION was born. A new version of Create Nulls From Paths that has extended functionnality.
Added functionnality
- ScriptUI Anchor Size input. - Lets you control the size of the Anchor point Square Shape Layer.
- Handle Stroke Size input. - Lets you control the size of the Bezier Stroke Layer.
- Handle Size input. - Lets you control the size of the Bezier Handle Circle Shape Layer.
- Create as Guides Toggle - Lets you choose if you want the created locators to be guide layers or not.
- Controller Null - Lets you edit the colors and sizing of each element of the created shapes.
Download link
You can get the script for free here!
How to install
Drop the .jsx file inside your After Effects' ScriptUI Panels Folder:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects 20XX\Support Files\Scripts\ScriptUI Panels
You can then open the window in After Effects by clicking on window, and at the bottom should be Create Nulls From Paths Omega Edition.jsx . Click it and the panel should open. If it's not there you might need to restart After Effects after installing for it to show up.
How to use
You can check out the original Crunchy Creatives video for a good tutorial on how to use this! The only extra settings are pretty easy to grasp, they control the size of the shapes and there is an extra toggle for if you want to create the locators as guides or not. Watch for the "Layer Name - Nulls Controls" Layer that gets created, there is where you'll be able to edit the colors and sizes of the locators once created.