v0.145.4Internal beta docs
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Beta documentation · eXLib v0.145.4. Public release is pending.

Pull, Edit, Place Back

A pseudo effect you built once doesn't have to stay frozen. Pull from layer brings an applied pseudo effect back into Pseudo Effect Authoring for editing, and placing it back never silently overwrites what's already on the layer — it always routes through a remap panel first.

Pulling an effect off a layer

Pull from layer, in Pseudo Effect Authoring, needs only a layer selection — no property has to be selected. If that layer carries more than one pseudo effect, a picker lists each one, marking it "in library" or "best-effort" so you know which kind of pull you're about to get before you commit to it.

Library-known versus foreign

What happens next depends on whether eXLib recognizes the effect:

  • Library-known — if the library already has a saved rig for that effect, Pull loads the exact saved draft back: every control, every group, every wire, intact. Nothing is reconstructed.
  • Foreign — an effect authored elsewhere, or built by hand directly in After Effects, is reconstructed from what AE itself reports about it. Groups are recovered by pairing AE's start/end group markers back into nesting; if a marker set can't be paired cleanly, it degrades to a flat structure with a note explaining why, rather than guessing at a hierarchy that isn't really there. AE's own "Compositing Options" group — host chrome that gets added to every effect automatically — is dropped silently everywhere: in pulls, in counts, in reconstruction. It was never part of what you authored.

What cannot be represented faithfully

Anything eXLib can't faithfully carry over while importing a .ffx or reconstructing a foreign effect surfaces as one digest toast — a short summary that collapses identical issues into a single counted line instead of firing one message per parameter. Nothing is hidden, though: the complete, uncollapsed list always goes to the debug log, so you can see exactly what was affected if you need to.

The remap panel

Placing an edited pull back onto its layer always opens a remap panel first — never a silent overwrite. The panel pairs each control still on the layer against its counterpart in your edited rig:

  • A solid wire marks a confident pair. Renames, moves, and retypes are tracked, so a pairing usually survives all three.
  • A dashed wire marks a lower-confidence pair, where eXLib is only guessing by name or position.

Drag to re-pair anything by hand. An old control that can't be paired to anything — and that's carrying keyframes or an expression of its own — is flagged plainly for discarding rather than dropped without a word.

Confirming — one undo group

Confirming migrates every paired control's keyframes and expressions over to its new counterpart, then removes the old effect — all as one undo group. That means a single Cmd+Z in After Effects reverts the entire place-back: controls, migrated keyframes, and the removed old effect, together.

✓

Because place-back is one undo group, it's safe to experiment — confirm the remap, look at the result in your comp, and if it isn't what you wanted, one undo in After Effects puts the layer back exactly where it was.

i

These screenshots were captured in an earlier beta. Toolbar and Library layouts have since changed; the written instructions on this page describe v0.145.4. See A Tour of the Panel for the current controls.

Place back — confirm the mapping: the layer's 44 parameters on the left, the edited rig's 44 on the right, a wire pairing each row, an × to unmap, and the footer counting 13 expressions to migrate before Confirm & place back.
Place back always opens this mapping first: every parameter on the layer paired by wire to its match in the edited rig — drag a port to re-map, × to unmap — with the footer counting the expressions that will migrate before anything is written.