Missing 'Animation Presets' in the Dropdown List

[Damo_S15]

Hey everyone,

I'm trying to fix this issue that i've been having with After Effects.

After i've made a layer and applied an affect onto it I'd like to use the Animation Presets dropdown list to apply another preset to it - but it's empty.

There are several methods on the net to fix this - none have worked.

Any help would be amazing!

Thanks, Damian

[Todd_Kopriva]

What are you expecting to see there?

Have you saved any animation presets that use this effect? That's what that menu is for.

[JohnSeptimus]

Hi Todd

We are expecting to see something like this

http://youtu.be/fTrW3t-SHIY?t=52s

The entire list of existing presets appear in the dropdown. If we choose "Save Selection as Animation Preset..." and save the file, it then appears in the list, but still no others appear.

Cheers

James

[Todd_Kopriva]

In the video that you're pointing to, he's using the Fractal Noise effect, for which there are many animation presets installed. You're showing the Broadcast Colors effect, for which there are no animation presets installed by default. There are no animation presets to show. What you're seeing is normal.

[JohnSeptimus]

Thanks Todd.

Sorry for the misleading screenshot - the same thing happens no matter which effect is chosen, including Fractal Noise. Fractal Noise is the one we have been testing with up till now, not sure why the screenshot was taken of Broadcast Colors.

@Rick Gerard - would you mind explaining how to do this, or linking to a guide? I am just plain old IT support and not familiar with Adobe products.
I've tried pasting presets into various likely looking folders, and tried granting "Full Control" NTFS permissions on the entire Adobe folder in case it was a permissions issue, but still no luck.

Have tried reinstalling and updating CS6

Thanks all for the responses.

[Rick Gerard]

What version of AE? What OS. I'm assuming Mac. The default folder for Animation Presets is Documents/Adobe/After Effects 6/User Presets.

I don't see any option in Broadcast Colors for animation presets in CS6...

[JSRACS]

Hi Rick,

The version of AE is: 11.0.2.12
We are running Windows 7 64 bit

We have found this problem on both Deskops and Laptops. No matter which effect we choose, the animation presets do not appear. Both re-installing CS6 and applying updates on various machines have failed to help.

Thank you.

[Andrew Yoole]

Well, that's interesting.  I don't use Animation Presets directly from the effect window much, so haven't noticed this before, but I don't have any factory Animation Presets in any of my effects either, in the CS6 installation I currently have access to.

I have them in CS4, CS5, AND CS5.5, all verified as I have them all in my office - all Macs.  Presets visible in Fractal Noise, Ramp, Colorama etc.  But on my MBP with CS6 - nothing!

They are still present in the Effects & Presets pallet in CS6, just not directly under Animation Presets in the Effects window.

I'll check another CS6 installation when I get home.

[Klaus_Brandenburg]

Just tried this and found that I had presets disabled in the effects window. When I turned it on I also had no presets visible. Restarting AE initialised this however so I would advise to uncheck "Show animation presets", restart, enable it again and restart again. Does this help?

[Rick Gerard]

I did a little research.

If you have enabled show animation presets in the Effects Controls Panel and you save an animation preset using the pull down for that effect that preset will then show up for that effect providing that the only parameters selected in the preset are parameters for that effect.

The saved preset will not show up in the menu for other effects. This makes sense to me.

Animation presets saved selecting multiple parameters in multiple effects and layer properties saved by going to the menu and selecting Animation>Save Animation Preset will not show up in the Effects Controls Panel. This also makes sense to me.

[djfilms9]

Allow me to clarify:

1.

In a standard install of AE CS4, the animation presets pop-up list showed a bunch of presets for fractal noise, without the user doing anything extra.

In a standard install of AE CS5.5, the animation presets pop-up list showed a bunch of presets for fractal noise, without the user doing anything extra.

In a standard install of AE CS6 (on the Mac), the pop-up list is empty. (Yes, I enabled the "Show presets"), despite the fact that, eg, "Curtain.ffx" is in the equivalent Presets>Backgrounds folder.

2. In all versions of AE on the Mac, the preset "curtain.ffx" is actually in a Presets>Backgrounds folder in the same folder as the app iteself. There is also a folder in Documents>Adobe>User Presets, containing an alias to the presets folder in the app folder. Thus, the positions of all relevant files are the same in all versions of AE.

3. The alias worked in previous verisons of AE. The alias does not work in AE CS6 on the Mac, in that the presets for fractal noise do not show up.

4. I tried copying the Backgrounds folder in the app folder into the User Presets folder. This did not work.

5. Advice in this thread suggests screwing around with show/hide and re-start. Even if this worked, (which it doesn't on my system), the default install behaviour for presets for fractal noise has changed, in that the presets do not show up.

[Rick Gerard]

I use an alias on my Mac running CS6 and have more than 200 presets in there. I tried making a preset for fractal noise and worked just fine with the alias. It even showed up on my home machine because in my Documents section my alias points to a drop box folder. This gives me access to all of my presets where ever I go.

There are no presets for Fractal Noise supplied. The Curtain effect contains both Fractal Noise and Tri Tone and therefore will not show up in the Presets for Fractal Noise Effects Control Panel even if you try and save it there because ONLY presets that use only that effect will show up in the effects controls for that effect. See my post above.

[djfilms9]

Rick,

Then why is it that the curtain ffx and others showed up in AE CS4 and 5.5, as shown in the attached screenshot for AE CS4? Regardless of your reasoning as to whether it should or should not appear, it actually DID appear in 4 and 5.5.

Also, you did not address my main point: the curtain.ffx appears in the default install for 4 and 5.5 but does not appear for 6. Therefore, the default install behaviour has changed. You said you tried to save a preset, but that's not the point: it used to appear in the defailt install and now it does not. I am not the only one to observe this behaviour.

[JSRACS]

"Also, you did not address my main point: the curtain.ffx appears in the default install for 4 and 5.5 but does not appear for 6. Therefore, the default install behaviour has changed. You said you tried to save a preset, but that's not the point: it used to appear in the defailt install and now it does not. I am not the only one to observe this behaviour."

This exactly what we are experiencing. We have noticed that the presets in the past are still easily found if you search for them here. However you would have to know the name of the particular preset in order to find it.

If this is indeed the case, that is the default install has changed, then I guess we will have to work around it.

"There are no presets for Fractal Noise supplied. The Curtain effect contains both Fractal Noise and Tri Tone and therefore will not show up in the Presets for Fractal Noise Effects Control Panel even if you try and save it there because ONLY presets that use only that effect will show up in the effects controls for that effect. See my post above. "

Rick the reason we mention that Fractal noise has presets in that particular menu is that on an existing CS4 install we have they do appear in that list.

[djfilms9]

JSRACS, I agree that we have to work around this step down in funcitonality, but there is a larger point demonstrated in this forum: the Adobe reps are bending over backwards to camouflage the fact that the default install has changed, and we are now expected to add approx 35 presets by hand where we did not need to before CS6. The reps know that this is a bad design decision, but won't admit the presets are no longer installed for fractal noise. That is the real cause for concern that Adobe is the new Microsoft.

[Rick Gerard]

No, I see the behavior, however it's changed in CS6. Only presets that use just that effect show up now. If you'd like to have it back submit a feature request. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

Personally I don't miss it because I only want to see presets for that specific effect in that preview.

[Todd_Kopriva]

>  the Adobe reps are bending over backwards to camouflage the fact that the default install has changed

No, no bending over backward to camouflage anything. I'm checking to see if the change was a deliberate change or an accident (i.e., a bug).

[djfilms9]

Todd,

Thank you for checking. As I mentioned above, the previous install was helpful. I suspect the change was deliberate. If so, it's not helpful. If you can supply guidance such that the list can be populated without having to go through 35 actions, that would definitely be of great assistance.

[Irina Zen]

Hi,

I had the same problem and I do use presets from time to time like Fractal Noise Curtain as a base for light rays scenes. I saved the Curtain as a AE4 file and import it in my AE6 projects but I would really appreciate if it would return were it was in the animation presets list as in AE4 & AE5.5

Thank you in advance

Irina

[djfilms9]

Rick,

Thank you for acknowledging that the default install has changed. Having the list appear displays what presets are available without having to know the list from memory. This is helpful for users like me who do not use AE all day every day, but intermittently as contract content requires.

[Rick Gerard]

You must save the presets in the default user presets folders and you must save the presets you want to appear in a plug-in's preset menu from the Effects Control Panel.

[BingoFriday]

Yes. Me too. It would be nice to have that drop down list in CS6.

[shando]

I had this problem as well, using the most recent update to AE CC (2015.3) on Mac. Tried some of the quick fixes such as saving your own preset to populate the list, or refreshing the list in Effects & Presets. That had previously resolved the issue for me but not after the most recent CC update.

For me the fix was to go into Applications and copy/paste the Particular presets from a previous version of AE. I had a "Adobe After Effects CC2015.3" folder (where the presets were missing) and also one simply labeled "Adobe After Effects CC". I looked in that folder and in the Presets folder there was a folder called "Trapcode Particular ffx". I copied that folder and pasted to the Presets folder from my most recent version (2015.3), and this fixed it for me.

I realize that some users may not still have their old AE app folders, but thought this might help someone else out there. Good luck. 

[ronlemen43]

has any of this been resolved, I am having the same issue with AE 2018 CC