Inspector Spacetime
Generate motion specs from After Effects and become an engineer's best friend
Usage
Select pairs of keyframes and click the big button. These keyframe values will be collected within the panel and may be copied out in one of the format versions (Text, Markdown, or JSON).
Note- this JSON is not the same as Lottie JSON. It is just a verbose look at all the details of the spec data. An engineer might want this or you might want to build your own converter.
Collected data
Comp name
Transition duration
Layer name
- PropertyName: StartValue → EndValue
Duration (in milliseconds)
Easing curve as cubic bezier
Delay (in milliseconds) from the playhead
- PropertyName: StartValue → EndValue
Duration (in milliseconds)
...
New in v2.5
Since its initial release in 2017 as one of the first attempts at speccing motion, the ways motion designers work with engineering have matured. Inspector Spacetime is now much simpler than previous versions.
The dynamic expressions and spec sidebar are gone and have been replaced with a few different varieties of plain text formatting.
Improvements
Now supporting
Add-ons
New Counter
Having a visual representation of the elapsed time on screen can often be helpful. Click to a add a new time counter layer at the playhead, and drag the Start and End markers to the beginning of the transition to easily illustrate the global start time.
Alternatively, select a set of keyframes and click to automatically place the Start and End markers around the selected keys.
Ease library
The system generates easing curves as cubic bezier easing functions. This is a common format, but your team might have developed its own short-hand terminology for these curves.
A Linear curve is a good example of one you might not need numbers for.
To auto-detect reusable curves, click the ✱ button at the bottom of the panel to open the /config folder. Open the ease-library.json file in a text editor and add new curves in JSON format.
"material standard": [
0.4,
0,
0.2,
1
],
Install
2019+
In newer versions of After Effects, it is possible to install RubberHose 2 and other scripts without digging through your hard drive.
File > Scripts > Install Script UI Panel… Restart Ae and InspectorSpacetime will be available in the Window menu at the top of the screen. Scroll down to find the installed scripts
2018 and older
- Unzip the InspectorSpacetime.zip download
- Copy InspectorSpacetime.jsx do the ScriptUI Panels folder
- Restart After Effects
- InspectorSpacetime will be available in the Window menu at the top of the screen. Scroll down to find the installed scripts
Why the dumb name?
The tool is named after the Doctor Who parody from the underrated NBC comedy Community. The series sort of falls apart toward the end but it's mostly pretty amazing.
Inspector Spacetime. It's a bad pun. I'm a dad. I can't help it.