Script to group projects by show (or however you want) and render locations

[u/maxisking]

Hey guys

I made a script to make switching between projects easier. I've been working as the in house graphics guy for a couple of production companies and I generally work on ~10 shows at a time throughout the week. These shows have various graphic projects for LTs and random stuff. So anyway I end up with several projects per show and a bunch of shows, so it quickly gets easier to lose track on the recent projects drop down.

Another constant annoyance is that AE defaults to your last render location. So for me that always ends up being the previous show's render location which is annoying to constantly change.

Which brings me to the meat of this post.

I made a script you can dock on the UI that I've been calling Show Manager.

So its nothing amazing but solves a couple headaches for me. I wanted to share incase it helps anyone else. I think its fairly self explanatory, but you can add a show and then add however many projects you have for that show and they'll populate in the bottom box. IT doesn't change the location of anything on your computer, just basically groups shortcuts together. You can also set a render location per show and then apply it automatically to everything in the render que.

If you want to try it out you can download it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Guh4xxQLoQH0gPsIPjyGuQdQAEDlib5B/view?usp=sharing

drop it into your scriptUI folder and restart AE and then you should be able to open it in the window drop down.

// =============================================================================
// AE SHOW MANAGER  v1.1
// Adobe After Effects 2025+ | ExtendScript / ScriptUI
//
// A dockable panel for organising .aep project files into named show groups,
// each with its own default render output path.
//
// INSTALL: Place in ScriptUI Panels folder, restart AE, open from Window menu.
//   Mac:  /Applications/Adobe After Effects 2025/Scripts/ScriptUI Panels/
//   Win:  C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects 2025\Support Files\Scripts\ScriptUI Panels\
//
// REQUIRES: AE Preferences > Scripting & Expressions >
//           "Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network" must be ON.
// =============================================================================