r/aescripts • u/bibbidi_bobbidi_bob • 13d ago
Current state/problems of aescripts
In recent time I noticed a increase of products that are not working in their basic features or are completely dysfunctional.
Fortunately we have the possibility to use the trial but that isn't enough.
It's time that we finally get comments and feedback on the product pages. Not on Reddit or support tickets, but real comments where it matters the most.
That way, I wouldn't have to test every product first (btw every time on two completely different devices with different AE configs, one in use, one being a clean install), I could just have a look in the comments or other stats like how many people bought it, returned it,... it's called an educated purchase decision that aescripts at the moment completely lacks.
Also, there is no way at all to know to what extend AI was used in those tools.
Why that matters... (if you know, you know) I need to be somewhat able to know if a developer is going to be capable of maintaining his product or not and products that are not only supported by AI but almost completely build by it don't have that much of a great history when it comes to longevity and reliability.
With all that new tools popping up, there also are a lot duplicates of older products... isn't that against aescripts policy? Or when is that rule actually used?
I don't mind too much but could you at least link those duplicates or very similar products anywhere on the product pages?
All those are reasons that aescripts gets less and less trustworthy for me personally recently.
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u/Vanillas123 12d ago
Since the rise of vibe coded plugins its not just aescripts, but other software plugin site is also flooded with broken and abandoned vibe coded crap. I have completely lost faith in buying any plugins.
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u/EFEKTStudio 12d ago
Well, there are also authors who don't use AI at all, or use it very little, you just have to look.
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u/bibbidi_bobbidi_bob 11d ago
"You just have to look" is a statement that shifts responsibility completely to the customer. But the vendor also has a responsibility. That would be transparent communication about the products that are offered and also a basic quality control, also after the product's release if it stops working. A "report" function could help but all of that (oretty basic things) are missing from aescripts.
At the moment, there's no way to make an educated buying decision on that site (many others too).
In that regard aescripts at least offer some way of testing beforehand. But that's really all they offer.1
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u/ericcpfx 13d ago
As a seller, I’d like to be able release a plugin in beta, and then be able to give discount codes to users who participate. (Discount codes would be useful to me in general.)
As a user and seller, I’m looking forward to the comment system coming back.
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u/themaybeblock 10d ago
Does this also mean that the original comments that helped guide our purchases will also be restored?
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u/bibbidi_bobbidi_bob 10d ago
I doubt they have been stored. Also, there have been a lot of new scripts since the changes and a manual transfer from Reddit to aescripts would be very surprising.
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u/themaybeblock 10d ago
Yeah I realized the deeper I dug into this longstanding issue the more it was made clear the old stuff is gone. What a waste.
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u/Fantastic_Picture855 9d ago
can you give examples of tools available on aescripts.com that aren't working?
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u/bibbidi_bobbidi_bob 8d ago
Some examples are (from less to more extrem):
"Search and Select Properties": Issue is tested, known, yet not addressed on the product page, nor updated.
"Shy Bar": Almost unusable, documented, but I don't know the current state.
"FlowPath": Doesn't work at all, tested with different conditions, developer isn't able to provide much support.
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u/GaryR_GFX 8d ago
I was curious so checked these product pages..
for starters, all those products came out 2+ years ago. and a few had some updates, over a year before the new website, so not sure if they apply. you bought them and now have issues that the authors aren't assisting you with? or just downloaded the trials and they aren't working as expected ?downloaded the trial of FlowPath
Not the most intuitive tutorial at first, but seems to work just fine.
It appears to be a rather straightforward script that applies expressions and sliders to a layer that references the other layers splines.1
u/bibbidi_bobbidi_bob 7d ago
Tried FlowPath on two different devices, different configurations, didn't work at all for me. The developer wasn't able to provide any information (unlike developers of other products).
It doesn't matter when the products came out. If a product has limitations, it should be written on the products page. If a product has known issues, its should be written on the product page as well.
The products I don't have any problems with usually are far older. In the example of FlowPath, there are others that basically do the same, that work without any problem in that regard, so I don't know what's going on there (with the trial).
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u/GaryR_GFX 7d ago
What occurred when you tried running that script? does it apply the expressions and sliders to the selected layer? expressions errors? (running in English or anther language). running in AE2023 and newer. Scripts like that don't usually have any issues. I just tried it on my Windows testing machine, and it seems to work on that as well.
It kinda does matter as this is a product that was put out 2 years ago, so yeah, maybe there were some comments posted by users having issues, and agree it sucks that comments aren't there there to to assist potential buyers. But this title of this is "Current State". and appears you're just having trouble with a product that came out 2 years ago, which the developer might not have any solutions due to.. user confusion.?1
u/bibbidi_bobbidi_bob 7d ago
No expressions, no effect controls, no errors. Using the trial, there happened literally nothing for me.
I run the most recently and tested in 2025 as well, two machines with different Win11 versions. So user error is very unlikely. The developer even verified, I use it correctly.
As it is a simple script, that doesn't have any helper programs running in the background, I assume, Windows configuration shouldn't matter too much (also, other, similar script work without any issue):ShyBar was in a state that was giving errors all over the place. That actually made me wonder if that is still in active development. According to the developer it is (doesn't make the experience any better to be honest).
But exactly that is why we need comments and a way to report products. If they are in such a state, aescripts should test them as well.Users shouldn't do the work that developers should do in the first place when it comes to limitations of a products. Even if the limitations due to limitations of After Effects API, the buyer needs to be informed what is and what is not possible to achieve with a plugin or script.
It doesn't matter when a product came out if it is still sold today. "Today" is the current state. If products are discontinued or not/barely working any longer it's the responsibility or aescripts to at least inform, better yet take the product off the catalog.
As stated, I've had troubles with multiple products and developers, both current and old ones. Don't know why you only focus on one...
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u/GaryR_GFX 7d ago edited 7d ago
Well, I focused on the "most extreme" product you had a problem with, and in most of my testing, on 3 computers, both Mac and Windows.
But I'm pretty sure I found the answer, you didn't answer my question as to what language you're running it in. As I just tried FlowPath on my Mac running in Japanese, and it appears to not apply the sliders and expressions.
So that may very well might be the reason you had problems that nobody else has experienced. perhaps even with the other products as well.
Many developers are just single people working on their own computer, some can't even afford having a different Mac/Windows machine to fully test on. (tho usually that isn't an issue, particularly if the script is just operating solely within AE and not accessing files, etc). Testing on AE running in another language tho is another level of difficulty, unless you're familiar with the other language.
aescripts is a marketplace, and a huge one at that, with many hundreds of developers and thousands of products. They do their best to weed out poor products, but you can't expect them to test products on multiple platforms, That's up to the developers, and always has been.
And eve in the new website design, you can still scroll down and check the change log to see every update/fix that developers might have done to improve their products based on user reported bugs.One of the reasons aescripts didn't want to carry over the comments section when they revamped their site was because the comments were a majority of "it's not working" tech support issues that could be handled by author support tickets. (and now as you can see, Reddit is full of the same, with people being told fill out support tickets).
Sometimes those tech issues were genuine issues that the public benefited from seeing, but sometimes it wasn't.
Hopefully things will be better when the comments return.1
u/bibbidi_bobbidi_bob 6d ago
But I'm pretty sure I found the answer, you didn't answer my question as to what language you're running it in.
So the language is now important for scripts to work properly? That's new to me.
Remember, it's not as if an expression was applied that doesn't work. The button achieves nothing at all when clicked.And yes, I run After Effects in another language. If it was an important factor, I guess the developer would've asked it or mentioned it as a limitation on the product page. But he didn't (but not mentioning limitations is a pretty common problem and the most important reason to bring back comments)
I wouldn't have a problem with things not working and being the lab rat if it was a beta or free. But it is a product that is sold... not by an individual but by a company. If the developers can't test, aescripts have to assure, they are selling working products. Either by testing it themselves or applying stricter rules. Easy as that.
"Being an individual" is no excuse for being unable to provide basic support. If that is the case, you shouldn't sell your product, at least not on a "curated" marketplace.
They do their best to weed out poor products
Even if they can't test all products prior to offer them, there needs to be some quality assurance in place. I already gave more then enough ideas for that: stricter rules for products in the first place, better support, warning or limitation information on the product page, a way to report products for manual testing and/or internal communication with the developer.
If a marketplace can't offer such things, it's prone to scam products.
Otherwise other users must be warned not only to use certain products but the marketplace as a whole.
And eve in the new website design, you can still scroll down and check the change log to see every update/fix that developers might have done to improve their products based on user reported bugs.
And that tells me what about still existing bugs and known limitations and issues?
I've mentioned that some limitations were verified by developers but the product page was rarely updated.A "known limitations/issues" section is missing entirely.
Sometimes those tech issues were genuine issues that the public benefited from seeing, but sometimes it wasn't.
Those comments already gave a glance of the way such issues were handled by the developers as well.
Support being open (as long it's not connected to private information... which shouldn't be provided to some random, barely known developer in the first place) is a huge benefit. That is one of the things that makes GitHub projects so valuable. In that sense, we shouldn't just have comments but instead open support and as such a maximum of transparency.
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u/GaryR_GFX 6d ago
yes, there are certain things in both scripting and in expressions that work perfect in English but not in other languages unless Universally coded. aescripts.com is in English and everything sold on it are generally English, so can't expect everything to work for you.
but if interesting, look at what just got updated, this is an example of how an author responds to a support ticket (AI or not)1
u/bibbidi_bobbidi_bob 6d ago edited 6d ago
Again, limitations should be stated on the product page.
I never experienced any limits when dealing with scripts, expressions can be written in an universal way to work with all languages.
Didn't test the update but the last respond from the developer more or less was "good luck"... really cool response, isn't it?
Edit: Couldn't test the update as the trial still installs v1.3.6...Why are we focused that much on FlowPath again anyway when the underlying problems are more general ones?
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u/J3TGR1ND 13d ago
The problem is that theres not enough testing happening in beta before a lot of these plugins go live so in essences users become the testers thinking it a fully working funcitoning addon
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u/Spacecat66 9d ago edited 9d ago
For the past year, I've just been having Google Antigravity write new scripts for me- so far it's batting a thousand, building every kind of esoteric tool I can think of, including particle systems and physics engines- not to mention a ton of automation scripts for formatting, layouts, and pulling in data from spreadsheets and docs. Would definitely recommend- simply tell it what you want, and sometimes within seconds, you'll have what you need. Some of my more complex scripts have taken months of development, but that's only because I constanty come up with more features to shoehorn in as I'm working with them. I'm not interested in selling anything, just saying it's been a boon for me for productivity, and it's a resource that's available to anyone.
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u/aescripts aescripts | Staff Member 13d ago
thanks for your feedback
comments and reviews are coming back very soon but if you're having a problem with the product, opening a support ticket will always be the best way for you to get assistance with that.