The Boords Animatic Tool for After Effects allows you to import Boords animatics into your AE projects in just a couple of clicks. It even includes label, voiceover, and action text for reference.
To get started, download the Boords Tools After Effects Script from GitHub. It comes as a ZIP file, which contains the BoordsTools
directory and the BoordsTools.jsx
script file.
Unzip the Boords Tools Script ZIP file, and move the contents of the directory into your After Effects ScriptUI Panels
directory:
It's important to move both the BoordsTools
directory AND the BoordsTools.jsx
file into ScriptUI Panels
. It won't work if you skip this.
Moving the directory and script file
On a Mac, ScriptUI Panels
will be located within the After Effects application directory:
/Applications/Adobe After Effects CC 2017/Scripts/ScriptUI Panel
The exact location will vary with your After Effects version, so you may need to do a little exploration in Finder.
Once you've added BoordsTools
and BoordsTools.jsx
to ScriptUI Panels
, restart After Effects.
Congratulations! You're ready to go.
The Boords Tools Script works by turning a folder you'll export from Boords into an After Effects composition. Let's go through the process step-by-step.
Within the storyboard you'd like to convert to an animatic, select 'After Effects > Download Images' from the export menu:
This will download your storyboard as a ZIP file containing everything you need to create your animatic. Go ahead and unzip it.
With the 'Window' menu open, select the BoordsTools.jsx
plugin. This will open the Boords Tools panel.
Open the script, then select your Boords folder. You'll be prompted to add a sound file. Just click cancel if you don't have one.
You can add a reference later with voiceover, label, and action text. The script will ask you if you'd like to do this:
This can take a while, particularly for longer storyboards. 1 minute or longer is not uncommon. Please be patient!
Your Boords storyboard is now an animatic in After Effects, ready for editing!