macOS · After Effects · CLI

Every project starts the
same way. Stop typing it out.

Folders, naming, comp settings, project bins — the part of starting a project that has nothing to do with the edit. Aeset asks five questions in your terminal and hands you a fully structured After Effects project, ready to open.

~/projects

Scaffolding isn't creative work. It's the tax you pay before the creative work.

Every editor and motion designer does this by hand at the start of every job: create folders, name them consistently, open After Effects, set up a composition with the right resolution, framerate, and duration. Do that fifty times a year and you've spent a full work week on folder creation and blank comps. Aeset takes the project-scaffolding pattern developers have used for years and brings it to motion design.

10–20
minutes lost to manual setup, every single project
~1 wk
of a working year spent on folders and blank comps at 50 projects/yr
5
questions in your terminal, then aeset does the rest

Answer five questions. Aeset builds the rest.

Run aeset from wherever you want the project to live. It asks what it needs, then does the setup itself — including launching After Effects and running the composition setup for you.

01
Answer the prompts
Project name, project type, resolution, frame rate, duration, and color space — asked once, in your terminal.
02
Aeset builds the folder tree
A studio-standard directory layout is created on disk, separating source footage from outputs from the start.
03
A project file is generated natively
Aeset writes a small ExtendScript file with your specs and hands it to your installed copy of After Effects, which creates the .aep itself — so it opens correctly on whatever AE version you're running.
04
After Effects opens, ready to work
The composition, color space, and project-panel bins are already set up. You start on frame one, not on folder one.

One convention, everywhere. Source never mixes with output.

On disk

<ProjectName>/ ├── project/ │ ├── <ProjectName>.aep │ └── setup.jsx temporary ├── footage/ │ ├── video/ │ ├── audio/ │ └── renders/ C4D, Blender, etc. ├── assets/ │ ├── images/ │ ├── fonts/ │ └── documents/ briefs, scripts ├── exports/ │ ├── drafts/ │ └── final/ └── README.md auto-generated

Inside After Effects

_COMPS — your main composition
_FOOTAGE
_ASSETS
_AUDIO

Install it once. Use it on every project.

$pip install aeset
$aeset
Operating systemmacOS (AppleScript + `open` are macOS-specific)
Required appAdobe After Effects
Python3.11+
Adobe accountNot required — local scripting only

Open source, MIT licensed, built for the way motion studios already work.