FAQ's

Where is the User Guide for v1?

Is there a free trial?

Yes! Just click the TRY button on the product page and get going. The free trial lasts 10 days and will only load paths with 10 points or less. Purchase a license to unlock the full version.

Why doesn't Penpal automatically stay in sync with AE?

It is possible to build a tool like Penpal in such a way that it is constantly 'listening' for events that happen outside of itself - mainly mouse and keyboard clicks. Some other developers use a lot of listeners like this to maintain greater synchronization between After Effects and their tools. However… the more listeners we add to our tools, the more we make your computer slow down. If you have several third party tools that are built like this, all open at once, it will negatively impact the responsiveness of After Effects' user interface.

As developers, we have to make choices about how we handle your computer's resources. Choices between being 'greedy', at one extreme; and something more humble, at the other. I say humble because we don't make an assumption that our tool is the only one in your UI, or that it's more important to you than any others. We have to compromise on the wow-factor of our tool, so that you are less likely to have to compromise in which tools you keep in your workspace.

Why are things different across OS's?

Keyboard shortcuts are handled differently between Mac and Windows operating systems. The same goes for the behaviour of floating palettes. Both these OS-specific factors have knock-on effects for Penpal that are beyond our control.

When I click on Window > Extensions > Penpal, nothing happens

Please try the following steps:

Download the latest ZXP Installer from aescripts.
In ZXP Installer, click on the Settings icon in the top-left. This opens a new pane which has three icons on the left hand side. Click on the bottom icon to bring up a list of CEP versions. Make sure that Enable debugging is checked on for CEP version 8 and above.
Click on OK.
Close and re-open the Penpal panel inside After Effects. You may also need to restart After Effects.

If this process fails to get Penpal working, please open a support ticket at aescripts and we will help you directly. These installation issues are really down to Adobe but we can usually get things working in the end.

Why doesn't Penpal integrate with point selections I make in After Effects?

Adobe doesn't provide developers with access to point selections, so we have no way of knowing which points on a path you have selected in the composition panel.

How accurate is Penpal?

Penpal becomes more accurate as it's panel increases in pixel size, so if you use Penpal as a very small panel you might find it harder to make accurate selections, or that tangents change from broken to smooth too easily.

Why can't I align points or tangents between multiple paths?

When you edit multiple paths at once, Penpal handles each path independently of the others. So whilst you can align points within a path, you can't align points from two or more different paths with one another. But you can enable snapping - which does snap points across multiple paths.

Why do paths appear in strange places in the canvas?

Multiple paths sometimes look strange in Layer or Local space. Try working with one path at a time, or switch to Comp space.