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After Effects storyboard importer

After Effects storyboard importer

Download from:

Google Drive
GitHub

Download from:

Google Drive
GitHub

The storyboard importer is an After Effects script that takes your storyboard pages and arranges the panels into a basic animatic automatically. Each panel lasts one second and is ready to be timed. The script works with any storyboard layout. A template is included if you don’t have one.

A companion Photoshop script batch exports pages from a layered PSD.

Before and after: exports from Photoshop → After Effects timeline

Before we begin

  1. All pages must share the same panel layout: same number of panels, same positions, same sizes.
  2. The script works by keying the anchor point at the centre of each panel. The image files are not cropped, so you can manually pan, zoom, or rotate any panel afterwards.
  3. Image files are sorted alphabetically on import. If you have ten or more pages, zero-pad your filenames (p01, p02 … p10), as p1, p2 … p10 sorts as p1, p10, p2 ….
  4. Each import creates one comp and one footage folder in your AE project, both named after the source folder. Re-running creates versioned duplicates ((2), (3), …) rather than overwriting.

What’s in the download

Download and unzip the folder. Inside you’ll find:

  • ae_storyboard_importer.jsx ← AE script
  • ps_storyboard_exporter.jsx ← Photoshop export script
  • storyboard_template.ai ← Illustrator template
  • storyboard_template.png ← template image
  • storyboard_template.psd ← Photoshop template

Left: Illustrator template with editable vector layout for customising.
Right: Photoshop template ready for drawing, with sample images for testing the scripts.

Case 1: using the provided template

The template uses 1920 × 1080 panels. If your comp is also 1920 × 1080, no changes to the script are needed.

Step 1: draw your boards

Open storyboard_template.psd or storyboard_template.png in any image editor and draw your boards one page at a time. If you’re using the Illustrator template, export at 72 dpi.

Step 2: export your pages

Export each page as a PNG or JPEG and name them in order: p01.png, p02.png, and so on. Put them all in one folder and name it after your scene (SC01, Sc_opening, etc.) as it becomes the comp and footage folder name in AE.

Step 3: run the script

In After Effects, go to File → Scripts → Run Script File and select ae_storyboard_importer.jsx. A folder picker will open, select your scene folder and confirm.

The script will:

  • Import each page as a layer
  • Set hold keyframes on the anchor point, one per panel, starting at frame 0
  • Scale each layer so the panel height fills the comp

Case 2: using your own storyboard template

Open ae_storyboard_importer.jsx in any text editor and update the SETTINGS block with your values:

panelCentres: [
    [750, 1080],   // panel 1
    [2250, 1080],  // panel 2
    [3750, 1080],  // panel 3
    [750, 2360],   // panel 4
    [2250, 2360],  // panel 5
    [3750, 2360],  // panel 6
],
panelWidth:  1280,
panelHeight: 720,
templateDpi: 72,

Example of a different template layout

Finding your panel coordinates

You need the centre point of each panel in reading order, plus the panel width and height. In Illustrator or Photoshop, these are usually available in the transform properties of each panel shape with the reference point set to centre. If not, draw a rectangle over each panel and read off the coordinates from there.

Reading the rectangle’s position and transform properties in Illustrator and Photoshop

Exporting at different resolutions

At 72 dpi, the coordinates match the exported image directly – a 1920 × 1080 template exports as a 1920 × 1080 image, for example. Leave templateDpi at 72.

At 300 dpi, for finer boards where you want to zoom in without losing quality, keep your coordinates as measured, then export your template at 300 dpi in Illustrator. Set templateDpi: 300. The script scales them up automatically.

A note on comp size and panel ratio

If your panel ratio doesn’t match your comp ratio – 4:3 panels into a 16:9 comp, for example, the script scales each page so the panel height fills the comp height. The panels will be the right size with more of the page visible on the sides. Set compWidth and compHeight to match your intended output.

Export your pages and run the script as in Case 1.

Case 3: scanned boards

Scanned pages vary in rotation and scale depending on how they were fed into the scanner. The template includes registration markers in the top-left and bottom-right corners to correct for this. Open each scan in Photoshop and snap it to the template using the markers, aligning to two fixed corner points corrects both rotation and scale in one step.

Once aligned, export the pages and run the script as in Case 1.

Photoshop exporter

The Photoshop exporter is a companion script that exports pages directly from a layered PSD. Each top-level folder is treated as one page and exported as a PNG named after the folder.

Setting up your PSD

Organise your boards so each page is a separate top-level folder, named in order: p01, p02, and so on. Layers outside any folder are ignored.

Hide any layers you don’t want in the export before running the script. The exporter only toggles folder visibility and leaves everything else untouched.

Running the exporter

In Photoshop, go to File → Scripts → Browse and select ps_storyboard_exporter.jsx. A folder picker will open, select your output folder and confirm. One PNG is exported per folder, then all layer visibility is restored to how it was.

If any files already exist in the output folder, you’ll be prompted before anything is overwritten.

Troubleshooting

Script won’t run – In After Effects, go to Edit → Preferences → Scripting & Expressions and enable Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network. In Photoshop, go to Edit → Preferences → Scripts and enable Allow Scripts to Access the Network. Restart the application afterwards.

Panels are off-centre or wrong scale – The safest approach is to open the image you’re about to import, draw a rectangle over each panel and read the coordinates and dimensions directly. Use those values in the script and set templateDpi: 72, the script will use them as-is with no scaling applied.

Hopefully it all works! More technical detail is in the README. Feel free to get in touch with feedback or if you run into any problems.

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