bakerBoy: smart expression baker for After Effects

bakerBoy: Fewer keys. Fewer vertices. Bounded error.

What it is

A smart baker for After Effects. It turns expressions or dense keyframes into clean, editable keyframes and cleaner shape paths, and only accepts a result that stays inside an explicit error tolerance. It is unreleased and developed in a private repository; its solver, bbsolver, is public.

What it does

It samples AE as the source of truth, sends the samples to an external native C++ solver, validates the candidate against worst-case error and outline-distance tolerances, and writes the accepted keys back inside one undo group.

Features

• Expression-to-keyframe baking with explicit spatial tangents, temporal ease and hold/linear/Bezier choice per segment
• Chebyshev (L-infinity) acceptance, so one bad frame cannot hide behind many good ones
• Dynamic-programming key placement instead of deleting keys one at a time
• Shape Path optimization: stable and variable topology, fewer vertices under a visual tolerance
• Solve modes: full, vertex-only, temporal-only, Motion Smooth
• Workarea and marker-range safety; per-property pass reports

Capabilities

Hand off expression-driven rigs as keys, unparent baked rig motion, clean up Motion Sketch and noisy paths, and slim heavy timelines.

Compatibility

• Adobe After Effects (CEP panel, ExtendScript)
• Native solver for macOS and Windows (see bbsolver)

Availability

Not released. Public solver: github.com/ivg-design/bbsolver (MIT).

Under the hood

A JSX/CEP panel in React and a C++ solver (dynamic programming, Ceres/Eigen fitting, TBB parallelism) exchanging FlatBuffers bundles.