Randomizer

Chaos, on tap. Smash randomness into your selected After Effects layers — position, rotation, scale, opacity — with ranges, modes, and a tasteful undo group so you don't burn the timeline.

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What it does

One panel. Four cards. Each card randomizes one transform property on every selected layer:

• Position — random X / Y / Z offsets within ranges you set. Choose Add (jitter) or Set (yeet to coordinates).
• Rotation — degrees per axis. 2D rotates Z; 3D layers can do X / Y / Z independently.
• Scale — uniform or per-axis. Set to absolute %, or Multiply to scramble existing scale.
• Opacity — random % within range.

Toggle any card off to skip it. There's also a big Randomize All button at the bottom for when you want a single click of pure entropy.

Everything wraps in a single undo group, so one Ctrl+Z puts it back the way it was.

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Install

One-click on Windows (recommended)

1. From the latest release, download both files into the same folder:
   • Randomizer-vX.Y.Z.zxp
   • install.ps1
2. Right-click install.ps1 → Run with PowerShell.
3. Restart After Effects.
4. Window → Extensions → Randomizer.

The script extracts the .zxp, drops it into your per-user CEP folder, and flips the registry switch (PlayerDebugMode) that AE needs to load a self-signed extension. No admin rights required.

To remove it later: run uninstall.ps1, or delete %APPDATA%\Adobe\CEP\extensions\Randomizer\.

Prefer a GUI installer?

Drop the .zxp into one of these free tools:

• Anastasiy's Extension Manager — usually works first try.
• ZXP Installer (aescripts) — sometimes errors with "Extension Manager init failed, status = -193"; if that happens, use the PowerShell script above instead.

The cert is self-signed, so installers may mutter something about "publisher not verified" — click through.

Doing it by hand

A .zxp is just a renamed .zip:

1. Copy Randomizer-vX.Y.Z.zxp → rename copy to .zip → extract.
2. Rename the extracted folder to Randomizer, drop it in %APPDATA%\Adobe\CEP\extensions\.
3. Open PowerShell and run:

   "10","11","12" | ForEach-Object {
       $k = "HKCU:\Software\Adobe\CSXS.$_"
       if (-not (Test-Path $k)) { New-Item -Path $k -Force | Out-Null }
       Set-ItemProperty -Path $k -Name PlayerDebugMode -Value 1 -Type String
   }

4. Restart AE.

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Use it

1. Select one or more unlocked layers in any comp.
2. Open the panel (Window → Extensions → Randomizer).
3. Set your ranges, pick Add/Set/Multiply, hit the button.
4. Don't like it? Ctrl+Z. Try again.

Locked layers get politely skipped.

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Requirements

• After Effects 2022 (22.0) or newer
• CEP 9.0+ (ships with AE)

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Build it yourself

If you'd rather build the .zxp locally instead of grabbing the release:

# Grab Adobe's ZXPSignCmd from the Adobe-CEP repo:
# https://github.com/Adobe-CEP/CEP-Resources/tree/master/ZXPSignCMD

# Stage the extension folder
mkdir -p build/Randomizer
cp -r CSXS client jsx build/Randomizer/

# Self-signed cert (one-time)
ZXPSignCmd -selfSignedCert US CA "You" "You" "pass" cert.p12

# Sign → ZXP
ZXPSignCmd -sign build/Randomizer Randomizer.zxp cert.p12 pass

Or just push a v* tag and let GitHub Actions do it.

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Tech

CEP 9 panel — HTML/CSS/JS frontend (client/) talks to ExtendScript backend (jsx/) via evalScript. Manifest at CSXS/manifest.xml. The randomizer math itself is dead simple — min + Math.random() * (max - min) for each picked range.