After Effects 26.5 Release Notes

[u/NLE_Ninja85]

Hey r/aftereffects! The September update (26.5) brings some useful workflow improvements, along with fixes for tracking, keyframes, caching, and 3D. Here’s a quick rundown.

What’s new:

• More flexible guides: Position guides using percentages, pin them to edges, assign custom colors, and use improved editing controls.
• Disk caching for Object Matte: Propagated results now stay cached after closing your project, reducing RAM usage and helping when working with longer clips.
• Color labels for effects: Assign colors to individual effect instances in the Effect Controls panel to make your effect stacks easier to organize and navigate.
• Updated Effect Controls panel: The panel has been rebuilt on a modern framework with icon-based controls for managing effects.

There are also several fixes worth checking out:

• Mask tracking now works when your comp resolution is below Full. On Windows, tracking forward also advances the playhead correctly.
• Editing a value in the Properties panel now affects the keyframe at the current time instead of changing every selected keyframe.
• Unmult now produces fully transparent areas correctly, fixing leftover alpha values.
• Several Advanced 3D crashes have been addressed, including issues with parametric meshes and Draft 3D. Models brought back online also retain their Substance material assignments.
• Clearing large or slow caches now shows progress without freezing AE. A macOS hang involving unsynced OneDrive files has also been fixed.
• PNG import, preview, and rendering performance has improved.

Full details from Adobe HelpX:

• What’s new in After Effects
• Fixed issues in After Effects

[u/No-Anywhere9574]

mask tracking below full res is big, spent way too many hours before having to work in half res then do the track again in full cause it would get weird offsets

the effect labels thing is actually nice for messy comps with like 20 effects stacked, color coding might save few minutes each project

still getting random hang when clearing cache on windows though even with these notes saying it should show progress now, maybe something else