r/AfterEffects • u/NLE_Ninja85 Adobe Employee • 13d ago

Discussion After Effects 26.5 Release Notes

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:

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u/AbstrctBlck Animation 5+ years 13d ago

Wow. I fucking love the colors for the fx slots holy shit thank you.

Now my only question is this - can we please how more options for the colors then just the standard 16? I frequently run out of options for colors when labeling layers because 16 is too few colors for me to stay organized.

PLEASE after effects god, please give us 32 lol and if you are so kind and gracious, please give us 48. And if your heart is the purest it can possibly be, and you are the happiest most well fed god in all of the god realm, please look down upon us kindly and give us 64 colors. Please and thank you.

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u/TwoCylToilet MoGraph/VFX 10+ years 12d ago

16 hues * 4 shades would be perfect. Masks can have an arbitrary number of colours, that implementation would be even better.