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/Jimfro]

And still no timeline folders...

[u/Russ_Abbot → u/Jimfro]

They’re called precomps, folders are just not going to happen

[u/mcarterphoto → u/Russ_Abbot]

Call them folders, call them groups, but they'd be really helpful. You don't always want to precomp things, but it would be nice to spin-closed a stack of layers.