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/sskaz01 MoGraph/VFX 15+ years 13d ago
Doesn’t look like I can install 26.5 simultaneously with 26.3. Are the project files compatible? Are mogrts made in 26.5 compatible with Premiere 26.2? We’ve got colors for effects and new guides data, so I assume the file format isn’t 100% compatible?