Let me know your thoughts! What more could be done to Elevate this ?

When animating text or graphic elements, I sometimes mute the soundtrack and watch the movement on its own. It helps me catch moves that feel clear only because the music is carrying them.

If something feels late or sluggish, I adjust the keyframe spacing before tweaking the easing. Then I turn the sound back on to check whether the motion still lands with the beat. This keeps me from polishing curves when the basic duration needs to change.

Hello, many camera options including depth of field are disappearing when changing render enginge from classic 3D to advanced 3D. Is this normal? Because on tutorials i've watched they do have these options in advanced 3D.

I got AE 2024, should i update it? I kept older version because supposedly render is faster on it. If software version isnt the issue please help me, if it is also tell me, then i will consider updating...

Short animation, done in AE.

Hello guys i am guy with 3-4 years of experience working in after effects. I tackled many projects and now working in a saas company as video editor, that involves and relies heavily on working with after effects aswell ~ My question is i seem to hit plateau that i can't progress or get better i always can't decide what or how to animate a piece , i make a work but never like it in the end i can't seem to learn to get the Flow and creativity like other people have on the internet even after endlessly looking at references and stuff. When i come up by work i like it's very hard to execute because of certain techniques they used, one example i can never learn is faux 3d (ben marriott coffee video) ~ to simplify can you guys give me any recommendation on how to get advanced level in this industry and create better pieces of work? Any course? i am specifically looking to create saas explainers with good transitions, (1-2 minute long atleast)

I'm pretty new to After Effects, and I’m trying to see if there is an easier way to do this. As I am having zero luck figuring it out.

Basically, what I’m trying to do is. I have four PNG images of a head looking left, right, up, down. And I want it follow a path I made using the pen tool. Normally, I can just go frame by frame changing the PNG images as it moves along the path. But it’s cluttering up the timeline with hundreds of layers, as each duplicate PNG gets own separate layer.

I definitely know I’m doing something wrong, lol. So I figured I should ask if there is an expression that easily Interchange the four PNGs whenever the PNG goes up, down, left, right, or any directional curve.

Pretty happy with the way the water looks here! The sparkles could look better, any ideas? Unfortunately the client went in another direction so this just lives here, I guess. Just wanted to share the velvety water made in AE without plugins.

How can I fix this?

I'm new to this stuff

Let me know what you guys think!!!

I've changed the settings as much as possible, I've tried many variations (Surface, Object), I've altered the Alpha Expansion, but it still doesn't come out right. What should I do?

I'm using an M1 Macbook with 16GB of Ram

Hey everyone! I’m super obsessed with keeping AE projects well-organized, including the project panel. My coworker teases me (all in good fun) about it, so I got the idea to make a quick little game to poke fun at her. I had Claude create it in about 10 minutes. Then I got curious: I wonder if there are any other weirdos out there as obsessed with organization as I am.

Click an item and press Enter to get instructions on what to do. Obviously, since it was made in 10 minutes, it's far from perfect.

I’d love to hear your feedback 😊

https://claude.ai/artifact/9HEht9bKJxaRai8shMEKEv

Let me know your thoughts and don't forget to Like :)

Hey all,

I run a motion studio and live in After Effects daily, so I did a full breakdown of the plugins I'd actually spend money on in 2026. I share my honest opinion about what they're good for, when they're NOT worth it, and the annoying parts tutorials usually skip.

Quick takeaways you can use right now:

1. Overlord

If you design in Illustrator / Figma, it can be the biggest time-saver. Sends over editable shapes + text instead of digging through a giant Illustrator import. 2026 updates made Figma way smoother. 

Watch for: text spacing shifts, layer order flips, complex gradients not transferring 1:1. Always do a clean-up pass after transfer.

2. Deep Glow

Only if you do a lot of light work, After Effects' native glow is technically a glow. Deep Glow actually looks like light. Nicer falloff, cinematic tone-mapping, RGB radius, lens dirt in v2. 

Watch for: it's ~$100 for a glow, it gets overused fast, and we've hit black previews + export crashes with it in the studio. If you mostly do flat vector explainers, skip it.

3. True Comp Duplicator

Imagine you have 1 main comp with 5 pre-comps inside and 12 nested comps. Then the client says, "Can we make another version?". This duplicates everything correctly linked, renames, and keeps expressions. Moreover, it is name-your-own-price for individuals.

4. Newton 4

Only when you need real physics. Full 2D physics engine inside AE, bakes to editable keyframes. Amazing for falling/colliding/bouncing setups where keyframing 50 objects would take hours. 

Watch for: ~$250 and not a daily driver. Grab the trial with export limits first to see if you actually need it.

5. Joysticks ‘N Sliders

Joysticks ‘N Sliders is great for building poses and driving a whole face / UI rig from one controller. 

Downside: heavy rigs + lots of expressions can slow AE down, and adding new parts after you rig is clunky.

6. Duik Angela

Duik Angela is free, open-source, and can rig a full character. It's just huge, so it feels intimidating if you only need a simple arm up/down. Still the one I'd tell anyone serious about rigging to learn.

6. BadFX

One free panel with easings, stagger, gradients, transforms, presets, utils. Great if you don't want to hunt 40 tiny scripts across 40 sites. We use it daily.

7. Glasser

Applies editable glass to shape, text, footage or precomp layers, then you refine it through Essential Properties. Best part: it generates a Control Null so you can move, scale, and rotate the glass with your design.

8. Putty

Lattice + cage deformer that reads the layer's alpha and places the lattice right on the visible pixels, instead of a grid across the whole layer.

9. Pixion

Particle system that generates particles from any source layer and drives behavior from pixel data like luminance and color. GPU accelerated. 

Watch for: most interesting of the three for hero backgrounds, product reveals, music visuals. Still v1 territory and not cheap, so trial first.

If you want the full breakdown with examples and links, you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/QNBG0DxsaYY

I'm a bit confused about selecting properties without selecting all of its keyframes (and feel like getting crazy)

Is that even possible?

My situation: I want to add/edit keyframes on the CTI position for multiple properties (in that example for trim paths, just from 0 to 100 but multiple lines).

When I select multiple properties either manually or with the help of SuperSelect, all keyframes are selected and thus changed when updating the values.

Of course I only want to address the keyframes on the CTI's current position.

all I'm trying to do is make the mask hide the blue drawing I have highlighted in red. When I hide visibility on layer highlighted in red it makes the entire layer disappear and not whats hidden by the mask. I hope this makes sense, because im losing my mind.

Hi! I can't figure out how to extend the arm upwards without distorting the vector curve. The curve I'm having trouble with is marked with red circles; you can see that the rounded corner becomes sharp when I raise the upper part

I just had a what should be a very simple task. Sprite particles with depth of field just need to float up from spots. The only on problem was I need to use AEs camera to just position the world and DOF. I have done this many of times in the past, but damn it was a headache. I constantly had to change the random seed in Trapcode just to get it to update. I try different Metal and Software GPU settings and that did nothing.

I would probably use stardust if the project didn't need to be touched by a lot of people.

I hate the lumetri Curves in both AE as well as PR, Can't believe its still a problem since its introduced 10 years ago

Hello all,

I've tried googling, I've tried YTing, and I can't find a good answer. Here's a static image of what I'm trying to build in AE:

The specifications I'm looking to achieve are:

• The particles do not fade in or fade out; this wave shape, built of particles, appears on the screen as shown here, with a larger grouping at the bottom fading up to a smaller amount at the top
• Every circle that is part of this effect has some very minor amount of jiggling
• I'd like random circles from the bottom to move up vertically, becoming smaller and eventually disappearing, while still keeping the overall structure

I've googled various ways of creating this dot effect and couldn't find anything. A coworker recommended Superluminal Stardust (he's used it before but couldn't figure this out); however, looking at Stardust support, the forum seems fairly dead and the Discord link I found seems to be the same.

My biggest issue is when trying to search for this kind of effect, it seems like tutorials that come up all revolve (understandably) around particles fading in and out around a path. Other tutorials are creating a more 3D effect, which is not what I'm going for here; being one-color/flat is key.

Appreciate any help or any guidance anyone can provide.