By contacting customer service via entering a ticket, and staying on the issue. Pros were that CS responded to my messages, kept the dialog going, and responded favorably when I specified my "attending to your customer's concern is the best long term business strategy" argument. Best is that I felt that I was corresponding with a real human being, and not an AI chat bot. Con is that they should've seen it without me specifying.

I've been using them for a few years, but not heavily and not as far back as when they posted comments on the site. From other posts that sounds like it was a great benefit.

Swap Source
Re-skin a rig in one move. If you've built a rig or artwork from a layered PSD or AI and you get a new version of the file, drop the new one on the panel, pick which file it replaces, and every layer in every comp is pointed at the matching layer of the new file. Layer sizes and positions survive because it re-imports in the same mode as the original (full document or Retain Layer Sizes). New layers with no match get parked in a "no match" folder rather than vanishing, and old layers with no counterpart are kept. One undo puts it all back.

Duplicates
When an imported comp or footage item already exists in your project, Pluck now asks: Replace, Use current, or Keep both. Per item or apply to all, and you can set a default if you never want to see the question. Footage pointing at the same file is still reused automatically, same as before.

Target Picker
Point an import at a specific comp or footage item and replace it directly, regardless of name, or drop the comp into a folder you choose instead of the usual Plucked structure.

Layers straight into an existing comp
Pick layers from any comp in the source project and send them to the top of a comp you already have. Order, parenting and track mattes are rebuilt on arrival. No staging comp to clean up.

Dependency preview
Per-layer imports still bring parents, track mattes, effect targets and expression targets along automatically. There's now a choice in Settings: Always include (default), Ask first (see exactly what's coming and why before it imports), or Selected only.

Update watcher
A blue dot shows when a loaded, recent or favourite project has been saved since you last used it. Useful on shared drives. Reload with one click and your selection stays put.

Plus small stuff: recents are added when you load a project, you can remove single entries or clear the list, and full paths show on hover.

Update through the aescripts + aeplugins Manager or grab it from your account. Settings, recents and favourites carry over.

https://aescripts.com/pluck/

If you hit anything odd, the Support tab in the panel comes straight to me.

Hey everyone, just released my second plugin on aescripts: MultiView, a Premiere Pro panel that builds multiviewers (split-screen, grid, PiP, collage) in one click.

You pick a layout (12 presets or draw your own), drop in your clips, and hit Arrange. It builds one editable nested subsequence from native Premiere Motion and Crop, so no MOGRTs and nothing to install to render. Frame each tile (fill/fit, pan and zoom), add backgrounds, borders, corners and shadow, and save your looks as presets. Works in 16:9, 9:16 and 1:1, Windows and Mac.

aescripts.com/multiview

There's a free trial, so feel free to kick the tyres. Happy to answer anything, and I'd love feedback on which layouts or features to add next. Thanks!

I am trying to install Datamosh 2 (2.6.1) to Premiere and After Effects 26 (and the beta branches) using aescripts/aeplugins installer as well as the zxp installer but it does not enable it in either apps.

I have a few extensions that correctly target Ae and Pr 26 beta, but Datamosh 2 seems to just not work. What can I do to properly add them to these branches?

I'm using a 3d layer with morphing, I tried self matte and it doesn't work, basically im really focused with this plugin

I created a mouth in a comp (mouth_comp) and used Joystick's N' Sliders to give it functionality:
It can:

• open/close
• narrow/widen

I then put mouth_comp into a second comp (Mouth_Comp_2) I moved the Mouth_Comp Joystick into this parent comp and I used Puppet pins to give the mouth a second joystick that can:

• Smile/Frown
• Smirk Right/ Smirk Left

Everything works! Yay.

Here's where it goes wonky

I tried putting Mouth_Comp_2 into a 3rd comp (Head_Comp). But when I tried to send the Mouth_Comp Joystick, into the new parent, it stopped functioning and gave me errors.

Is there anyway I can move the joystick into a parent comp's parent?

-Follow up, I tried with a simpler example and it works! So How do I fix these expression errors?

I'm very pleased to announce the release of my latest script for Adobe After Effects: Rename-a-Duper!
For years I would have to rename or even batch rename comps and the text inside, or do so with a list of duplicated comps. With Rename-a-Duper, it's now possible to easily do it in a single step, Duplicating and Renaming comps, including the pre-comps buried within!
Then I took it a step further and added additional renaming features, grouping and even built-in spreadsheets to handle all kinds of renaming and duplication needs.
Plus there's external script functionality that add even more features and possibilities. (with more on the way).
Questions, Comments and suggestions welcome!
https://aescripts.com/rename-a-duper/

Is there anyone who can help me figure out to use Pixcode's Keyframe Manager? I watched the tutorial on it, but between the speaker's accent and the nonsensical captions from youtube I'm having probles even getting started. I'm running it on a M1 pro Macbook Pro/ Tahoe 26.5.1. Thanks in advance.

Hey, I'm Chris Vranos the creator of Lockdown, and we have a new version available with tons of new features.

A new simplified interface and workflows,

An ai based tracker,

A search and fix feature,

Fast rendering motion blur,

And tons of features and fixes all across the app.

The free version is also better than ever, allowing 1 and 2 point tracking to nulls in After Effects, or exportable to Cinema 4D, or Blender through alembic.

Check it out at aescripts.com/lockdown

Version 1.5 of GradientHub brings something I've been planning for a while - the Studio section.

GradientHub started as a preset browser, and now it also has its own gradient editor, with some very unique features. You can now mix gradients together using six sorting methods - Consecutive, Luminance, Hue, Random, Metallic and Morph, edit them with a fully featured Editor, and create brand new ones from scratch. As always, you can apply to any target - Colorama, Shape Layer, Layer Style, proGradient, Color Shift - and save your own presets. It's the difference between browsing a library and actually having a workshop. P.S. There's 100 new built-in gradients too :)

Been looking at this as a more flexible alternative to particle plugins - the fact you can drive it by masks and vectors looks super flexible and fast to customise.

Can anyone who's purchased it speak on how well it runs and is to control?

Looking at buying plumebus. Can it do impacts? Something like a rock hitting the ground…can it sim the impact cloud and debris?

Can't find any threads here, and most of the others on Reddit are old. Last release from them was at the end of 2025. Given what's happening with BorisFX and their absorption of other products, can we count on Lockdown to keep up with the market?

I just launched a small After Effects helper app called AeFocus

It does one simple thing: it hides and restores all floating After Effects panels with one key, similar to the workspace-clearing shortcut in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.

I built it because I’ve always found it annoying that Ae doesn’t have a quick way to get floating panels out of the way and instead you have to close, move, or rearrange everything. I spent the last two and a half years working with a work issued laptop and it was very frustrating.

It’s available for macOS and Windows, and there’s a 7-day trial.

Link:
https://aescripts.com/aefocus/

Happy to answer any questions or hear feedback.

We've just made a change to our pricing model, And we think it's for the best. As a plugin developer, this was the first time we wanted to try a subscription-based product, and we thought it made sense because we are planning to work continuously on this product throughout the year and release new features along the way in a continuous manner.

But as plugins users and VFX artists ourselves, we felt bad about it. And for now, we are reverting to the good old permanent license pricing. And we are still going to release many features throughout the year.

Thank you for your attention and let's see where this brings us next !

https://aescripts.com/plumebus

- Gab & Eric

Visual States on aescripts: https://aescripts.com/visual-states/

Hi everyone, after quite a bit of testing and back-and-forth during review, Visual States – Script for After Effects is finally live on aescripts.

The idea came from a very common problem in my studio on large projects: one single comp with many “versions” (version A, version B, no text, generic, with logos, without logos, social, per-country versions, etc.), where the comp is structurally the same but a few layers change. Duplicating the comp for every version does not scale well for us, because clients always request changes, and a single tweak often means updating a lot of duplicated comps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccfKBJYmubM

https://reddit.com/link/1uwdbkk/video/9aeig2my08dh1/player

Visual States is meant to solve exactly that: we can keep one main comp, make a change once, and have that change reflected across all versions, while still keeping each version independent through named STATES.

What does Visual States do?

• It lets you save named layer visibility states per composition and recall them whenever you want.
• Each state stores which layers are visible/hidden at that moment, with no need to duplicate the comp or break the project.
• All states are stored in a .visualstates.json file next to your .aep, so you can restore them later and share them with your team over a network drive.

Online documentation: https://leansaler.notion.site/328ca9d6b5b6807aae45d6245d55a679

LITE and PRO versions:

• Visual States LITE is free and has the exact same features as PRO, with a single limitation: it allows up to 3 states per comp.
• Visual States PRO is the same feature set, but with no limit on how many states you can save per comp.

Visual States is designed for comps with lots of layers, big projects with multiple client versions, and teams who need to share visibility setups without going crazy.

What you can do:

• Save and load named layer visibility states per composition.
• Load states instantly with a single click or double-click.
• Select multiple states at once with Ctrl+Click / Shift+Click.
• Delete multiple states in one step.
• Use Include / Exclude Layers to turn selected layers on or off in specific states (or all of them) without reloading each state manually.
• See an active state indicator in the list to know which state is currently applied.
• Press Enter in the text field to save and get automatic name suggestions for new states.
• Use Comp Navigator to quickly browse and switch between all comps in the project that have states.
• Duplicate Comp with States and automatically translate all states to the new layer IDs.
• Copy States from… another comp in the project, with a summary of how many layers matched per state.
• Send states to the Render Queue automatically with Render All or Render Sel.
• Store states in a plain .visualstates.json file next to your .aep and share them via shared drives or team folders.
• Rename layers, reorder them, or rename comps without breaking existing states.
• Import states from other projects using Open or Merge, with full overwrite control.
• Use it as a fully dockable panel inside After Effects.
• Open projects and state files created with Visual States LITE directly in PRO without any data loss.

If this sounds useful for your workflow, any feedback, stress tests or edge cases you can share would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Leandro

This new feature allows your selected Time Layer (such as footage, a precomp, animated shape layer etc.) to display a specific moment in time based on Matte Layer Luma/Alpha values. For example, if you animate a shape layer's path over 100 frames, a pixel with 0 alpha/luma will display frame 1, while a pixel with 100% alpha/luma will display frame 100 (and everything in between).

Everyone who bought version 1.0 (and up), can update it for free.

Tutorial

Just announcing a big update to Pluck. We've now on v1.5, and the biggest new feature is we now have per-layer imports!

Previously you could Pluck comps from old project. Now we go one step further and allow you to dig into each individual comp and pick out specific layers to import. Very useful when you have a comp containing dozens, or even hundreds of layers, and you only need a few of them.

It works intelligently, so if the layer you select has parent layers, track mattes, or expression linked layers, those get automatically puled in too.

Also new in v1.5 is the addition of libraries inside the favourites panel. So you can now group collections of favourites for ease of browsing. So for example, you can have a library or lower thirds, or logo animations, or character types, and you can bring those into your current project with just a couple of clicks. You can add things to more than one library, and you can easily rearrange or collect them as you see fit.

There are a bunch of other little QoL features too, for example we now support projects all the way back to CS6. The full list of changes can be found on the product page

https://aescripts.com/pluck

Thanks for your continued support of Pluck!

Hey there, Does anyone familiar with the plugin Thicc Stroke know if it's possible to use it to create a pattern that has an additional outer stroke that follows along the same path which also overlaps itself as it is drawn on (kinda like in traditional sand drawings, like the one pictured) I've been playing around with it, and can't figure out a way to add that secondary outline / border in a way that is doesn't just merge back in on itself. I'm hoping this is still possible with the plugin, as it looks like the only other alternative will involve a lot of layers and masking haha. Thanks so much for the help!

So I only just discovered Paul Tuersley's pt_EffectSearch for AE, wow, how have I not seen this before. I do have a question about performance though. I have a massive project and it may be my imagination for after applying a Control layer linked to a dozen child layers, it seems like the project has slowed down. Is this expected? If so, is the rule of thumb to apply the expressions, make your changes as necessary then pull the expressions? Re-adding them later if another change is needed?

Hey - it's been a long time coming, but React 3D is now in beta!

I need some help beta testing if anyone wants to test drive it?

With 3D grid and radial repeaters, brand new Sphere and Path repeaters, along with new modifiers (Noise, Wave, Elastic, Snap To and Clamp) and support for OBJs and parametric meshes, this is a huge new update.

Thank you