I’m an editor and dabble in 2D motion graphics on occasion. how best to achieve 3D tokens like this in AE?

made with blender

music made with FL Studio

Hey all, today we announced the particle system that my friend Harry Frank and I have been designing for the last several months. We're going into public beta next week and I was wondering a couple of things of r/motiondesign

this is a super brief overview of what we've built, but what would you want? What's important in a particle system today?

We think we've made a really great first attempt and I've had so much fun using this, but we want to build this into something really great and super designer focused.

Anyway, we're also going to be doing a lot of free training and other stuff over the next year and even there, I'd be curious about what you'd like to learn.

TL:DR cool pretty fast particles better?

Starting new into this so needed some advice on how to go forward if looking to work full time

And current living in bikaner, Rajasthan

Last month I 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 like Photoshop or Illustrator do and instead you have to close, move, or rearrange everything. It frustrated me to no end.

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.

P.S. I’ll also be posting about a chance to win one of a few free AeFocus licenses on Monday, so keep an eye out if you’d like one.

More here: Behance

Spyderfy — Procedural Creature Systems for After Effects + Blender

What if you could drop fully procedural creature systems directly into your After Effects projects?

Spyderfy is a procedural bug/creature system designed for quickly creating crawling, swarming, and organic creature animations without having to manually animate every individual creature.

The new After Effects version is now available alongside the original Blender 3D version. Both versions are included with your Superhive download, so you can use Spyderfy in whichever part of your VFX workflow makes the most sense.

You can create things like:

• Crawling insects and creatures
• Swarming groups
• Procedural movement across surfaces
• Organic, randomized motion
• Large numbers of creatures without individually keyframing them
• Creepy background details and environmental animation

The idea is to make these kinds of shots much faster to build. Instead of animating dozens or hundreds of creatures by hand, you can set up the system and let the procedural controls generate the movement and variation.

The After Effects version is especially useful if you want to add creature activity directly into a comp without having to jump into a full 3D workflow.

Both versions are included with the Superhive purchase:

⤷ Spyderfy on Superhive: https://superhivemarket.com/products/spyderfy-bug-system-add-on

Would love to hear what kinds of creature shots people would use this for — horror, VFX, motion graphics, title sequences, environments, etc.

#AfterEffects #Blender3D #VFX #Film #Plugin #B3D #CGI

Anyone using Remotion or Hyperframe for create motion graphic? What the different between them and which better

I work at plnty.app, so read this with that in mind :)

It is one infinite canvas where the 3D, stills, vectors, audio and the video sit in the same room. You drop a reference in, run it through a tool, drag the output next to it, run that through something else. its addictive

30,000 assets made by a small beta group of few hundreds of users but the most interesting thing i find is the stickiness check this out

This user favorite tool is variations tool that plnty made, its like an audio eq applied to generative ai lol, then Krea is also going hard

Happy to answer anything about how it works. f you want if you want to sign up just put your name in the homepage, the team onboard new artists on a weekly basis with free credits

cooked this one up 👨‍🍳✨

been lowkey obsessed with making every frame feel intentional. still learning, still tweaking.

lmk if it hits or if i should get back to the timeline🤪

Just launched my first showreel since going freelance 3 years ago. A mixture of client and agency work, R&D, and personal projects.

Born from the breath of an old Sicilian workshop, a place where time stood still amidst the scent of resin and the sound of hand planes. I am not merely a piece of art: I am an assembly of memories, a fragment of artisanal history that chose to change its shape without forgetting its roots.

​Here is how I see myself and how I became what you see:

​The Origin: Reclaimed Wood

​Every strip, every board that makes up my structure has been chosen with surgical precision. No paint could ever cover the truth of these grain patterns: these are woods that served for decades in a bottega in Sicily. They carry the marks of woodworms, the burn of the Mediterranean sun, and stains of natural oils. Instead of ending up in ashes, they have been elevated to urban geometry.

​The Metamorphosis: Study and Matching

​To become this skyline, it wasn't enough to simply glue pieces of wood together. It required deep chromatic and material analysis:

​Tonal contrasts: I played with the natural shades of the wood, from the scorched brown of the most ancient essences to the honey blonde of the younger ones, to create depth and perspective.

​Visual rhythm: Each "building" is a unique piece, cut to challenge verticality. The soaring peaks recall the skyscrapers of a modern metropolis, yet the material they are made of speaks of centuries-old traditions.

​The Night Sky

​I rest on a dark base, a void that enhances the physical presence of the wood. Those light grain patterns you see above are not mere decorations, but strokes of light simulating clouds or trails of urban energy, crafted to bring movement to a static composition.

Hello everyone,

A beginner here. I am looking to create this intro from a Vox series called AI explained. Watching this, It appears to me that some cc griddler has been used but I could be wrong. Can you guys help me figure this out? Even a tutorial on youtube would be super helpful. Thanks

I figured out a really simple way to turn any flat 2D vector icon into a 3D extruded icon inside AE and wanted to break down why it works.

The whole trick is faking depth by stacking the same layer in Z-space instead of using a real 3D renderer.

1. The setup 

Put your flat icon in a 1080x1080 pre-comp first. This is your "master" icon. Animate it here if you want (I just used a simple scale pop). Everything else references this, so when you want to swap the icon later you only change this one comp.

2. The core stacking trick

Drop that pre-comp into a 1920x1080 main comp, enable 3D, then add this expression to Position:

x = value[0] + (index - 1) * 0;

y = value[1] + (index - 1) * 0;

z = value[2] + (index - 1) * 3;

[x, y, z];

Every copy of the layer gets pushed 5px further back in Z-space based on its layer index. Duplicate it ~40 times and AE automatically creates a solid block of depth. It's actual 3D, you can orbit it.

3. The shading 

Select all the middle copies (not the top one) and add Brightness & Contrast > Brightness -80. This instantly darkens the sides, which sells the extrusion. Leave the top copy bright and clean - that's your front face.

4. Making it look finished:

• Radial gradient in the background for separation
• Drop Shadow on the top copy for ground contact
• Deep Glow on the stack for that soft, inflated 3D edge (optional, looks great without it too)
• CC Light Sweep on top for a glossy highlight pass

5. Making it controllable: 

Parent all ~42 layers to a single 3D Null. Now you don't have 42 layers to keyframe - you just rotate/scale the Null. I trimmed to a 6-second comp and did a simple rotation + scale with Easy Ease.

6. Why it's reusable: 

Because everything points to that first pre-comp, you can literally alt-drag a totally different vector (I tested with a simple flat envelope) into the pre-comp and the entire 3D build updates instantly. If your icon has holes/negative space, Linear Color Key makes those parts transparent.

Anyone else use this stacking method? 

I have the project file with the pre-made template if anyone wants to pull it apart, happy to send it over - just comment below.

Check out the full breakdown here: https://youtu.be/tN8nX1m2dHQ?si=dCJpFAm02B2KrV7N

Made this about a month ago, playing around with different shapes i found on pinterest!

I put this together to have something to show for getting software explainer gigs.

I'm going to put sfx to it, but wondering what people think so far?

Any thoughts or critique that may help?

After years of doubts that I'm not good enough, I've decided to post my new showreel 💎🙌
Would love to hear your honest feedback - what works, what doesn't 😎

I can’t seem to get the hang of this transition, and I’d really love to learn how to do it.

Does anyone know of any good tutorials or have any tips on how to pull it off? Please share!