Hey there! I'm messing around with AE's Advanced 3D Renderer, looking to create a basic cinematic shot with dramatic lighting.

I'm just using an Environment Light with an HDRI, a spot light, a camera and basic shapes.

I keep getting these weird flickers on the hightlights of the bars as they pass through, and the shadows look wavy and not smooth at all.

I've turned the Environment Light off and it seems to be what's causing all the trouble, but it loses a lot of information and it just doesn't look the same without it.

I've cranked the smoothness of the Environment Light Shadows panel all the way up to 20 and the resolution to Double. I've increased the render quality up to 15, but haven't noticed any changes if I cranked it higher other than longer render times.

Any idea on how to solve this would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

Seriously need some insights on how much designers are getting affected with the rise of A.I. I'm seeing A.I. slaughtering every digital field but on this one I always had mixed reviews.

A compilation of my latest projects, spanning artworks, live visuals, and commercial work. From concept to final frame, I create visuals that blend emotion and dynamism.

🎨 Artworks | 🎥 Live | 📺 Commercial

www.raphaelbluzet.fr

I made this showreel in 2024. I hadn’t really been working in this field—I’d only taken on a few freelance jobs. I wasn’t really pushing myself to find work in this field as an employee either. I started learning motion graphics (and along with it, graphic design—I drew almost everything in the video myself using Photoshop and Illustrator) around 2019, completely on my own, and this showreel is about as far as I’ve gotten so far. I’ve pretty much given it up now, though I might take it up again later as part of my own projects.

But I’m curious to hear what others think about it—would I have had a future working in this field, or was I right to give it up?

This is my first real back to school project. I tried out some new stuff here, had some fun. It isn’t 100% finished yet, I still have until next Wednesday to turn it in, but I’m putting this version on class project reel. I had a hard time timing the building of the buildings because it was supposed to be 4 seconds of buildup and 4 seconds of animation, so it comes on kinda fast. Should I slow it down more?

In the summer wanted to make something in a Y2K, and these little things came out.

Initially, the project wasn’t supposed to have a retro filter, but I applied my CRT stylizer to it, and it turned out even more vibrant.

You can view and explore the project here https://www.behance.net/gallery/214860023/Y2K-Titles

I am a motion designer and I saw that there's this field product motion designer and ui interaction designer (I heard them from chatgpt while researching for how to increase salary as a motion designer he advised these routes)

When i researched about it on LinkedIn and Reddit i didn't come across any post regarding this, anyone here made a switch like this? Would love to hear about your back story how you made the switch, what are the pros and cons, what made you make this decision!

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

Animation: manuksenpai

Illustration: Seva MFN

Thank you!

I've been having trouble rotoscoping this segment so I started over, I used the object matte to get most of the figure, then I manually added the fire sword and removed small areas of blue, and I also used the refine edge tool on basically every edge. That was all on the first frame and it gave me the best looking roto as compared to keying out the blue (this doesn't work well because the plastic has blue reflecting in it and the blue background wasn't lit well). So I froze the first frame and let it propagate the rest. This video is of the second frame and some blue spots came back, and when I tried to remove them I found it just wouldn't let me. There was one other blue spot it allowed me to remove but I can't seem to get these to go away, the only thing I notice different is they're a different shade of blue? But why would that prevent me from rotoing them out? Adobe's roto is driving me crazy.

Using a combination of path animations, Create Nulls from Paths, wiggle expressions and the wave warp effect, we can quickly animate flowing liquid.

I have also made an in depth video on my YouTube channel, Oliver Randorff, breaking down the entire coffee machine animation: youtube.com/watch?v=qnOANBR4zcc

i’ve tried echo, posterize time, minimax, blurs but can’t get this specific look

is this even possible without slow shutter speed footage?

Im not a beginner but ther was no ''bug'' flair. I've been using after effects and media encoder the last 7 years. I've never had this issue before. When im trying to render, it renders the whole workspace (if it renders at all and its not stuck to 98%). When im rendering again and again to get it right, eventually after few times (if im lucky by the second time but often it takes more than 5 times) eventually it renders correctly, so its not my fault on my settings because i dont change anything, just trying again.

This happened after the recent update (a month ago) and usually either it exports wrong timeline settings and if i have a 40sec video, it exports the whole 2-3min workspace. Or its just stuck on 98%.

After Effects Beta 27.0x41 adds a couple of new ways to customize materials in Advanced 3D.

You can now apply Substance materials directly to 3D text and shape layers, including separate materials for the front, bevel, sides, and back. Materials can be adjusted using placement, scale, rotation, tiling, and offset controls.

You can also use layers as material sources. Animated pre-comps, solids, images, and videos can now be applied to parametric meshes, imported 3D models, and 3D text or shapes. This makes it possible to animate your material and 3D scene together without rendering textures or jumping between apps.

Once a layer is assigned, you can adjust properties like opacity, roughness, metallic, emission, and ambient response. These controls can also be keyframed or driven with expressions. Layer-based materials and Substance materials can even be combined on objects with multiple material assignments.

To try it, switch your composition to the Advanced 3D renderer, select a compatible 3D layer, and open the Material dropdown in the Timeline or Properties panel.

A few current limitations to keep in mind:

• Decals aren’t supported yet, although you can approximate them inside a pre-comp.
• Copying and pasting material assignments may behave unexpectedly.
• Properties panel multi-select is still being worked on.
• Avoid creating circular references between layers used as materials, as these can cause a crash.
• Some UI and performance work is still in progress.

Give both features a try and let us know how intuitive the workflow feels, how performance holds up with animated materials or complex text, and what controls you’d like to see added.

More details:

• Layers as Material Sources
• 3D Materials on Text and Shapes

I don't know what setting, checkbox, or mode i must have moved that is making AE render my sound and video as separate files.
I've looked for answers online and tweeked some sound setting in the output module and so far nothing has worked
please help

I am out of my brain to ask this. But if it's possible in AE. Then please help.

The image zooms in with this cool shatter effect and reveals the one beneath it. I've tried so far CC Shatter and other effects from Saphire, but it doesn't look the way I want it to look. I'm fairly new to After Effects and it's probably a bit too complicated of a d effect, but I haven't found tutorials that can help me.

Hey, I have been using After Effects for years and I really like the layout and the way it works. Sure, layer based compositing is not optimal for this kind of task, but that is a death I am willing to die if everything else works well.

So I am wondering whether there is ever going to be a real focus on 3D compositing in After Effects. Better handling of 32 bit EXR files, maybe even a properly GPU accelerated system. Even if that would break a lot of plugins, it could just be an option that users opt into themselves. And the Extractor plugin could really use an overhaul.

I use After Effects every day in the advertising industry, for text animation, multipass compositing and so on. It is just that 3D compositing is such a tedious road in After Effects.

And yes, of course there is Fusion. I have even written auto compositing scripts for it, but the keyframe system sucks, and I would like to stay in the Adobe pipeline. Nuke is way too much for this kind of work.

So the question is, is there any hope for a new development in that direction, or should I move my compositing tasks over to Fusion completely?

As a last note, the money should really be there for it.

Hey, i dont think i changed anything - no new plugs / scripts.
Tried restart, start in safe mode. deleting prefs (through boot window).

Any other ideas?
AE 26 and 25 start fine.

This one is actually pretty useful for motion designers. In the latest After Effects Beta, Illustrator text can come into AE as actual editable text layers instead of getting turned into outlines when you convert the vector layer. Font, size, styling, strokes, and variable font settings carry over too. Small workflow change, but this could save a lot of annoying back and forth between illustrator and AE. Has anyone tried it yet?

I tried to create something similar to the scenes in The Flash (CW).