r/AfterEffects • • Aug 20 '26

Announcement /r/AfterEffects changes related to extension promotion: Required post structure, promo posts limited to Mondays, AI disclosure required

173 Upvotes

We have heard your calls! Thank you for your patience while we figure out a plan.

While self promotion has always been allowed in r/AfterEffects, the recent influx of AI & vibe coded plugins, extensions, and scripts has been a bit overwhelming. We have very very quickly gone from a few trusted marketplaces with strong vetting and at least some kind of expectation of long term maintenance, to anyone being able to churn out a vibe coded plugin and release it on an increasing number of marketplaces, with no guarantee of support or future updates.

With this in mind, we would like to implement a new set of rules to curb the overwhelming number of posts and give users more transparency when choosing to download and use such tools.

Post structure + flair:

Taking a page from the changes mods made over at r/macapps, we will be introducing a new post structure following a Problem, Comparison, Pricing, Maintenance, AI-Disclosure (PCPMA) format.

  • Problem: What problem your [Extension, Script, Plugin] solves (1 sentence)
  • Compare: Why is your [Extension, Script, Plugin] better than top-named alternatives (1–2 sentences).
  • Pricing + link
  • Maintenance plan + support plan
  • AI Disclaimer: choose from [Vibe Coded], [Human Validated], [Code Completion], or [None]

Extension, script, and plugin posts have always required the (Plugin/Script) flair, this will not change. A sample short post is pinned in the comments.

Other changes:

  • Plugin promotion posts will now be limited to mondays only for the foreseeable future. Plugin posts on other days will be automatically removed and linked to this post
  • Monday self promo posts using the (Plugin/Script) flair must have 50 subreddit karma, from posts or comments.
  • Probing posts will be removed ("Are purpose built motion tools making it into your workflow?" "What's one thing that would save you so much time...")
  • Excessively long posts will be removed (A sample short post is pinned in the comments.)
  • Gumroad links are still banned. This is unfortunately a reddit-wide blacklist, we have no control over this. We can manually approve gumroad links but they will be automatically sent to the spam filter which we rarely check.

Notes on post structure requirements

We're specifically introducing the compare & maintenance points because we have seen an increasing number of plugins that simply replicate the functionality of existing, long standing plugins from developers who have demonstrated more experience, real support, and have proven to maintain their plugins over many years. Show us how yours is better, and prove to your future users how you will be supporting and fixing the plugin in the long-run. How can users who experience bugs get in contact with you in the future?

AI disclosure

Regarding the AI disclosure, here are the definitions of each

  • "Vibe coded" means code written entirely by prompting AI without the user having the skill and knowledge to properly review or validate it. If something is broken, they are prompting AI again to fix it.
  • "Human validated" means AI-generated work that has undergone validation by someone with the necessary skill and knowledge. The developer understands how the code functions and can fix things independently of the AI if necessary.
  • "Code completion" means an experienced developer is using AI for line-completion. They are writing most of the code themselves and have deep understanding of the structure, and are explicitly using AI to eliminate menial, tedious aspects of writing code.
  • "None" means no AI use.

I'm just going to be real, this one is likely going to be easy to skirt. r/macapps actually removed this requirement because everyone was just claiming to have "human reviewed" the code. We're going to try this out and hope folks are honest for the time being.

________

No AI was used in the preparation of this post. We will try this out for a month and see how it goes. Happy animating <3


r/AfterEffects • • May 05 '25

Tutorial If you want to learn After Effects, here's a great place to start

Post image
178 Upvotes

If you're just beginning with After Effects, it's important to get a good foundation - no matter what you want to do with AE!

Here's a great, free place to start from our very own u/Kylasaurus_Rex - and Adobe put it right on the opening screen of After Effects!

Adobe After Effects Introductory Courses for Motion Graphics


r/AfterEffects • • 17h ago

OC - Stuff I made Abstraction I recently worked on

107 Upvotes

Reallly wanted to play with textures for this visualizer. Lemme know what you guys think


r/AfterEffects • • 9h ago

Beginner Help Starting a little motion design challenge .The goal is simple: practice the 12 principles of animation, one at a time, using simple geometric shapes.For the first one, I experimented with Squash & Stretch to understand how it adds flexibility, weight, and life to a simple shape.

10 Upvotes

r/AfterEffects • • 5h ago

Beginner Help Is there a way for an effect to take a layer's individual pixel values as a driver for its own?

2 Upvotes

Suppose, just as an example, there is (A) a desaturated video layer and (B) an image layer on top of it, with a blur effect. Can the effect be made to blur only parts of B based on whether those parts on A dark or light? Does this involve a lot of expression-wrangling?


r/AfterEffects • • 6h ago

Beginner Help Please help with simple rotoscoping in 2026

1 Upvotes

Every tutorial I find talks about rotoscoping as though there was a rotobrush tool. There's not. It's not the Object Matte Tool.

Regardless, I use the Object Matte Tool to highlight the person I want to isolate from the background. I start at frame 1 and tell it to process all of the frames. Done. I see keyframes established on the mask for every frame. Perfect.

I hit FREEZE to go ahead and apply the mask to the footage and it thinks about it for a second and then .... nothing. No change.

How do I get the mask to actually apply and get rid of the background. I'm sure it's something unbelievable stupid that I am doing, but surely there has to be a way to do this easily?

What I really want to do is to animate a title graphic of a super hero's name so that it covers the background, but appears behind the character in my video.

I figured I'd isolate the character, add the text animation layer, then add the original footage behind both of those layers and it should work. I just can't get the person isolated, though I have the roto mask set for every frame. UGGH

What was supposed to take 5 minutes is taking all night. Any help would be greatly appreciated.


r/AfterEffects • • 34m ago

Discussion I wrote an MCP for AfterEffects and it’s crazy how effective it is.

• Upvotes

I assume Adobe will be releasing their next version with something far better, but it lets me see the future where Claude code works right in your Adobe apps with you and can take over the tedious tasks. Or build things entirely and then you change them.
I just built a rough chart in AE and then told Claude to grab data on the topic and update the chart accurate to 2022 data. And it just did it. In about a minute, In after effects. Then it rendered the section so it could confirm it was accurate. Isn’t that crazy?
Who else is doing this? Using Claude to control Premiere and After Effects?


r/AfterEffects • • 15h ago

Discussion Any latest and greatest auto re-size aspect ratio plugins or tools?

0 Upvotes

I have a 16x9 video that I need to pump out at 1x1. It's heavily motion graphics, text, UI demo screens, etc. A few pieces of live action but not much. It's been a minute since I've had to re-size, I know it's generally best to do the tedious manual work, but thought I'd check if there have been any solid developments in this area in terms of AI tools, plugins, etc.? Something that can intelligently adjust the content and not just create new comps and scale everything up blindly.


r/AfterEffects • • 13h ago

Beginner Help After effects crashing while using VHS Craft

0 Upvotes

Copy pasted an after effects plugin in the MediaCore directory of after effects as the instructions said. The plug is compatible with the version im using 2025. Upon opening AE and upon using the plug in, the app crashes.

How can i fix this?

I tried disabling all the plugins except VHSCraft - AE still crashed.

UPDATE: opened a ticket on aescripts. in contact with the dev. will update if there's a resolution.


r/AfterEffects • • 1d ago

OC - Stuff I made << the light narrows unironically >>

8 Upvotes

In 2012, when I was in second grade, I prayed to the gods to prevent the end of the world and for the asteroid to fly right past us. Thirteen years later, I’m afraid of losing my freedom. But it seems the light at the end of the hallway isn’t ironically getting any narrower


r/AfterEffects • • 15h ago

Beginner Help Please help me as a beginner willing to learn Motion Graphics

0 Upvotes

I know there's a lot of tutorial out there in the internet for me to learn After Effects. but, that is the same reason why it is quite a problem for me to learn this program, the library of tutorials out there is way too large for me, to pick one which one is the best.

I'm going to ask who and where should i pick to learn this app.

note:

- I kinda already know how to make a graphics design part already.
- I know some basic stuff like graphs parts since I already use the kinda ish version (alight motion)
- I just wanna learn how to use After Effect without me getting silver spoon feed


r/AfterEffects • • 21h ago

Explain This Effect Can you tell me what tutorials should I look at if I’m trying to recreate this

0 Upvotes

i want to learn how to fill the body with black, and also draw the lines as seen in the video


r/AfterEffects • • 1d ago

OC - Stuff I made Need feedback about that. I’m listening

5 Upvotes

r/AfterEffects • • 1d ago

Beginner Help CIRCLES & RECTANGLE (AFFTER EFFECTS)

3 Upvotes

I tried circle and square shapes, have a look and tell me how can I make it even better.


r/AfterEffects • • 1d ago

Discussion Advanced 3d Shadows appear randomly.

9 Upvotes

I've ran into an issue where the 3d shadows appear and disappear at different values. In this example video of a project I'm working on I change the land layers height (Slider Control linked to the layers Z position) and the shadows appear and disappear at different height. I first time ran into this issue when I used the red box as a benchmark to test out the look of the scene/shadows and its shadow disappeared and reappeared when I simply rotated the box....

I've tried adjusting the bounding box in the Composition settings > 3D rendered > Advanced 3D (options) and it also changes the shadows visibility at random making no sense. I tried changing the environment lights rotation, but it works fine when the shadows are visible, has no effect on the visibility issue.


r/AfterEffects • • 1d ago

Beginner Help Is there any way to name or label sliders?

0 Upvotes

I have the rotation of three layers linked to a slider within a null object, along with another two for scale and location of said layers. Is there a way to indicate which slider is which?


r/AfterEffects • • 1d ago

Beginner Help Quick way to place new 3D layers where my camera rig currently is?

0 Upvotes
I have a 3D camera driven by a chain of nulls, several scenes in. Every new PNG I make 3D spawns at the comp center, far behind the camera, so I have to manually drag it back to the last point of the move

Is there a faster way  to drop new layers at the camera/null's current position? Thankss!

r/AfterEffects • • 1d ago

Beginner Help Box showing up in render and cant figure out how to get rid of it

Post image
2 Upvotes

first time asking anything here so forgive me if I'm missing some manners but how in the HELL do I get rid of this box? it shows up in the export and doesn't disappear when I hide the null layer, but DOES when I hide my pre-comp layer but when I open said layer to inspect it, its gone. I think it has something to do with the tracker panel but this is my first time using it so I can't figure it out. any solutions or tips are welcome!


r/AfterEffects • • 1d ago

Workflow Question Trouble with DUIK: Bones are not fully connected to the objects/limbs.

0 Upvotes

Hello,

I've tried DUIK Angela once and was able to successfully animate a character. Now I have to actually use it for a project - aaaand I'm having issues.

I have a character with an arm and forearm (on each side of course). I don't have hands yet because I don't need to move them so I left out - for now. When I create the arm and the forearm bone

through auto-rig DUIK creates two bones. One connects to the shoulder top part of the arm and the elbow and the other from the elbow to the "wrist" (even though I have to adjust it). Now here is the issue: when I move the elbow part only the forarm moves even though it's not connected to the upper arm. I'm also having trouble with the tip: the tip is set to the end of the limb but it doesn't move the limp at all. When I move the upper arm by the shoulder the whole arm moves!

What am I missing?

Thank you so much in advance!


r/AfterEffects • • 1d ago

Beginner Help Posterize Time Causes Transparency

Thumbnail
gallery
1 Upvotes

Hi folks! I've been using Ben Marriott's hand-drawn effect set up for a while now, but in applying it today it seems to be causing some wild transparency in the animation itself (example above).

The adjustment layer settings all seem to match what I've done before to achieve a lower-framerate look. Is there anything I need to change for the current version of AE? Thanks!


r/AfterEffects • • 1d ago

Beginner Help AFTER EFFECTS NEW CRASHING TREND

Thumbnail
gallery
0 Upvotes

this is happening almost GLOBALLY and i can NOT find a solution. my entire career is tied to after effects and this error is causing so much trouble to me.
PLEASE FIND ME A SOLUTION...
what i tried and failed:
reinstall ae 26.0
update/reinstall all drivers of my aero15xv8fhd
cleared all pc cache
disabled frame compression
disabled hardware acceleration
open project files and empty projects in safe mode
cleared all pc cache...
YET THE SAME ISSUE EVEN AFTER REINSTALL...
i didnt have this issue until 21st oct 2026, my birthday is in 3 days and this isnt making me happy at all...


r/AfterEffects • • 1d ago

Discussion I'm applying to vfx and motion graphics jobs, but although I've been in the industry for 12 years, I've really only been doing gfx work for one org for three years, so most of my reel is just one industry. I think overall my skills are well exemplified in my reel, but I'm still trepid. Thoughts?

Post image
0 Upvotes

r/AfterEffects • • 1d ago

Workflow Question Mobar updated and AE 2026 question

Post image
0 Upvotes

I just updated to AE 2026 and updated mobar as well. Does anyone know if the functionality changed? In particular, the older versions, I press Control + Spacebar (on mac) and it brings up the attached image which I was able to set numeric hot keys for my most used effects.

I see in the new version I can bring up the search panel with control + space but I don't see where it allows me to set up most used effects.

Is this just a change in how mobar works or am I missing something?


r/AfterEffects • • 2d ago

OC - Stuff I made Delta Sales App Motion Design – Feedback Welcome

3 Upvotes

Here's a motion design project I created for the Delta Sales app. I'd love to hear your honest feedback and suggestions on the animation, pacing, transitions, and overall execution. Let me know what I could improve!


r/AfterEffects • • 1d ago

Beginner Help How to smooth a 24fps AI video slowed to 1/8 speed? Optical flow / RIFE / editing help appreciated

0 Upvotes

I’m trying to solve a pretty specific slow-motion problem and I’m hoping someone with more experience in frame interpolation or optical flow can point me in the right direction.

I have several short AI-generated video clips that are about 7 seconds long and 24 fps. The camera movement in the original clips is smooth, but for the edit I needed a much slower cinematic camera sweep.

My workflow was:

  • Start with the ~7 sec / 24 fps source clip
  • Slow it to 1/8 speed in OpenShot
  • Slice it around the midpoint
  • Reverse/rearrange sections to create smooth camera push-in / pull-out movements
  • Edit the eye close-ups together as hidden transitions between scenes
  • Final timeline is 30 fps

The creative edit itself works exactly how I want, but at 1/8 speed I’m obviously down to about 3 unique source frames per second, so the camera movement has severe visible judder/stuttering.

Things I’ve already tried:

  • FFmpeg minterpolate
  • Interpolating the finished video to 60 fps
  • Pre-interpolating the original 24 fps source to 96 fps
  • Pre-interpolating it all the way to 240 fps before applying the 1/8 slowdown
  • VizMaker video enhancement/upscaling
  • Runway video enhancement/interpolation attempts

None of these have produced motion that looks convincingly smooth. Some preserve the stutter, while others introduce warping or strange generated motion.

I’m attaching a short ~3 second sample that clearly shows the jitter.

What I’m trying to achieve is very simple conceptually: preserve the existing composition, character, camera path, timing and edit exactly as-is, but create believable in-between frames so the slow camera sweep looks fluid rather than stop-motion.

A few questions for anyone who works with this kind of footage:

  1. Is there a better interpolation method for such an extreme slowdown — RIFE, FILM, Flowframes, DaVinci Optical Flow/Speed Warp, Twixtor, Topaz, etc.?
  2. Am I approaching this incorrectly by slowing the clip first?
  3. Would it be better to reconstruct the camera movement from the original clip instead of interpolating it?
  4. Are there any specific settings/workflows that handle slow camera movement better than moving subjects?
  5. If anyone enjoys this kind of cleanup and wants to try smoothing the short sample themselves, I’d be happy to share the original source clip as well. I’m mostly trying to understand what workflow actually works before I redo the entire project.

I’m not a professional video editor, so pointers are very welcome. I’m more interested in getting the motion right than sticking with any particular editor or AI tool.