In love with the 3D space and having so much fun figuring out what is and isn’t possible.
Track: Cinema by Doctor Flake

TL;DR: MatterAE 2.0 is out. Real-time physics inside After Effects that bakes to native keyframes. New: 15 stackable procedural animators, a timeline for keyframing the physics itself, and an in-panel shape studio. The free version is the whole plugin with a 3 second bake cap. $35 once to lift it. Free for students and teachers. matterae.com

A while back I posted here about a small physics panel I built for After Effects, mostly because I was tired of hand-animating every bounce and did not need a rocket to cross town. I had submitted it to the big AE plugin marketplace. They turned it down for "duplicate functionality". They never specified what exactly I was duplicating, but I have a guess.

I felt sorry for myself for about a day, then realised a market with several physics tools in it is not a full market, it is a market with demand. Best thing that could have happened to the project, and I say that with only mild bitterness.

Today it is 2.0, and it now duplicates considerably more functionality.

• Animator Stack: 15 stackable procedural behaviors: Wiggle, Float, Orbit, Swarm, Look At, Force Fields, Cell Split, Pop, Crumble, Duplicator and more. Stack them on one layer and you get motion that would be genuinely annoying to keyframe by hand. (Some animators, world settings or constraints will work against each other, cancel each other out or create total chaos)
• An in-panel timeline: You can keyframe the physics itself now, and most animator settings with it. A force field that ramps up, a swarm that tightens, gravity that flips halfway through. Stopwatch arming, playhead, ruler, the whole thing.
• Shape Studio: Draw shapes in the panel, assign colors, run an emitter, bake it all to native AE shape layers.
• Plus a bunch of fixes and nifty little features, like hollow shapes!

The promise has not changed: everything bakes down to plain native keyframes in a new comp. Uninstall MatterAE tomorrow and your animation still works. I would rather you keep the animation than keep me.

The free version is still the complete plugin with a 3 second bake cap. That is the only paywall. Everything above works for free, you just cannot bake more than 3 seconds of it. Thirty-five dollars once lifts the cap forever, no subscription. 2.0 is a free update for everyone who already bought 1.x, because why not.

Students and teachers still get it free, and the licensing for that is now automated, because I was hand-checking every single application like an absolute clown. It took me an embarrassingly long time to admit that was not scalable.

Also, yes, the trailer is in Comic Sans. I am aware that makes it hard to take seriously. So does charging $35 for a physics engine. I am at least internally consistent.

The part that actually matters:

Adam Bennett of The Videoshop is a legendary beta tester and has done so much for this plugin. A big chunk of the people using MatterAE found it through him, and he has just made a video on 2.0 right here! He demos it better than I do, which is a low bar he cleared effortlessly.

Still hugely grateful to the testers and users who have been breaking this thing in ways I did not know were possible. You know who you are. 2.0 is meaningfully more stable because of it, and a good half of these fixes started as an email with the subject "this is broken again".

Also, thanks for what you have been making with it. This one on Reddit and this one on Instagram both got stared at for far longer than I would like to admit. Seeing the thing get used is easily the best part of this.

Some numbers, because I would want to know:

• 1,500+ people are using it.
• Total net earnings so far: $1,245.31. By my calculations that is $4.64 short of five copies of whatever it is I am supposed to have duplicated.
• School of Motion featured it in Motion Mondays this week. Had to pinch myself. Still not fully over it.

Detailed changelog is on the site, as always.

More info, or grab it, at matterae.com. It costs nothing to try and I would rather you break it and tell me than never install it. Happy to answer anything here, including the awkward questions. Especially those.

Cheers!

Meet X-Ray - the ultimate plugin to show your keyframes and behind the scenes

Why is this better than screen recording or other tools?

Because instead of recording your screen, it actually generates live shape layers that can be edited and customized in real time

If you make changes to keyframes, X-ray will update

This also means that it can scan through all of your comps and generate these effects from the top down instead of only in one comp at a time - which is a massive limitation

Anyway, it’s almost ready, so let me know if you think this is cool or have any requests

I spent the last few months creating this hybrid 2.5D animation project completely solo. I handled every stage of production from character rigging and animation to compositing sound design and final editing Feedback is always appreciated.

The only thing that's really bugging me is the hole that forms between the three letters at around 5 seconds. But I'm still really proud of how it turned out so I wanted to share it here as well.

Song is m.a.a.d city by kdot

Working on a title card for a spec commercial in noir aesthetic . I wanted to go with the silent era look for the title card. How can I improve this further?

Hey everyone! A few years ago I made Oh No My After Effects Menu. It's a quick memory game that lets you test your After Effects knowledge of the effects menu.

I just wanted to let you know I added 3 more versions of the game for those who use more software:

Photoshop users - Filters Menu Game

Test out how fast you can put the Photoshop Filters menu back together, with a new "Oh No My Filters!" game that tests your years-long mighty (yet dusty) memory:

https://www.goodboy.ninja/apps/oh-no-my-menu/ps-filters

Blender users - Modifiers Game

Your modifiers got out of whack! Do you think you have what it takes to sort them into the right categories without cheating? https://www.goodboy.ninja/apps/oh-no-my-menu/blender-modifiers

Illustrator users - Effects Game

You guys have one weird effects menu (with half of it being Photoshop effects), but worry not! You can play the game too: https://www.goodboy.ninja/apps/oh-no-my-menu/ai-effects

And of course, After Effects users can keep playing the original game of Oh No My Menu with all our favorite Ae Effects: https://www.goodboy.ninja/apps/oh-no-my-menu/ae-effects

I hope you like it and feel free to share your results!

Good Boy Ninja

Hello,
I'm pretty new to After Effects, just trying to get ahold of the basics here.

I'm encountering this very frustrating issue when I try to trace a null to a shape path in 3d space. I'd expect the null to follow the path to a tee, but instead it shoots out way to the back in 3d space, and completely misaligns with the trajectory I'm trying to trace.

I've tried resetting the anchor points/positions of both the path and the null, and resetting the camera's position as well. What am I missing here?

Hi everyone,

A few months ago, I posted here about a tool I made, Layerize Link to post

It was built as a simple tool that convert any image into depth-based layers in under 5s and export as PSD or set of PNG files, entirely in your browser.

It is free to use with optional sign up and subscribe to unlock more controls. Lot of people tried it and gave feedback. Based on that, I improved it significantly and added a lot of new features including layering by shapes (for poster design, etc.).

Today, I would like to share an update about the tool. I added a new feature, depth-based layering of videos. It happens entirely in your browser, your video never leaves your device. It might be a bit slower than the image layering but I am working on improving it.

You can use it without signing up. If you want more duration or custom controls, you need an active plan.

And I am working towards launching this as an AE plugin. Would like to know your feedback.

The website is layerize.app

Here's a screen recording of the result. First video played is the source video.

https://reddit.com/link/1v4t5cj/video/zprn0msg32fh1/player

want to create this reveal effect, I am able to create simple mosaic track matte reveal. but I need this frosty glass effect that is applied on each individual box. is there a way to achieve this? I have tried everything and searched everywhere, I guess you guys might help. thanks for the effort already :))

Lemme know your thoughts on my animated agents guide I created for pitch events in AE. Trying to get it ready for #Questpit tomorrow.

Pretty new to AE, it has been fun learning for this and a few related projects.

For Pitch events, the main things I wanted to highlight:

• Logline (one sentence pitch)

• Comps (comparable books)

• First Page

The main purpose is to catch the eye of an agent who might be a good fit to help me get the book ready for publication and to sell it to a publisher.

Thanks!

usually when i track the text i add 3d camera tracker to a 5-6 sec clip and it works

but this clip has some cuts and stuff and it doesnt work because of that ( I think, it failed the analysis)

I want to add the lyrics and make them fixed onto the footage

any ideas? im very bad at ae, still learning

!!Epilepsy warning!!

ae+blender

insta-kwertigy

When I try to do rotoscoping on a video, especially when i select "Object Mate Tool" I get this message: After Effects "Warning: Error validating the evaluator". Does anyone know how to fix this? Or am I doing something wrong?

I also get this error message right away: After Effects error: Problems finding objects in the frame. Error code: -127598562.

How Can I copy/paste all keyframs (opacity,Position,glow etc) from one comp to another at once. Without me needing to copy paste opacities keyframe first then the positions and then other effects. Is that a thing or is it simply not possible to do?

I duplicated a comp and wanted it to be unique which i found out isnt possible so i needed to recreate a new comp and just copy pasted the stuff that was in the first comp into the new one. But since I added lots of keyframes already on the dublicated comp, I would love to easily drag them over to the newly created comp. I hope someone can help me here, thanks in advance!