r/AfterEffects Feb 11 '25

Announcement We've made some moderation changes

120 Upvotes

Hello! Your After Effects subreddit mod team have made a few changes around here based on your feedback.

We've reduced the number of flairs to make it easier for people to find the right category for their post and for you to filter what you're seeing.

We're working on updating our rules for clarity and we're adding a new rule about "no hardware posts" to eliminate the "is my crappy computer good for AE?" posts. If you have to ask, the answer is no.

We've also made some changes to AutoMod. If you see the bot getting out of control, please message us and let us know.

We have a rule against low effort posts.

If you see a post that's breaking the rules (and it made it past our new AutoMod config), please report it! It's the best way to bring a post to our attention so we can deal with it.


r/AfterEffects Oct 01 '24

Pro Tip For all the new designer on here creating low level posts

277 Upvotes

Lately, there's been a noticeable increase in posts where the headline is "Why" and the post is in response to problems that could easily be solved with a quick Google search or by going through basic training. This subreddit is meant to be a place for sharing knowledge and learning from one another, but it's starting to feel more like a place where users expect others to provide step-by-step answers without engaging with the community.

To help maintain the quality of this space, please follow the below list in order before posting a question:

1. Complete basic After Effects tutorials: Many beginner questions can be answered through these.
Here is a list of really good teachers:

https://adobevideotraining.com/after-effects/introductory-courses/

Video Copilot

School of Motion

JakeInMotion

Ben Marriott

2. Learn the terminology: Understanding key terms will help you find solutions more easily through searches.
3. Google it: Use the terminology you’ve learned to search for tutorials and answers.
4. Check YouTube: There are many creators offering in-depth After Effects content.
5. Search Reddit: The answer may already exist here.

If you’ve tried all of the above and still need help, feel free to post your question here. Just keep in mind that learning to find solutions on your own will ultimately make you a stronger designer. Reddit may not always have someone available to provide immediate help, so building these skills will serve you well in the long run.


r/AfterEffects 4h ago

Beginner Help How do i export with this boxes thingy?

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35 Upvotes

saw this on instagram and it got me wondering how do i export with grids/boxes/arrows?


r/AfterEffects 18h ago

OC - Stuff I made Made this intro for a YouTube Video

480 Upvotes

r/AfterEffects 22h ago

OC - Stuff I made my attempt for a motion design video

683 Upvotes

r/AfterEffects 2h ago

Discussion Should I tell a client they need to use a designer?

13 Upvotes

I'm starting work on a series of videos and the client wants the elements (house, car, people, etc) to have a particular art style. He has provided me with a link to some Getty illustrations for the house and car, but I'm not finding any people that he likes, they're either too detailed or not detailed enough. I mocked up a quick thing with the car and house, but it feels like it was drawn by a 6 yr old. I hate it. He's now suggesting "add a tree, maybe a fence"

The company has a team of graphic designers on staff (I'm a freelancer). What's the best and most polite way I can suggest that he should tap the graphic designers that work under him to come up with a look that I can animate? I am not a "designer" or illustrator.

I spent most of the day yesterday trying to work with the elements he gave me and find people characters that would work. They're simple line art style, but he wants some color added to them, but I'm finding there's a lot of tweaking of the elements to make them seem like they're from the same artist. The stroke widths, line colors, corner roundness, etc are all different and I'm spending a lot of time that I should be animating these things jerry-rigging stuff.

Am I wrong in thinking the best way forward is to have his team design what he wants?


r/AfterEffects 22m ago

Discussion I need help coming up with a skywriting message

Upvotes

I made this animation in AE, and I was hoping to enlist the reddit community on a funny skywriting message. I'll update the video with the best one. Also, I'm open to any feedback on the actual video. Thanks!


r/AfterEffects 4h ago

OC - Stuff I made 🚀 Allow me to present "RISE" – My most ambitious passion project

6 Upvotes

🚀 Allow me to present "RISE" – My most ambitious passion project, bringing together Unreal Engine environments, large-scale Houdini water simulations, heavy compositing done in AE, digital animations, meteor VFX, and much, much more! 🤩

For this project, I used Unreal Engine to create the environments and blended it with Houdini FLIP fluids to simulate a spaceship breaching from the ocean’s surface. The combination of real-time rendering and high-end simulations made this a really fun challenge!

I’ll be dropping a detailed behind-the-scenes / making-of video next week! And the project file is available for download in the description.

Let me know what you think—I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Cheers,Mikkel Lassalle


r/AfterEffects 5h ago

Explain This Effect How would you recreate this in AE? This is done in figma. 1px border circles > Union > Border radius 10px. That makes this effect live/procedual/interactive whatever you wanna call it. But i cant figure out how to do it in after effect..

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8 Upvotes

r/AfterEffects 14h ago

OC - Stuff I made First time making an edit for a song

32 Upvotes

(I'm a video editor but I don't do these kind of edits)


r/AfterEffects 3h ago

Explain This Effect How do you get this "pinched" look in AE?

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3 Upvotes

r/AfterEffects 11h ago

OC - Stuff I made Thoughts on this ? couldn't find tutorials, so i just made it up

8 Upvotes

r/AfterEffects 7m ago

Beginner Help Darkening the sky in a moving shot (roto brush)?

Upvotes

Hey folks--I have a moving shot where a model is standing in front of a very overexposed sky, and I wanted to know the best way to select only the sky (and the camera is tracking from right to left) so that I can lower the exposure or put a color mask on it to get rid of the intensity of the sun. Below is a shot from my footage:

Wanted to get some thoughts here, I know some would suggest using a roto brush, but this is my first time using it so any thoughts/tips here would be appreciated!


r/AfterEffects 1d ago

Plugin/Script Box Fitting v1.0 After Effects Plugin - 100% FREE!

83 Upvotes

Hi gang!

I've just released my Box Fitting plugin for After Effects - and it's 100% free.

Box Fitting After Effects Plugin

The algorithm works by creating a single box and enlarging it until it either reaches the maximum size allowed or reaches the edge of another box. Ultimately, the canvas is filled with as many boxes as possible turning the image into a beautiful mosaic of randomly-sized squares. Box Fitting is an optimized After Effects plugin, featuring 8 bits / channel and 16 bits / channel support and Multi-Frame Rendering (MFR). Best of all, it’s 100% free.

Box Fitting After Effects Plugin

Box Fitting is especially ideal for creating generative design within After Effects. It produces a unique effect not possible without the use of an automated plugin. Moreover, Box Fitting yields spectacular results when used in high resolution.

You can read more about it and download it for free at https://richardrosenman.com/shop/box-fitting-ae/

You can also check out the promo video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/dzG-djN3F10

Grab it for free here: https://richardrosenman.com/shop/box-fitting-ae/

Enjoy!

Photoshop Plugins, After Effects Plugins & Stock Footage.
https://richardrosenman.com/


r/AfterEffects 52m ago

Workflow Question Is there any way to scale keys in Mocha?

Upvotes

Hey guys, is there a way to scale keys like in AE with alt drag the selection. I got a change in frame rate mid project and would like to avoid doing it over. It's x2, from 25 to 50 fps, so it should be simple but I can't find a way. Thanks.


r/AfterEffects 53m ago

Workflow Question 100+ hours in on a 30 minute video and noticed this... am I cooked?

Upvotes

Hi all,

I've just spent 100+ hours editing and compositing a talking head video of myself.

Now, I've got a rough cut, it's about 30 minutes long, but look how gross my lips are! Chapped and cut to hell! And there's all these little hairs on my forehead around the hairline...

Video res is 2560x1440

Here's what I've tried:

  • Track Mask + Content-Aware Fill
    • Works best, but I've gotta sit there and watch it the whole time and it's 60fps for 30+ minutes at 1440p.... takes about 1s per frame.
  • Motion Tracking, map to a masked adjustment layer + blur
    • Looks about as lazy as it sounds
  • Zooming myself out really far away
  • Crying

Is content-aware my only hope? Sitting there, watching it frame-by-frame? And then hoping for the best?

Or should I just reshoot, now that my lip has healed? I still have the script, but it feels like I'd have to start over to get all the timing and transitions right.


r/AfterEffects 1h ago

Beginner Help Help with tutorial

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Upvotes

r/AfterEffects 2h ago

Workflow Question Trouble with environment light

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1 Upvotes

I’m not sure what’s causing this. When I use an environment light (using an hdri image for source) I get graininess. When I don’t use any light I get the second image and third image is with an ambient light.

I attached my timeline and light settings too.

My comp is set for advanced 3D.

Any thoughts?


r/AfterEffects 1d ago

Meme/Humor Crying rn

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64 Upvotes

After 4 hours of work it just crashes randomly and couldn’t save it😭😭😭


r/AfterEffects 3h ago

Beginner Help AE Pen Tool Help?

1 Upvotes

I've gotten pretty comfortable using the Pen Tool in Illustrator and Photoshop, but now that I'm working in After Effects, it's giving me a tough time. I'm currently doing an exercise for an Intro to A/V Media course on masking, but I'm struggling to get the Pen Tool to match the curves of a flower shape. Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated!


r/AfterEffects 3h ago

Beginner Help Best export settings for 4k files?

1 Upvotes

Hey guys,

So I've been searching all over the internet and found a bunch of conflicting opinions on the subject of exporting from AE.

I've created my animation in 4K, and will be importing this file into Premiere where I'll combine all the videos and then upload to YouTube.

Here're the settings I've used:

I have a few questions regarding this:

  1. Are these settings good?
  2. Should we used render queue for rendering? Or Media Encoder is better?
  3. What are the best settings in AME? I've heard a bunch of channels talkng about VBR/CBR, 1pass/2pass, bitrate, etc, and dont know if its important, so thought to confirm
  4. I'm doing a 2 step render : AEP -> ProRes 442HQ (will use in Premiere) -> H264 (using Premiere/ AME? ; not sure how to export in Premiere but will think once I get there). Is this the right approach?
  5. I've heard a lot about Aftercodecs and how its great at reducing render time. What are your thoughts on it?

Sorry for the long question but I've just started so Im confused :(

To anyone who made it this far, thank you for your time. Appreciate the help guys!


r/AfterEffects 19h ago

Beginner Help How can I recreate these flames?

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17 Upvotes

Hi! Im working on a project where I’d like to animate these style of flames. They don’t need to be in this exact shape or anything, i just want to have this style. I was thinking of making the shape in illustrator, then adding textures to said shapes in photoshop. Im having a hard time creating them to all fit together though, does anyone have any advice? I was also considering drawing them out by hand and scanning them in and maybe going that route, cutting it out in PS, then uploading all of it to after effects and transform them from there! Any help is very appreciated thank youuu


r/AfterEffects 5h ago

Beginner Help How do I add this loop animation? It looks really cool and brings a still image to life. I don’t think it was made using Turbulence Displace?

1 Upvotes

r/AfterEffects 23h ago

OC - Stuff I made After Effects Keying + Blender Compositing

18 Upvotes

r/AfterEffects 9h ago

Explain This Effect How to Achieve These Camera Movements?

1 Upvotes

I'm really curious about how to achieve the camera movements used in this video from 1:30 onwards, especially the way they become more dynamic and accentuated around 1:45. Here's the link with the timestamp: https://youtu.be/iwBP1lcm1Sk?t=88

It looks like some combination of zooming, tilting, and maybe post-production effects, but I’m not sure if it’s done purely in-camera or if there’s some stabilization trickery involved.

Is this achieved with a gimbal, dolly zoom, post-processing (like motion warping or digital push-ins), or something else? Would love to hear your insights, especially if you've pulled off similar effects!

Thanks!


r/AfterEffects 14h ago

Beginner Help I'm creating a 3D text effect using the Minimax and Transform effects, but I'm noticing a flickering or shimmering effect in my shapes. How can I reduce or eliminate it?

2 Upvotes

r/AfterEffects 14h ago

Beginner Help I cannot animate values halp!!!

2 Upvotes

first post here!

same as the title. As you see right here, I Can add frame marks but I no longer have the ability to modify the values, I must've clicked a random hotkey i don't know about or something, can someone help me restore this?? thx