After Effects

so i just downloaded after effects and im trying to add a preset but when i go to animation it wont let me click on “apply animation preset”

Prime Z790-P WiFi DDR5 Triple NR 1 M.2 ATX Socket 1700BEQ043 Pure Loop 360 x Socket Socket NR 1 1700 1200 2066 AM4 AM5BEQ046 Silent Base 802 Black ATX NR 1 CRA052 RM1000x Shift 1000W PCIe 5.0 NR 1 Modulare 80 Plus GoldINI768 CORE i9 13900K 3Ghz 24 Core NR 1 Socket LGA1700 no FANKIN722 64GB Kit DDR5-5600 Fury Beast NR 2 Black CL40 128GBMIC601 Windows 11 Pro 64bit oem NR 1 PNY223 RTX 4080 16GB VERTO DLSS 3 NR 1 SAM885 500GB 980 Pro SSD M.2 NVMe NR 1 Gen 4.0SAM886 1TB 980 Pro SSD M.2 NVMe Gen NR 1 4.0SAM903 1TB 990 Pro SSD M.2 NVMe Gen NR 1 4.0Latest Nvidia Studio drivers (clean install), Windows 11 25h2 Good morning everyone, as the title suggests, the latest version of After Effects is unusable on my machine. I’ve read numerous reports online, and many recommend disabling the disk cache. I’ve disabled the cache, but when I use the Warp Stabilizer it takes ages to complete the analysis and the GPU spikes to maximum usage. I receive countless “out of memory” messages (128 GB of RAM...), a

the goal : Explode an image into custom shaped particles. Current method - Particle playground, using layer map for the custom particle shape, using the grid to duplicate that particle. grid is 10x10 in the first frame and 0x0 afterwords. Problem : I can't find a way to have those particles take the color of the image I want to explode. I can only them essentially mask the image, but then then particles are just changing colours based on their position over the image. I want them to keep the color of the image while they explode. It seems I can't use layer exploder with Layer map.

About 5 mins after i open after effects it crashes showing this error (0 :: 42)i unistalled and reinstalled AE, deleted pluggins.What else can i try to resolve it

I work for a company with specific brand elements to use. These has been in my library for years at this point, added as vectors. I was always able to drag them into AE and create shapes out of them using the “create shapes from vector layer” option. For a month now, whenever I do try to do that, all of the shapes turn into a square - not leaving any traces of the original (sometimes intricate) design, no matter how deep I try to dig into AE.I tried installing an older version of AE, tried reinstalling the new one - nothing seems to be working. I did not edit the library in any way, the elements are fully vector/working perfectly fine in all other adobe apps. I end up having to import the shapes I already created out of the same elements from my previous AE files, which affects my productivity. Any advice on how to tackle that? 

I do vector animation and my process is to import various Ai files in Ae. Recently, Ae has not been reading the respective Ai files correctly. So for example if I have taken the head off a character and saved that as a separate Ai file, After Effects show that character still with the head.  The only work around that I have found so far, which doesn't always work, is to go back into Illustrator, make a small change, undo that change, and then resave the Ai file.  After effects then notices the change and when I choose the option to reload footage it (sometimes) works.  Really making my animation work slow. What's going on? 

When I try to move an item into a different bin I get a popup essentially telling me I can't do that (see image below - red circle with slash). This appears to happen after I select a bunch of elements in a timeline and PreComp them but I can't be sure. This absolutely destroys any ability to work. I can't get around it and even worse it seems to infect old saves as well. Any and all help is appreciated!

Is there a way to use CC ball action, put instead of balls have rectangles and/or custom shapes? That would be really helpful, since all other properties of that effect are great.

Hi guys,I’m looking for some advice from someone skilled in Mocha Pro. The last few days, I’ve been watching some tutorials about the ML Matte Assist. I select the area and let the AI shape the object to track. I see there’s a spline with points only on the first frame, but as I understand the ML mask is tracked in a different way, so I ignore this. After tracking, I go to the Matte section where the Generate Object Matte is already selected. I activate Refine Layer Matte, save the project, and exit Mocha.Back in AE, I select Apply Matte and nothing happens. When I scroll through the timeline, it’s like my video is not responding at all, the frames don’t change. The video plays only if I turn off the Apply Matte option. If I click Create AE masks, it adds the spline points of that first frame only. It seems there’s a mask layer that has some keyframes, but nothing happens either way.I did 2 screen recordings to demonstrate this, and I hope there’s someone here who can help and tell me

Bonjour,Lorsque je lance after effects, un message m'indique qu'il faut 16go de ram pour le faire fonctionner correctement. J'ai 16go, mais il est indiqué dans les infos système que seulement 13,7go sont utilisables (le problème vient peut-être de là). Ce message peut être ignoré avec “poursuivre avec les problèmes connus”, or quand je crée un nouveau projet, la composition reste entièrement noire et rien n’apparait dessus. J’ai trouvé sur ce forum des personnes ayant eu le même problème et j’ai testé une des solutions qui a marché : la solution étant de mettre à jour ma carte graphique intel et d’installer à la place la carte vidéo de base microsoft, sauf que ça a complètement modifié l’apparence de l’interface de mon pc. Je me demandais donc s’il n’y avait pas une autre solution. J’ai déjà fait tourner after effects sur des pc moins puissants donc je ne comprends pas.Merci d’avance !

In my latest VFX History video, I take a look at slitscan.  The effect used in 2001, Doctor Who (1974), Star Wars and Star Trek: TNG.  Throughout the video I use After Effects to illustrate the technique and how it was adapted and then, I end by showing you how to recreate the mechanics of slitscan inside AE using the Echo effect, 3D layers and Essential Graphics. 

I'm using the new Object Mask tool in After Effects to isolate a moving person. I want to create a stroke outline that follows the person as they move. How do I achieve this in the best way?Thanks

I am trying to do some very tedious roto work removing tracking markers on greenscreen. Even though my setting for Mask Feather is set to zero, there is a few pixel feathering that exists, making it hard to really do an accurate roto. Any ideas what I am missing here?

After working, foolishly, on a new project in the latest upgrade (26.0.2) and masking is a mess, so need to save it out to previous 2025 version - is this possible?

This is a PNG image animated [Wave Warp] in Ae and which was imported from Photoshop. You can see edges get cuts when animated. In my view this is because of bounding box in Photoshop. How to fix it? video is attached as well. Ae image In Photoshop image  

In video to align right edge of the static image to left edge of the animated image, it was moved to align the left edge of the composition then again moved in the opposite direction and pinning was applied.What is purpose of moving animated image to left, to align left edge of the composition?Animate a Static ImageTime 2.17      

HiI am once again asking the boring question : why is ram preview so slow? It takes time to cache and is very jerky when it plays.But the reason why I’m asking is that ae barely taps into my computer’s resources at all. I have a ryzen 9, 200 gb ram, an rtx 5090, a 5th gen nvme, and ae barely uses 10% of it… But still lags?Why???And it’s a pretty modest scene, nothing crazy.So, how come? Is there anything I can do? 

The 2 images i will add here are a wide to a medium shot of my film. The background is 4K and there’s no problem to scale into the different shots (wide, close-up etc). However the animated characters are .mov files and if I was to simply take the composition as a whole and scale in (which would be so easy and great!) -the characters lose a significant amount of quality.If I parent the characters to the footage they will scale but at the scale they are already at in the wide shot -so for example -a character in image 1 above -the wide -might be at 30%. When I parent to the footage, the character will scale up but stay at 30% so not as good quality.  What I’ve been doing is scaling everything separately with key frames -for each shot -which takes a long time with all the above characters! There must be a better way -can anyone help?!

Somehow the properties panel doesn’t show detail info. For example, I used to be able to click on a layer with a shape, and the shape info would be accessible. No longer. Same with type, click on a text layer and nothing.  

Hello.I would like to understand the best way to migrate After Effects when upgrading to a new version.I recently installed After Effects 2025 while previously working in After Effects 2020. I used the “Migrate Settings” option, but I’m not sure what is actually supposed to transfer and what should be moved manually.I would like to know what is considered the best practice when moving between versions of After Effects so that future upgrades are easier and do not break things.Specifically:1. What is the recommended way to migrate settings and workspace between versions?2. How should plugins be handled when installing a new version of After Effects?     Should they always be reinstalled, or is it safe to copy the Plug-ins folder from the previous version?3. Some Animation Presets (for example Trapcode Mir 3 and Trapcode Tao) were visible in After Effects 2020 but do not appear in After Effects 2025.     Where are these presets stored and what is the correct way to migrate them?4. Some t

This version doesn't read Cryptomatte layers correctly for me, does anyone else get broken cryptomattes?

Just started working with AfterEffects & interested in working in C4D Lite. When I open a Cinema 4D file, or use FILE > NEW > MAXON CINEMA 4D FILE, the Cinema 4d Launcher window appears. After a moment, a popup from Maxon requires me to register an account on their website. I made sure that I registered on their website with the same login as my Adobe CC account. However, no c4d files can be opened, it asks me to activate a Cinema 4D trial instead of reflecting some kind of Lite license.  I'm not finding much information online about this license manager at all. In all the tutorials that I see, there is absolutely no mention of this License registration or MAXON account requirement - they all seem to just open straight into the 3d editor.  Is Cinema 4D Lite no longer included with After Effects in v17?   EDIT: I restarted the app again, and now when I open a Cinema 4D Lite app, this very confusing screen blocks me from doing anything:

Maybe someone here would know if it's possible to get rid of the " i " symbol below the playhead ? It's hard to find my keyframes ! Maybe a checkbox in UI settings… I don’t know what’s the purpose of them by the way... 

I was working fine until last Friday. Then it was the weekend, I didn't touch the Mac, and on Monday morning I get this fine error message from AE.  This is on a MBP M4 Pro, 24GB RAM, MacOS Tahoe (latest version), a fine machine that is working properly on anything (Premiere, etc), and was working properly with AE until three days ago. Nothing changed from the time AE was working to the time AE decided to throw this error and stop working. No new files, no new plugins, no new installations. Contacted Adobe support, allowed remote control, the support guy spent an hour trying to change folder permissions all over the place, nothing happened. All permissions seemed proper (that is, my user had R+W permissions on most of the folders, and “system” had R+W permissions on other folders that I guess just need system permissions). Nothing seemed out of place. Cleared everything, removed AE version 26, rolled back to 25.6. still the same message. I followed every article I found online, checked