After Effects

Hello! I am having trouble turning a path I created and added to a shape layer into a line. I created the path in a shape layer and then pasted that path into the position of a dot i was hoping to follow the path. That worked and i made some edits to the path in the dot path. I am now trying to use the path from the dot to be used in its own layer as a a line following the dot. When I have copied the position keyframes from the dot and pasted into a new shape layer, the line does not show when I add a stroke or generate one.  I haven’t seen any other questions in these forums with a similar problem. More than happy to send screenshots if it helps!

Can anyone help me how to fixed this. While importing Illustrator file in After Effects all my graphic layers has a white shape or block aroung the graphic. The following image shows the original file and the second image shows the screenshot after importing into After Effects.Img 1Img 2The Img1 is the final image and the Img 2 is the screenshot after importing in After Effect.

I recently upgraded to 24 and there are some bugs, but most go away by closing and reopening.  One just popped up that despite closing and opening and restarting, it won't go away.   The keyboard shortcut for split layer (Shift+cmd+D) doesn't work.  I went into keyboard shortcuts and it said that was the shortcut.  When I got rid of it and tried to reassign it to that, it turns out that it AE won't even accept that as a keyboard shortcut.  Can anyone think of a solve for this, short of uninstalling and reinstalling AE?   Title edited by Mod.

I’m having an issue with Motion Tools Pro v1.4.9. When I try to log in through the panel, I get the error: “Invalid server response: Missing token”. I’m using After Effects 2026 on a fresh Windows installation, so there should be no conflict with old cache or previous versions. Because of this error, I’m unable to access the plugin.

Imported my illustrator file in AE and all the vectors have this white block behind them. I did not convert them into shapes in AE neither did I use clipping masks in AI. Previous projects did not have this issue After Effects Version 25.5.0 (Build 4)My Hardware:RTX 4060, 32gig RAM

Hello all,This is a very trivial problem, but… how can I adjust the opacity of a 3D (native cube) mesh?I am using the advanced render engine, and the opacity control does nothing: either is fully opaque or is fully transparent.Thanks

Excuse moi… What the hell is that?! It’s the first time in 15 years in After Effects I’ve had this: Absolutely nothing special here. A fresh project with one video precomped, tracked, camera and text added. That is all. I cannot use Advanced 3D today because it messes up my font. Tried resetting AE preferences with Ctrl+Shift+Alt on load.  Tried resetting font preferences, choose other fonts. Tried changing Advanced 3D preferences.AE 26.0.0, 14700K, 4080, 64 Gb of ram

Hello, I’ve been working on developing a plugin using the AE SDK (essentially an AE-style plugin for PR). However, I’ve been unable to successfully compile Chinese effects names.Here is the command I’m using:cl /D "PRWIN_ENV" /I "$(AE_SDK_BASE_PATH)\Examples\Headers" /I "$(AE_SDK_BASE_PATH)\Examples\Resources" /EP "..\%(Filename).r" > "$(IntDir)%(Filename).rr""$(AE_SDK_BASE_PATH)\Examples\Resources\PiPLTool" "$(IntDir)%(Filename).rr" "..\%(Filename).rcp""-c"Even after adding the -c option, it still fails. I suspect this tool might not support it, because I know that Cnvtpipl.exe does support Chinese attribute names.

Opening someone else’s project I get “Could not create Essential Graphic parameter because it refers to a non-existent layer.”→ How does one find out why Essential Graphics failed, what the layer(s) might have been?Similar to when expressions break .. you can click the magnifying glass in the orange alert bar to go directly to the broken expression, or type “missing” in the search field to solo footage files that the After Effects project cannot locate.Thanks,Marc Chep

I need to reset an anchor point to the center of a shape. I can use the Pan Behind tool to drag the anchor point back, though I do not know how to get it right back in the center. Searching Google told me to hold down Command while dragging and it should snap to the center, though that is not working for me. What do I do to get the anchor point right back in the center?Thanks

 AE crashes during render after a few minutes. My comp is Intel TM i9-14900 3.2GHz, 96 GB RAM, £TB of storage available, 64-bit op system and processor

I am troubleshooting a MacBook with AE 2026 (completely updated) using significant energy over a 12-hour period, causing slow-downs and battery drain. (Activity Monitor → Energy → 12 hr Power). On this machine, it’s hovering right around 15%; while on my own MacBook, it sits at about 7%. The laptop is also very hot, with fans turning on intermittently. I have tried clearing all caches, reinstalling AE, updating it, and resetting the Mac’s SMC. It’s not actively using energy, but the 12 hr Power does not budge. What could this be? Laptop is a 16-inch 2019 MacBook Pro. Specs below, if it matters. Graphics:2.4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9 AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB Memory:32 GB 2667 MHz DDR4 macOS: Tahoe 26.4.1

I have been editing this comp for a couple of days and when I went to edit opacity the scale from 0-100 was gone and so was the “Add: ▶” to add an effect. I am super confused and don’t recall doing anything to remove this, see pics (this was an existing comp that I no longer know how to adjust in terms of the amount. However, after hours I realized that I could use the Properties tab on the left side panel, but it is just inconvenient and hope to have it back. Anyone know how? I have to have this project done soon so any tips are appreciated! 

Ran into some confusion when attempting to animate some shoe laces today. I was wondering what the best way to animate them would be. I wanted to achieve a realistic feel, where the end of the lace pulled first, then the rest followed eventually ending in a knot of some sort, the knot didn't need to be accurate, but I of course wanted the movement to feel and look good.  My first thought was manually animating the path but I ran into the problem of spacing between keyframes, which would cause the stroke to distort and not follow a natural line/ flow that the lace would naturally achieve, animating each keyframe could be possible with a reference for timing and spacing but still felt very slow and inefficient. I then attempted to use Bones, which also didn't work and distorted the stroke. Finally landed on points follow nulls. Which seemed at first to do the trick, only to run into the problem of the bezier handles causing the stroke to distort, as you cannot edit the path due to the po

I see it nowhere in the render queue or even Adobe Media Encoder. I'm on a mac but I need to make .AVIs for use in a PPT on a PC for our salesforce who are on PCs.If one can't do this from AE or AME, i could use a lead for a 3rd party app that can make them. I may have read that Microsoft provides a free .AVI maker. Not sure if that's true.Thanks in advance for your help.

When is next update coming cause this one is non functional?

Hi gang;As of After Effects v26, it seems the description no longer shows up when a user right-clicks on the plugin title, and selects “About”. Now it only displays the plugin title and version.This is a real problem because the description displays the request code which is required for activation. Now my users can’t see the request code so they can’t activate the plugin!My question is whether this was intentionally removed, or if it is a bug in my code that worked with previous versions of AE but no longer does? Here is the code I use to display my content:  PF_Err err = PF_Err_NONE; AEGP_SuiteHandler suites(in_data->pica_basicP); A_char strMode[256]; if (licensemode == 0) strcpy(strMode, "DEMO MODE"); else strcpy(strMode, "REGISTERED"); if (!err) { suites.ANSICallbacksSuite1()->sprintf(out_data->return_msg, "%s - v%d.%d - %s\r\r%s\r\rRequest Code: %d", STR(StrID_Name), MAJOR_VERSION, MINOR_VERSION, strMode, STR(StrID_Description), get_req_code()); } return

Hi,I’m a professional After Effects user trying to spend less time managing the app and more time animating.One recurring issue is updates. I just updated AE and lost my workspace again. This keeps happening and breaks my flow.More broadly, AE is highly customizable, but everything is scattered across the system. Workspaces, presets, plugins, scripts, shortcuts, UI panels… all live in different folders. Each new version also feels like a partial reset and double the file, and I’m never fully confident that everything will carry over correctly.This becomes a real problem when working on two machines. Keeping everything in sync is time-consuming and frustrating. I’ve heard about using Dropbox, but it seems unreliable depending on what’s being synced.And it’s not just about major updates. During active contracts, I often make small tweaks to my setup on the fly. In that context, digging through deep folders just to recover a small change becomes slow and and breack the flow, especially un

I dragged the Work Area End to where I want the composition/animation to stop. Is this all I need to do set up the duration of a composition? If so, is the duration setting under Composition Settings just a different way of dragging the Work Area End?Thanks 

I want to create the cracked screen effect shown below. I like the way it looks in the screenshot, but the Shatter effect I’m using keeps evolving past it, despite my efforts to control it through keyframing. I only want it to happen at the end of the video. Suggestions? Thanks.   

Luma Matte is selected opacity works but Shape Fill Color does not show any change. How to fix it? Video is attached. 

Hi all, Since the latest version of After Effects, I’ve been experiencing an issue when working with layers.When I select a layer in the timeline panel and then try to move it manually in the Composition panel, it doesn’t move the correct layer. Instead, After Effects seems to switch the selection in the timeline to a completely different layer—almost as if an “auto-select” option is enabled.I have already searched extensively online and checked all possible settings, but I cannot find any auto-selection option that could be causing this.When I open older projects that were saved in a previous version of After Effects, this issue does not occur.Has anyone experienced this before, or does anyone know how to fix it?

I have a simple animation that consists of an image rotating. After it rotates several times I would like it to move. Should I be placing a Position Stopwatch/keyframe at the very beginning of the timeline along with where the rotation starts, or do I just place the starting Position stopwatch/keyframe wherever I want the movement to start?Thanks

I have been this issue for long enough but havent found a way to fix this yet !Im using AE 25,My GPU is an AMD rx 9060 xtAll my drivers are updatedI tried to reinstall both Red giant and AEI only have 1 monitorIf anyone could help me it will be very appreciated !! 🙏🏼

I have the TranSMaxX Nostalgic Polaroid Photo Slideshow with Cinematic Flares template from Videohive. There is lorem ipsum background text that I cannot find or delete. Has anyone used this template and knows where that layer is hidden?"  I’m a long time AE user and I’ve never had such a hard time finding a layer!  Thanks!