After Effects

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!

Today AE starting seriously lagging and responding to anything.  Timeline frozen.  In one example working with one ten second video, the only video in the project.   Cache is clear, mouse and keyboard are wired.  This problem didn’t start until halfway through the day.  This was happening with 2026 version which is why I went back to 2025.  Mac Studio M2 Max / Sequoia / 64G ram, 90% of which allocated to AE.  

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

Depois de instalar a nova versão do after effects, passado algum tempo não conseguir fazer preview de uma animação relativamente simples. Já desisntalei e voltei a instalar, já limpei as informações disk and memory, do cache. E segui todas as hipoteses de solução de várias AI. Como posso fazer para recuperar o programa?