After Effects

 In this tutorial, I talk you through the full workflow for taking a static astrophotography image and turning it into a cinematic fly-through using After Effects. We’ll be collaborating with the expertise of astrophotographer Alex Linde to bridge the gap between photography and motion graphics. What you’ll learn:Star Removal: How to use Photoshop and StarNet++ (and alternatives like StarXTerminator) to prep your image for 3D depth. Camera Rigging: Setting up a 2-node camera with a Null Object for smooth, professional movement. Parallax Backgrounds: Creating a distant starfield that reacts realistically to camera movement. 3D Particle Stars: Using CC Particle World and a clever expression to generate thousands of static stars you can actually fly through.  

I recently updated Ae to version 25.2.  My current projects were all defaulted to automatically open with version 2024. I went into my settings (using Mac OS 14.5) and changed to 2025 as default, but when I tick the box to "change all" it forces the Beta version as the default.  How can I make the 2025 version the default? This used to work, I feel like it's an issue with this update?

Hi, I’m new to AE and I was wondering if there was a way for me to combine all of these mask into one mask. I am trying to animate this image from top to bottom but since there are multiple mask it is animating it sequentially. Alternatively is there a way to prevent multiple mask from being created when tracing a complex image?

Tenho um plugin externo de estenção chamado Brazu Motion sempre funcionou numa boa. Recentemente eles atualizaram o plugin que preciso acessar pelo navegador, porém o after 2026 esta com incompatibilidade no plugin por que toda vez que eu clico nele só carrega e faz nada. Ja configurei a aba de scripts mas nada resolveu. Gostaria de saber se alguém ta com esse tipo de problema e conseguiu resolver. 

I am trying to create a video that is a seamless loop in both the visual and audio. After I export the file from after effects, the visual plays in a seamless loop, but the audio does not - there is a tiny space of silence in between. I imported the file into Adobe Premiere, along with the original audio file, and the waveforms are different. There is silence at the beginning and end of the waveform in the After Effects file, in addition to the waveform being slightly off throughout. I cannot figure out why AE is doing this or how to fix it. Any insights are greatly appreciated!

The 2 images above 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?!

Hello I have a shape layer with only one path. I would like to retreive the points of the path My layer :“Arrow”|_Content  |_”CArrow”    |_”CPath”      |_Path My code    comp=app.project.activeItem;    shape=comp.layer("Arrow");//I try these two possibilities    sPath=shape.content("CArrow").content("CPath");    sPath=shape.content("CArrow").content("CPath").path;//I also try these two possibilities    sPoints=sPath.points(); //I got an error    sPoints=sPath.points; //I got “undefined” I don’t understand where is my error. Could someone explain how to retreive points coordinates ?

Where is the implementation of display color space transforms via mercury transmit? My second monitor is now useless if I want to use OCIO color management. Why does it not follow the displat color space set under the compostion window?

Hello I would like to retreive the points of a path in a shape layer In a composition, I have this layer :“Arrow”|_Content  |_”CArrow”    |_”CPath”      |_Path I create a text layer. In the source text of this layer, I write :-- Code --thisComp.layer("Arrow").content("CArrow").content("CPath").path.points();-- End code --and it works fine But if I write this code in a .jsx file -- Code --  var mainWindow = new Window("palette", "Get-Set arrow", undefined);  group01 = mainWindow.add("group", undefined, "Group 01");  group01.orientation = "row";  var bGet = group01.add("button", undefined, "Get");  var comp = app.project.activeItem;  WriteLn(“name : “+comp.layer("Arrow").content("CArrow").content("CPath").path.name);  pointsArray = comp.layer("Arrow").content("CArrow").content("CPath").path.points();-- End code -- that I launch by File->scripts->Execute file script (not sure of the name, I’m using a non english version of After Effects), it doesn’t work anymore. The writeLn(...name

I have a line of text that I want to reveal from the center out. I tried making 2 shape layers as masks each moving in opposite directions to reveal the text. I want to use the scale for the mask so it hides the side of the text I don’t want to see. However, there is drift in the scale even though I have unlinked the scale parameters. It is about 5% drift that reveals the side of the mask I don’t want to see as the correct side of the text appears. How do I do this?

I’m working on animating a chart to go on my company’s homepage and followed this tutorialto help me achieve the look I want. The red line (trim path) is moving left, which is the direction I want it to go, but for some reason the null is moving the opposite direction when I adjust the slider control. I’ve attached a screenshot of my work so you can see the expression I used to achieve this. I need the null object to be aligned to the right side of the trim path line so I can eventually add a gradient color that would be track matted over the red line. Happy to provide more insight if needed, but am hoping for an answer! This is definitely user error :) Red Trim Path moves from left to right, but null object moves from right to left 

Hello, I'm sure there's been discussion on this, but I am at my wits' end trying to get accurate colors in motion graphics for use on a web page. My goal is to set hexidecimal colors in AE, and achieve those same colors in the export file. But I can't seem to get the file to come out without Rec. 709 curve adjusting (I think)?   Color test export results.  I have:Project Settings: Working Color Space: set to sRGB IEC61966-2.1Output Color Space: set to the Working Color SpaceSee project/render/output settings below. My current work around is just basically guessing/calculating a different hex value that, when color transformed upon export, results in the desired hex. Not a great long term solution.  Surely with these settings the color should come out of AE as the hex code they're set as? Or am I missing something? Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you.  I don't want to muddy the water, but additional info:I'm trying to re

I am experimenting with various Effects & Presets by dragging them onto animated image layers in the Timeline.Is there somewhere that you can see a summary of how all the different effects look when applied? How do you specify when you want an effect to start after being dragged to the layer since it is applied to the entire layer? What if I want some effect to only be applied at the beginning or the middle or the ending of a clip? I applied three different effects to animated text and I only see the parameters for it in the Layers and not in Effect Controls. Why are they not displaying in Effect Controls?Thanks

This is definitely user error, but I’m clearly forgetting some of the most basic AE knowledge. Nothing on Google is helping me. I have two shapes. A line and a circle. I’m trying to copy the ellipse’s path to the line’s position so the line will follow along the circle’s path. Yes, I’m aware of just using a trim path on the circle but that’s not the end goal here. Anytime I copy the ellipse’s path and paste it on the line’s position, it just pastes a “Group 1.” How can I properly copy the ellipse’s path so that the line follows it?  

Everytime I open after effects I get this message on startup. Have tried everything but nothing seems to work.