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Community Manager
Catie BassCommunity Manager
Community Manager
February 19, 2026
News

New in Beta: Object Matte in After Effects

  • February 19, 2026
  • 8 replies
  • 3972 views

We’re excited to introduce Object Matte in the latest After Effects Public Beta (26.2 build 27) — a major evolution of the Roto Brush workflow.

Object Matte shifts rotoscoping from a brush-only workflow to a hybrid approach that combines single-click AI subject selection with precision refinement and intelligent propagation over time. Built on the same AI technology powering Premiere Pro’s Object Mask workflow, Object Matte delivers faster, more intuitive results with significantly less manual effort.
 

What’s New in Object Matte?

The Object Matte suite includes four core tools designed for speed, control, and flexibility.

  • Object Selection
    Quickly isolate objects in your footage with one-click or marquee-based selection (rectangle or lasso). This tool leverages advanced segmentation logic for accurate propagation across frames, reducing manual effort for complex scenes.

 

You can access Object Selection by clicking the icon highlighted in blue. You can select an object in your comp by clicking, or by using the marquee selection options displayed on the right.
  • Quick Selection (formerly Roto Brush)
    Our classic Roto Brush has been reimagined as Quick Selection, optimized for faster, more intuitive workflows. It’s perfect for users who want brush-driven control with improved responsiveness and UI feedback.
  • Selection Brush
    For fine-tuned adjustments, Selection Brush allows additive and subtractive strokes with enhanced cursor feedback. Modifier keys make switching between selection modes seamless, similar to Photoshop and Mocha workflows.
  • Refine Edge
    Maintain natural edges and intricate details like hair with the Refine Edge tool.
Our classic Roto Brush tool has a new icon and name: Quick Selection. You can make fine-tuned adjustments to your matte using the Selection Brush tool, and maintain natural edges and details (like hair!) with Refine Edge.


Let us know how this is working for you; we're also interested to learn what additional functionalities you may want. Thanks for continuing to be a part of the After Effects community!

      8 replies

      zandwacht
      zandwacht
      Inspiring
      March 30, 2026

      Selection is much quicker and consistent than before without many additional tweaks. UI for refinement is very confusing: are those strokes per frame? Do they propagate?

      Rendering is incredibly slow: 1sec per frame for 4k footage (M2 Ultra 128Gb ram).

      There is almost no GPU usage and 8% CPU usage during rendering: is this effect not multicore compatible? Eternal propagation makes it impossible to quickly preview your selection at 25%, 50% or 75%, unless you want to wait 15 minutes. I think this needs better cache management or even a warning that one click might clear the cache.

      Effect stopped working around 33 seconds of footage for me (cleared cache, no difference) unless I selected the subject again at 30 second mark.

       

        Shebbe
        Community Expert
        ShebbeCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        March 25, 2026

        Hello devs. I'd like to highlight two big issues while testing on a 3s 8640x5760 X-OCN clip and have the following findings.

        1. Performance is way too heavy and slow. I couldn't get to cache the whole clip as it would remove propagation data trailing behind while not finished yet. Attempting to freeze the clip froze AE instead. Maybe X-OCN isn’t GPU accelerated in AE, or if it is, the performance is at unacceptable levels compared to Premiere and definitely to Resolve.                         

         

        For rough reference, when tracking objects:

        Win11 / RTX 3090Ti 

        Resolve: 9fps

        Premiere: 1fps

        AE only object: 3s per frame

        AE object + refine edge data: 10s per frame and barely works, can't finish


        2. The initial creation of the mask data is smooth but the rendered propagated data is heavily aliased as if there is an internal resolution limit. The same is the case in Premiere's implementation but Premiere's data seems to receive a smoothing filter which only makes the staircase rounded but doesn't solve anything.


        I think these issues really need to be addressed before it can be considered production ready.

          authentic_reality5C9E
          authentic_reality5C9E
          Participant
          March 28, 2026

          Having the same aliasing problem, don’t suppose you’ve figured it out?

            C
            cmatts
            Known Participant
            March 4, 2026

            thought this wasnt working but for some reason the after adding the clip to the comp, it was opening as ftg not in the layer window.

            VictoriaNece
            Community Manager
            VictoriaNeceCommunity Manager
            Community Manager
            March 4, 2026

            There was a recent bug with public beta where a small number of preferences were being reset, and one of them was whether double-clicking a layer opens it as a comp or footage. This should be fixed now, but you may have to reset any affected preferences to your preferred settings. 

              C
              cmatts
              Known Participant
              March 4, 2026

              are future versions going to be less aliased? after the frame where objects are selected - it looks like the selection was done at ¼ res

              QuietRobot
              QuietRobot
              Known Participant
              February 23, 2026

              ​@Catie Bass shouldn't these dropdown menus have rounded corners in After Effects? To be in line with Spectrum Design.

              Karlo Franco
              Karlo Franco
              Participant
              February 22, 2026

              This is a nice update, this will help us reel editors in doing background removal using Ae, also I like to suggest to put presets animated captions in both Ae and Pr like the one on firecut, capcut or filmora.. this will make all social media editors like me happy!🙂 Thanks!

              Shebbe
              Community Expert
              ShebbeCommunity Expert
              Community Expert
              February 20, 2026

              Very nice.

               

              My initial feedback would be that there is a lack of interoperability with Premiere where Premiere’s object mask does not translate over to AE if a clip is copy pasted to it. I would assume this to be technically feasible since it's the same kind of data?

               

              Will the object matte eventually be expanded to ‘full masking’ capability? In the sense that edge detail will also be calculated along with it? Especially for Premiere which does not have the refine edge tools this would be really helpful.

               

              I recently came across VideoMaMa where Adobe Research seems to be involved with. Maybe that is something that could eventually be integrated?

              C
              Community Manager
              Catie BassCommunity ManagerAuthor
              Community Manager
              February 20, 2026

              Thanks for the feedback! I can confirm that we’ve been in talks with Premiere on the future of Object Mask/Matte interoperability, but don’t have anything to share at the moment.

              R
              RKahlenberg
              Inspiring
              February 20, 2026

              Good Stuff!!! 

              Additional Functionalities  :-)

              • Ability to create separate mattes based on semantic/text input and/or brush - so, I’ve created a separation of a human body and I now want a dedicated/separate matte of just the right arm or just the wheels on a moving car - or just the bag someone is carrying or their shoes

                 provide pre-processing guidance based on user input on what they want to separate. Object Matte then pre-processes at 5x-10x realtime to provide guidance on which frame to start and if this is possible then might as well go straight to Auto Mode as an option. Oh yea, let’s have Modes - Auto Mode (add background processing option) and Guided/Assisted Mode. 

                And output a Depth Matte too. Then, add Gaussian Splat output with a full-featured compositing solution to truly capture and use the technology’s full capabilities. 

                - an aside … that magnet icon is awkward cos MochaPro has a magnetic tool and it predates this Quick Selection, unless the behavior is similar, it’s best to use another icon. 

                TIA
                 
              C
              Community Manager
              Catie BassCommunity ManagerAuthor
              Community Manager
              February 20, 2026

              Thanks for the feedback! 😀

              R
              RKahlenberg
              Inspiring
              February 21, 2026

              Heya Catie, you know what else will be useful … provide 3 test footage for users to work on. The reports you receive will give a better idea on UI-UX than users working on x-number of different footage - these are good too but having a standardized base/footage from which to garner feedback/reports should provide interesting data to work with; especially in UI-UX. 

              k.singh
              k.singh
              Participant
              February 19, 2026

              Perfect, waiting for this feature so long, now no need to use mocha, thank you team.

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