Feature Requests

I’d love to see a method added to the scripting API to be able to run the Dependencies > Collect Files command, with its various options.A bonus would be if you’re also (optionally) able to zip up the contents of the collect via scripting (as described in this linked post). 

Something that happens EVERY time we use EXR sequences in After Effects, we have to right-click on the footage (there is no File menu equivalent)Interpret Footage->Main and then select the color tab and "Preserve RGB". It would be super helpful to be able to set these values in these sub tabs with a script event that can be accessed with the scripting language or Automation Blocks system.

After Effects has become an apalling mess and Adobe is a joke of a company.  Why on earth are the new features etc., being driven by your marketing department instead of what users want and need?  We're in a ridiculous position where updating After Effects with the hope of fixing one lot of bugs just introduces a whole load more.  Can someone with a bit of backbone at Adobe suggest to their bosses that they are f***ing the company?  The ONLY reason I still have CC is because they offered me money off when I went to cancel, but I'm slowly shifting my workflow away from Adobe completely because they cannot make a decent piece of software.  Adobe, please DO YOUR JOB so that I can do mine!  

I find myself tweaking some effects over and over in the same way. Yeah, we can save an ‘Animation Preset’ (a confusing name). But I would like to have a simple button to set the current status of an effect to be default, so the next time I apply it, it will be automatically featuring these settings 

I've been playing with the unreal engine server plugin in Nuke and it is really useful. You can link to unreal engine and render passes from the nuke interface as well as update camera lights etc and then comp. Really useful and would be great to have in after effects. Thanks 

We need a simple 3D tool in After Effects to create basic polygons/planes between points—for example between Nulls or 3D Camera Tracker points.Right now AE can solve a camera and generate 3D points, but it’s missing the next essential step: quick proxy geometry. For even a few simple surfaces we’re forced to roundtrip to a 3D app, which breaks the workflow.Why this matters?Fast proxy surfaces are crucial for: shadow catching / contact shadows projection mapping (projecting a plate onto simple cards/planes) quick set-extension cards and grounding elements RequestAdd a Create Face / Create Plane from Points tool: select 3 points → create a triangle select 4 points → create a quad keep it editable (move vertices / reassign to points) optional: Shadow Catcher surface mode + Project From Camera helper This would make AE far more practical for real 3D compositing workflows.thx

Currently the only way to see if some footage/asset is used, is to select it in the Project panel where it says “footageName, used # times”. To check many assets, the fastest way is to click on the first one and bash the arrow key on your keyboard. Not very efficient when I hear computers are pretty good at counting quickly (unless the AI is hallucinating—but that’s another story 😬) Adding an additional panel column that says how many times an asset is used would be much faster. I attached a quick mockup of how it could look—being able to shrink the column very narrow would be key since—for most uses—it’ll be single or double digit number. This would be very handy when you have a collection of assets to somewhat randomly use throughout a project, like a graphics package with several variants of a kind, or building a collage with random shapes, precomped pieces of text, etc. and you don’t want to use some assets too much or too little. Or simply to get a sense of

Expose embedded camera timecode (Start Timecode from Interpret Footage) via ExtendScript on FootageItem or FootageSource. Currently FootageItem.displayStartTime returns NaN for proprietary formats (R3D, ARRIRAW, etc.) even though AE reads and displays the correct timecode in the UI and in the Footage viewer. A reliable FootageItem.sourceStartTimecode property (in seconds or frames) would allow scripts to generate accurate EDL-style reports for legal/rights clearance workflows — which is a common production need.

You know what AE, you need to step up your game if you want to be irreplaceable. Copy CapCut. Add automatic subtitles based off of VoiceOvers and have lots of preset styles that people can choose. Companies don’t want programs that slow down the workflow. My company ditched AE for CapCut bec things are way faster. Well if you don’t want to be the next Nokia or Kodak. Adapt. I love AE!!! Don’t get me wrong.

Every time I want to see the Script List under the Window Menu I run into the anoying issue to scroll down to them. The length of that Menu can be very long depending on the comps that are open. And scrolling is slow and only works by clicking on the down arrow. That menu doesn't move when I scroll my mouse wheel (Windows). Apparently on mac it does.I suggest having a side menu like the Extensions menu. (see screenshot).As I discussed this with the community a few useful tips came out of it:(Kyle Harter) With the new Quick Apply one can launch every script .Or Kbar can do that too. (Rob Barrett) One can also start typing the name of the script with the Windows menu open, and the selection will jump to that item. Typing “T” several times will cycle through all entries beginning with “T”.These tips help!However if you don’t remember the name of the script and want to see the list, the old problem stays.A Script Sidemenu would be an easy fix.Thank you for considering this!

Animated AVIF is a modern replacement for gif supported by Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Samsung Internet browser. It supports background opacity, which is very useful. You can read more about it here. I would really like to be able to export After Effects videos as animated AVIF.

I’d like to request the addition of Add 'New folder from selection' to the right-click menu in the Project Panel. This would take any selected project items and create a new folder, move those items into the new folder, and the folder would be active to directly type a new name.Functionally, this work work exactly the same as selecting items and dragging them to the Folder icon at the bottom of the project panel (big up Brian Carter for sharing the knowledge on that one 🍻). It would simply make the process faster to execute, as well as potentially increasing discoverability (thank you Kyle Hamrick, Jake Bartlett, Bobby Donald for valuable input on this 🙏🏾)It's a feature my file manager has (I'm using OneCommander - I think there's a Powertoys tool for this as well), and I find it super useful for quickly organising files. Just select the files needed, run the command, and they're placed in a new sub-folder that I can instantly name. Really useful for things like client asset dumps t

I've always felt that the project panel within after effects to be very limiting coming from a the perspective of a video editor  As much as I've gotten very used to it, I cant help but feel it could be a lot better since it has barely changed since I first began using the software. I would love to see something more akin to Premiere's project panel in AE, but to me more specific, I'd love to see... -Scale slider to change the size of the list in the panel and make icons bigger-Double click to open up a bin in an isolated panel on it's own-Freeform view for visual organization of assets-Hovering cursor over certain assets provides a scrubable preview on the thumbnail.

In many occasions Adjustment Layers, Backgrounds, masks, letterboxes ‘live’ throughout the whole Comp. It would be nice to have a layer switch that makes layers persistent, even when the Comp duration changes.

DEACTIVATE THE SHORT CUT FOR RENDER/NOT RENDER IN CAPS LOCK!!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!! OR GIVE ME A WAY TO DEACTIVATE IT. WHEN ANIMATING TEXT IT’S A NIGHTMARE!! PLEASEEEEE!!!

Create a Shape Layer. Name it “1”.Duplicate it, using cmd-D (ctrl-D on Windows). See how the layer name of the duplicate is “2”, and above “1”. In many cases, making numbered layers, requires the duplicates appear UNDER the original. This has to done manually for each duplicate.My request: let alt-cmd-D or shift-cmd-D do that in one go: create Duplicate under the original.

To make a flickering effect, the Strobe Light effect comes in handy. But when applied to an Adjustment Layer, and set to ‘Makes Layer Transparent’, it affects the Opacity of the underlying layers as well, kind of natural Adjustment Layer behavior. But when we want to only strobe the Adjustment Layers’ effects, it is not possible with the Strobe Effect. Please make that possible via a switch.

Thumbnail preview on the project list should offer different size options! the current size is too small for quickly previewing images and footage. This feedback comes from someone who has been using After Effects for almost 16 years! Thanks.

With the advent of MOGRT, Essential Graphics and templated AE tools, there is a need to have more data exposed surrounding AE's "Point text" and "Box text" layers that the current sourceRectAtTime does not provide. Having more typographic bound data exposed would be extremely useful for procedurally aligning type. The main issue that one might encounter is ascenders and descenders influencing the sourceRectAtTime dimensions, which is a typographic no-no if using these properties to align type to just about anything. Currently, sourceRectAtTime only has an option "includeExtents" which returns a Box text's (paragraph) bounding box. This is a good start, but there are some other things that would be extremely helpful! Additional optional parameters for sourceRectAtTime might be: 1) typeBounds (Bool) (optional)- sourceRectAtTime.top and sourceRectAtTime.height would be calculated from the topmost capheight to the bottommost baseline. The key is ignoring ascenders

When prepping files for other users, or working on files from other AE artists, a folder full of null objects is simply a “mess on the floor” we could really do without. I recently had a project come in to get cleaned up that had HUNDREDS of nulls. If the nulls were simply shape voids, they wouldn’t even be in the project manager and would really tidy up the project and reduce the risk of a link being broken by someone along the pipeline accidentally cleaning up too much in the project manager.  alternatively, an option to ‘hide nulls in project manager’ would nearly achieve the same effect.  please.and thank you.      

When creating series of graphics, it is nice to check the number of e.g. created Comps. It would be nice if After Effects shows the number of selected items in the upper left of the  project panel.

It would be great if Audio Loudness can be added as an effect on to an Adjustment layer, and this would control the loudness of the composition’s loudness as a whole.Rendered videos frequently need to conform to a specific level like -23 LUFS, and this requires correcting the audio separately in Audition and re-importing the loudness-corrected audio.

When I open an Illustrator (.ai) file in After Effects (Import → Composition), any artwork that sits outside the composition frame is automatically turned transparent/alpha-clipped. I intentionally leave a margin around elements in Illustrator so that when they move the edges don’t show seams — but After Effects is making those outer areas transparent, which causes visible gaps during animation.Steps to reproduce Create artwork in Illustrator that extends beyond the intended comp size (leave a margin around the visible area). Save as .ai and import into After Effects as Composition. Open the composition: artwork outside the comp frame appears transparent (alpha) instead of preserved. Expected behaviorArtwork outside the comp bounds should remain opaque (preserved) so the margin stays visible when elements move.QuestionIs there a setting or recommended import workflow to prevent After Effects from automatically making those outer areas transparent? Any workaround or explanation of w

Feature Request: Native OpenEXR Embedded Matte Support in After EffectsAs a VFX compositor, I'd love to see native support for embedding custom matte or utility channels directly into OpenEXR files exported from After Effects.Currently, we have to render separate files for the beauty pass, mattes, and other utility passes. This increases render time, storage usage, file management, and the chance of delivery errors.Supporting embedded matte channels in a single OpenEXR file would make After Effects much more efficient for professional VFX, DI (Digital Intermediate), and post-production pipelines. It would also improve compatibility with industry-standard OpenEXR workflows used in film, television, OTT, and commercial production.Benefits:Export beauty and embedded mattes in a single OpenEXR file. Reduce the number of rendered files. Simplify file management and deliveries. Improve compatibility with professional VFX and DI pipelines. Bring After Effects closer to industry-standard OpenE

In many motion graphics occasions (games, scores, clocks), it is essential to have numbers to be monospaced, to avoid ‘m from jumping positions all the time.Please make this a feature for Text layers - a switch to make any text/font monospaced.