Questions

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

 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

OK, here goes.Select an image, say a narrow street showing to the end.In Photoshop,select Filter > Vanishing Point.Go through the process of making the Planes required. Export for After Effects .vpe > Open After Effects, import the .vpe you just created.Double click the Composition folder > AAAARGHThis is where it goes pear shaped and is my question, See the attached screenshot.How on earth do I put the Planes into the viewport, is there an easy way to do this, I have tried dragging, fiddling with Parent / Transform settings. It is a nightmare to place the planes in the viewport, and I’ve never managed to make it fit nicely. Can anyone suggest a method?Thanks in advance. 

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.

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

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 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! 

Current Spec: 64GB DDR4, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, set my disk cache at 115GB on 3400MB/s read speed, about 5000MB/s write speed, set ram reserved for other app to 6GB, paid application, enable multiframe renderingSomething likes this took me like 1 min to play back, its literally just basic 3d rotation and positioning keyframe, no crazy plugin or effectTried switching the codec for the video on another comp but it doesnt help muchI can add some other settings/info if needed

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

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 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. 

I applied a Lumetri color effect to a clip in my comp and it caused the image to stretch (as if I had distorted the horizontal size of the image). I toggled the effect on and off and the stretching disappears when toggled off. I removed the effect and reapplied, nothing. Restarted After Effects, nothing. Tried another clip from the shoot, no problems. I've had this, and other small bugs, appear randomly when using the Lumetri Color effect. Is there something that I'm missing or is this a known bug with After Effects CC 2017?

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

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

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! 

when I try to launch After Effects I get an error saying it can't continue due the the Common Extensibility Platform not loading. Ive looked up and tried all possible solutions and still hasn't worked. Everything from reinstalling to granting Read/Write permissions and still does not launch.

 In this tutorial, I’m breaking down how to recreate the classic vortex with any shape or logo with two different methods:*Method 1 - Maxon C4D Lite (Included with AE) I show how to take an image and convert it to a spline using the Vectorizer tool, then extrude this into a tunnel before applying a texture. Method 2: VideoCopilot Element 3D If you have a copy of this fantastic 3D plugin, you can use After Effects' own auto-trace to get your shape then extrude it and add textures in Element.  I think it’s highly likely that shortly we’ll be able to substance textures of extruded shapes directly in After Effects.  You can already do this using the cube and cylinder shapes.  I expect I’ll publish an updated version should that feature get released.  

 My Ae can only open up to here. Then this pops up every time I open it again. While this is what happened with Pr.