Questions

Hi all:  I'm still trying to learn the roto-brush tool but I'm having some growing pains that I can't find answers to online.  The video I'm working with is a plane taking off and flying out over the ocean.  Attached is a picture of the scene I'm working with.  It's a 20 second clip.  I'm trying to mask the grass, the water, and the sky, all separately. 1. I'm having trouble keeping the mask from moving or breaking up when rendering it.  I'm constantly adjusting it and having to train it.  While the roto-brush sees the lines perfectly when I do it frame by frame, once I playback it starts to shift slightly.  I understand that the line between the sky and the water is faint, but again, it sees it perfectly when I do it manually frame by frame.  Also, the line between the water and the grass seems to brake up and move as well. 2. I don't understand the concept of the Refine Edge tool.  I get that it's supposed to be used for jag

I'm not talking about blending modes, I mean the thing in 'shop with the splitable sliders to remove the lighter or darker tones from a layer?  If not, what could I do in AE to achieve something similar? I have a comp where I have some footage at a gig... I've added an element on top & made it look like it's part of the background (tracking, blurring, etc.) but for about 5 frames, the motion-blurred hand of one of the characters in the footage passes "behind" the new object instead of in front. I've duplicated the footage, put it in front & created a "garbage matte" around the hand.  The hand is light, the background is dark, the footage is very low quality & it's just for fun. Rotoscoping the hand is not really an option (with my limited skills plus it's very blurry). If I were in photoshop, I'd just go to my blending options, remove the darker tones & split the sliders to get a feathered edge but I'm not sure whether or not such a quick f

Hi, I want to control the opacity of a layer by the position of another layer. I dnt know why my expression is not working. Please correct me where I am making mistakes. Thank you. I want the eye corner to be visible only when the eyes moved to teh last positinon (here 990,403), before this it's opacity will be zero,  Thank you.  

How to check other frame 

It’s frustrating that After Effects scripts can’t access or handle the text from modal alert panels. I understand there are technical and security reasons, but as developers, this limitation blocks us from creating more intelligent, user-friendly tools. There should be a safe, official way to catch or read these messages programmatically without compromising security. Why hasn’t Adobe addressed this in a more developer-friendly way?

As a long-time user and motion designer, I’m writing to request the addition of a native Duplicator system in After Effects—comparable to the powerful one available in Cavalry. While After Effects is excellent for compositing and animation, its current duplication and instancing workflow is extremely manual and outdated compared to modern tools. The Problem Currently, duplicating objects and managing variations in AE requires a combination of precomps, parenting, expressions, or third-party tools. This process is slow, lacks flexibility, and is not visually intuitive—especially when working with large numbers of repeated elements in motion graphics, UI, or pattern-based animation. Proposed Feature: After Effects Duplicator Here’s what the new Duplicator panel/system should offer, inspired by Cavalry: Core Features Instance-Based DuplicationLike shape layers or nulls, duplications should be instances (linked copies), not flattened clones. Editing one updates

When I put an Element 3D on a layer in my scene, the Render Que and Media Encoder cannot render the composition. They will either freeze, or drop frames of the Element 3D layer, or flash up crazy blues, greens, or a solid white frame. I just finished a project 2 weeks ago with no problems.I think there was an AE and ME update since then (I did try rolling back, and that did not work).There was also an NVIDIA driver update since hten I believe.Anybody else having trouble with this? 

I've got a composition built up of some light passes from Maya & V-Ray 7. Rendered with ACES 1.2 Config.These are added on top of each other to match a result that I get in Photoshop for a product render.On top of these are some adjustment layers with various exposure/hue sat/curves etc. When I RAM Preview the animation without the adjustment layers it looks fine, then with the adjustment layers it'll be fine up to a point then the colours will go all muted. The individual light comps and beauty pass look fine on their own... No flickering or muted colours. I've tried this setup via the new OCIO Color Managed set up in After Effects, and via my old method that was to use an OpenColorIO ACEScg > sRGB adjustment layer with a Color Profile Convertor layer on top to correct the gamma. Both of these methods have very much random issues with the frames going muted on random frames. If I turn any adjustment layer off the muted look disappears. I've tried to reset AE pref

I'd like to download after effects 2023 or 2022 but its not shown in the previous older files, and I can't get into contact with any adobe workers 😞

I have an Ae file that freezes up Ae every time I open it, even the autosave files freeze it up. The problem is specific to one project. All my other Ae project files open just fine. Never had this issue before today. I have coworkers that can open the file just fine, on the same version of Ae. Same exact hardware and software build as well. I can even open it on my laptop, which has an old version of Ae, just can't open it on my Mac Pro. I tried reinstalling the current and old version of Ae. Still won't open. See screenshot below. It looks like a dialogue box starts opening and freezes before it gets past this point. I get the color wheel and have to force quit. Any thoughts?

Hello, I'm not sure it is OK to raise the issues on Adobe FORUM. When I import Obj.files on Plexus, Obj  isn't showed up!!! why ???????Even I adjusted both OBJ Scale and Camera Position, Obj isn't showed up. Would you let me know how to solve the issues ? Help me ㅜㅜ. sincerely

Hi everyone,this seems like such a basic question:but how do i view my composition FULL SCREEN in after effects? I searched "toggle full screen" in keyboard shortcuts and found nothing there.  Thanks for your help!

Hi,I am try to import Canon Raw image (.CR2) sequences in AE 2025  (25.5).I am working in a art school, we have both PC (windows 11) and Mac (Os sequoia). These images display correctly in photoshop 2025 and in the last update of Camera RAW.The problem does not appear in AE 2024, the problem is really with After 2025 and how it interprets these images when imported. When importing raws in AE2025, CameraRaw opens to do settings (right colors displayed) but when you close it, the colors turn to this ugly shift. According to me, this is due because on former versions (2024), these images were imported and interpreted with a media color profile "Camera Raw" in AE.But now this default  profile is not available anymore, and the raw images are interpreted with a ProphotoRGB profile. Why ? Will this problem be soon solved? I cannot find a profile in the interpretation of the media that match the look i had on Camera Raw and Photoshop.I had the exact  same pro

When I render a sequence out of AE 17.1.1 using a project working space sRGB, and then import that sequence into the same project, AE assigns the Rec709 2.4 profile to it, resulting in a colour shift. I'm using ProRes 4444 as a render format.Any advice welcome, as it's resulted in some irritating issues that have been tedious to track down. More info: Windows 10, AE 17.1.1, NVidia TitanXp x2 + 1080Ti.I'm importing the sequence as a series of .exr files. Comp is set to 32bpc, colour management ON, working space sRGB, exporting using ProRes4444.

Do you think it is prudent to do animation with plugin? I found doing animation without plugin makes life difficult. Not only that there are so many features in many Effects & Presets one can't remember everything.  Therefore plugin can reduce the workload. What is your experience? 

Hello all,I'm working on a project between After Effects & Premiere Pro. I want to create multiples text animation coming from the left & the right side. The animation is working well and my text is formatted well as well. BUT for this purpose, I will need to have the possibilty to edit the text. For this, i'm drag n dropping the source text for the text layer into my Essential Graphics panel, it's working well, I can even add properties such as Enable Custom Font Selection, Enable Font Size Adjustement & Enable Faux Styles. The thing is that within that paragraph, I don't want all my text to be regular or italic or bold if I use the Faux style, I want part of the paragraph to be regular and the last sentence to be italic, Did any of you succeed to do this? On the following images is an example of what I want to achieve but within Premiere Pro and without having to going back and forth between the two apps ..If you have any questions, don"t hesitate to shoot! Thanks a lot i

‌I understand I can use thisProperty to get the index of a property, but is there a way to get the index of the shape group my opacity is inside? Sort of like an thisProperty.parent.index or something

Hello, I have a project I complete in April of this year in Premiere with linked AE comps that use the light sweep effect. Upon re-opening the AE project to edit the comps, the CC Light Sweep effect is missing.  How do I reinstall that plugin? It was on my machine just about 6 weeks ago.ThanksAE 23.4.0 Build 53. Premiere Pro 2023, 23.4.0, Build 56Mac OS 11.2.3, Macbook Pro i9 64 GM RAM.

 My asset keeps disappearing right after the keyframe even though the asset should still be visible. Is there something I can do to resolve this?

Hello, Once again I'm testing the limits of what the SDK allows me to do. I have a custom control, a button in my effect panel. I want to implement a rollover effect, and it all works fine for activating the rollover, but not to return the button to its normal state. The problem is when I move the mouse too fast, and the cursor goes out of my parameter area. In this case I have no way of checking where the mouse is and even a way to redraw that area with the new state. I can't seem to find an event like PF_Event_MOUSE_LEAVE that I could use to somehow force a redraw and check the mouse position again to see if the mouse is over the button or not. PF_Event_DRAW event for custom controls is only triggered when the mouse is on top of them, same goes for PF_Event_ADJUST_CURSOR. Any idea of a workaround for this one? 

A Fresh, Modern UI   Adobe Video apps are getting a fresh, modern, and consistent design with the new Spectrum UI.      Try the Latest Version     Key Features   Here are a few key features that become available with the new Spectrum UI   Cleaner Design You get cleaner fonts and typography for better legibility and consistency with other Adobe Creative Cloud apps. That means you’ll spend less time re-learning how to use tools in our different apps and more time creating.    Switch to High-Contrast There is now a new toggle for switching between a high-contrast mode for easier visibility and accessibility or a low-contrast mode for focusing on your content.    Color Themes With Theme modes—a standard dark, darkest, and high-contrast accessibility mode—you can customize the look and feel of After Effects to your preference. Switching between these modes gives you the flexibility to sele

Last week, I updated my mac with the latest version of Adobe After Effects 2020.  I still kept the CC 2019 version installed just in case I had a difficult time opening my files.  Now when launching either CC 2019 / CC 2020 version of After Effects, I cannot open any of my previously created after effects files whatsoever.  I am getting the error message: After Effects Error: File Exists but couldn't be open for reading: "FILE NAME.aep" ( 3 :: 0) . At this point I really have no idea what to do to move forward. Any help is greatly appreciated.  

Hello,I need to edit and update an older project I created using the Plexus plugin. In AE 2024 and 2025.1 (the newest update as of now), I am no longer able to import an OBJ sequence (even with Plexus installed properly). It seems the import process reverts back to the native OBJ importer in AE, which only supports single OBJ files.The strange thing is that if I open and convert an old CC 2017 AE project, it correctly displays and works with the imported OBJ sequence. However, I cannot change or replace it with a new sequence—doing so results in the same import error.Is there a way to "force" AE to use the OBJ importer from the Plexus plugin rather than the native AE importer? (The Plexus plugin has been capable of importing OBJ sequences for more than seven years.)Another (less ideal) solution would be to install and use AE 2023, but in Creative Cloud, I can only go back as far as 2024—even though my subscription started earlier.Any thoughts or fixes? Thanks in advance.

I want to dynamically center multiple (three, in this case) text layers as if they were one block, so no matter which of the three changes size (more text or font size change) the layers are, as one unit, centered vertically together. This is to be used with essential graphics, so it needs to be procedural. Also, this is text LAYERS, not just multiple-line text boxes (although this should accommodate the layers whether or not they have multiple lines). I have no problem centering (or bottom- or top-aligning) individual layers using sourceRectAtTime(). I center the middle layer's anchor point and, using the various layers' heights and tops I align the top and bottom layers relative to the center. All is good, they behave nicely together--now I just want the lot of them centered on the screen/in the comp. I'm thinking the way to go would be to parent the middle layer (because the top and bottom layers are relative to it) to a null, and somehow move the null's anchor point relat

I have a bunch of TIFF files I batch-processed in PS that include layer masks. I've imported these into AE as a TIFF Sequence, but apparently, AE can't render the layer masks correctly. It does not produce the desired effect.  Before I go batch-process each TIFF file again, applying the layer mask, is there something else I should try? Interpret Footage/Main Options tab doesn't allow me to select anything within the Alpha section; all the options are grayed out. I'm pretty sure AE can render PS files with layer masks, and I believe I've done it before. Why not TIFF files?What am I missing?Thanks.