After Effects

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?!

The 2 images i will add here 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?!

Why AE is still in 2026 absolutely garbage and unoptimized? Why at more than 70$ moth is still full of bugs? Why rendering is still underusing the machine? Why adobe? Why dont you destroy the program and rebuilt from zero? Years, more than 12 years working daily with it and every day I have to FIGHT with the software, every day. Every day I discover a new tricky way to solve a NEW problem. 

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 ?

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?

Hi!I can't find the solution to something I thought can be easily fixed.I created a very basic counter, going from 100 € to 2000 €.So the Slider Control effect is applied on a solid, and I applied this expression to the Source Text: Math.round(thisComp.layer("counter").effect("Slider Control")("Slider")) + " €" However, I would like the numbers above 999 to be spelt with a space. So basically: "1 000", instead of "1000".I found the expression "addComas", but nothing for the space. Can you help me on that? Thanks!

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?

There’s this very specific bug that has been happening to me since the later versions of After Effects 2025 and it’s still present on the latest 2026 release.I do a lot of transcriptions on Premiere, then convert those to captions, then convert those captions to graphics, and finally copy the graphics layers from Premiere to After Effects. This is a workflow that I’ve been doing for a while without any issues.These graphic layers are interpreted in After Effects as compositions with text layers inside. And this behavior is still true.But since later versions of After Effects 2025 (up to the current release of 2026), whenever there’s a line break (only on the first line of text) in this layer that comes from Premiere, the rest of the text just disappears. It’s still selectable and reappears if I remove the line break or convert the text layer from the original paragraph text to point text, but I just preferred if this wouldn’t happen in the first place.I’m on a 2021 M1 Macbook Pro. I’m

After updating After Effects from 25.6.4 to 26.0 - there is really undesirable and stopper bug with exporting shapes with color gradients through Bodymovin plugin. 

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 reinstalled my computer. My previous local fonts are not available anymore. I open a project I was working on, get this message. Ok, it works. But the problem is that after I click ok, after effects is not showing the missing fonts. I have no clue which fonts I am missing and it would take a lot of work to manually set all the text layers again. 

I was working fine until last Friday. Then it was the weekend, I didn't touch the Mac, and on Monday morning I get this fine error message from AE.  This is on a MBP M4 Pro, 24GB RAM, MacOS Tahoe (latest version), a fine machine that is working properly on anything (Premiere, etc), and was working properly with AE until three days ago. Nothing changed from the time AE was working to the time AE decided to throw this error and stop working. No new files, no new plugins, no new installations. Contacted Adobe support, allowed remote control, the support guy spent an hour trying to change folder permissions all over the place, nothing happened. All permissions seemed proper (that is, my user had R+W permissions on most of the folders, and “system” had R+W permissions on other folders that I guess just need system permissions). Nothing seemed out of place. Cleared everything, removed AE version 26, rolled back to 25.6. still the same message. I followed every article I found online, checked

Getting this UI on my after effects whenever i try to change the color or anything. Is there any fix to this???

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 updated After effects Beta to it’s latest Version (26.2) and then I find out that the new Object mask is not working, no brush no select .. nothing at all in the latest update of after effects Beta 26.2.the brush is not appearing to select any object, no object is going to be highlighted to select and isolate.

Is there a way to still obtain the AE 2024 in 2026?The oldest version I can find when I click on the three dots is version 25.0. If I click on "see more," I just get redirected to the website where the 2024 version is also not listed.Thanks

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?