After Effects (Beta)

Hello everyone!The rumors are true: we’ve brought a native AI Assistant to After Effects and it’s now here in beta! Update to the latest beta build (7 or above), restart After Effects, and open the panel from the icon in the header bar or via “Window” > “Assistant.” Exhibit A: a disaster project file.First, what this is and isn't. The Assistant is not here to replace you as the artist. Our north star for the Assistant is for it to do the tedious work that takes away from the joy of creating (think expression troubleshooting, reorganizing a project you inherited from a contractor who didn't follow your team's project organization guide, manually checking the spelling in your text layers...)So while you can point the Assistant at a wide range of workflows and get varying success rates, we've deliberately made it best at two things right now: project organization and expressions.Ask it to explain, restructure, rename, and color-code your project: handy for anything that's gotten away f

Rolling out now in the After Effects Beta, starting with CCD Beta build 27.0.049 After Effects now includes the Account Menu -- the same account panel you already use in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Premiere Pro. Click your account icon in the toolbar or on the Home screen, and the Account Menu panel opens to display the information relevant to your account.  If you move between Creative Cloud apps, the menu looks and behaves exactly as it does everywhere else and now the experience will be consistent across our suite of applications.   Account Menu - Click on the account icon on the top right to access the flyout panel 

 Rolling out now in After Effects Beta, starting with CCD Beta build 27.0.048After Effects now lets you choose how much to compress PNG files when you export. When you set PNG as your Output Module format, the PNG Options dialog now includes a Compression slider. This is similar to the kind of control you already have for JPEG. Steps to Access the Output Module and PNG OptionsOpen the Render Queue: Select your composition in the timeline or project panel, then go to File > Export > Add to Render Queue (or press Ctrl+M on Windows or Cmd+M on Mac). Click the Output Module Link: Look for the section labeled Output Module in the Render Queue panel. Click the blue underlined text (which often says "Lossless" or displays a format name like "H.264") to open the Output Module Settings dialog. Adjust Your Settings: Choose your desired Format (PNG Sequence) from the dropdown menu. Under Video Output, click on format options to open the PNG Options dialog to access the compression slider.  

Rolling out now in the After Effects Beta, starting with CCD Beta build 27.0.044.We have made two meaningful upgrades to the After Effects auto-save, now in Beta. Your backups now happen on a consistent schedule, and recovering after a crash takes one click instead of digging through a folder. What's updated:Never-saved work is covered: Auto-save now runs for untitled projects, so a project you haven't saved yet can still be recovered. We have also improved to have cleaner file names on auto-save. Auto-save on a consistent clock: Auto-save now fires on a fixed interval measured from your last auto-save and is not reset every time you save manually. One-click crash recovery: After a crash, After Effects will now offer to reopen your most recent auto-save. This helps in reducing the need to try navigating to the Auto-Save folder by hand. Recovered Projects protect your original: An opened auto-save now opens as an untitled “Recovered Project,” so your first Save creates a new file inste

 While working, the screen suddenly goes black and then this error appears... I'm using a 2060 Super. I updated the driver, but the problem still happens. How can I fix this problem?

Version 27.0x33 of After Effects Beta introduces support for editable text from Illustrator files.Previously, converting an Illustrator layer to native shapes would turn all its vector content into shape layers and text would be lost unless it had been converted to curves. Now, text stays text: when you use Create Shapes and Text from Vector Layer on an Illustrator footage layer, text objects come into your comp as fully editable After Effects text layers instead of outlines. Font, size, fill, position, styles (like bold and italic), strokes, and variable font settings all carry over, so you can keep editing in After Effects instead of being locked into static shapes.  Getting StartedSelect an imported Illustrator layer in the Timeline, then choose Layer > Create > Create Shapes and Text from Vector Layer. Any text in the source file will be converted into its own editable text layer (rather than a shape layer), matching the font, size, fill, and position from the original file a

hi everyone i really need help with object matte tool. ive done everything possible and nothing is working. im on mac m4 pro. as you can see im in the layer comp, resolution is on full, frame rate is the same, ive tried literally everything. the view: mask doesnt come up as object matte either. i click and my ae just freezes and crashes. im on the newest version of after effects btw.

We're excited to introduce Smooth Zoom in After Effects (Beta) version 25.2.0.113, a major improvement to zooming in After Effects that allows for precise, fluid magnification in the Composition, Layer, and Footage panels.     What’s New? Since the earliest versions of After Effects, zooming was limited to fixed magnification levels (33.33%, 50%, 100%, 200%, etc). That’s no longer the case! With Smooth Zoom, you can now adjust magnification to any valid value with decimal-point precision using a new hot text control in the viewer. All zooming tools in After Effects have been upgraded to incorporate this new capability: Precise hot text Magnification control directly in the viewer. Scroll wheel zooming with smoother, more precise adjustments. Redesigned Zoom Tool behavior for a more intuitive experience.   Additional EnhancementsYou can find new settings under Preferences -> Previews -> Magnification : Type: Choose between Smooth and Legacy. Behavior: Follow Cur

alert("abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"); in a script only shows abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwx in the message box in After Effects on Windows.I know there are alternatives, but for one-off scripts or quick debugging an alert can really help. However, the message displayed by alert truncates things in very hard to explain or predict ways. I’ve taken to adding a bunch of junk at the end of the message (like some words and line breaks in an attempt to figure out what causes this issue) in order for it to work, but then it displays some of or all of the junk too.I’ve tried to determine if there was some pattern with length of substrings, numbers vs letters vs characters vs whitespace, line breaks, etc but no luckSteps to reproduce:create a .jsx script file with the following contents:alert("abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"); // abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxalert("1234567890klmnopqrstuvwxyz"); // 1234567890klmnopqrstuvwxyalert("c:\\test\\a\\path\\to\\project.aep"); // c:\test\a\path\to\project.aalert("aaabbbcc

Version 27.0x41 of After Effects Beta introduces support for Layers as Material Sources. You can now apply layers — animated pre-comps, solids, images, and videos — directly as 3D materials on parametric meshes, 3D models and 3D text and shapes when using the Advanced 3D renderer. No more round-tripping through other apps or baking out intermediate textures: animate your 2D content and your 3D scene together, in the same project. We’re also changing how materials are applied so that you don’t have to scroll through big lists of material assignment slots when you only want to tweak part of a model.  Getting Started Select a parametric mesh, 3D model, 3D text, or 3D shape, then open the Material dropdown in the Timeline or Properties panel and choose any eligible layer to use it as the base color source. Once assigned, you can fine-tune the look using new intrinsic material streams — Opacity, Roughness, Metallic, Emission Color, Emission Intensity, and Ambient Response — all keyframeable

After Effects AI Assistant cannot access the After Effects project tools.I saved the project, fully quit and reopened After Effects Beta, reopened the project, waited for it to load, and started an entirely new Assistant chat.The prompt I used:“Inspect the active composition and all nested compositions. Do not modify anything. Give me a complete hierarchy of the active layers, source footage, nested comps, effects, expressions, blending modes, and animated properties.”The Assistant reported that no After Effects inspect, compose, edit, animate, render, or project-management tools were found in the session. It only reported document-reading and image/video-generation capabilities.Exact error:[RESOURCE_NOT_FOUND]: Could not load "describe" from skill "ae-inspect".Unless I am just going crazy, but shouldn't the Assistant be able to read the active composition and return its composition/layer hierarchy without modifying the project?The Assistant never accessed the project and could not loa

Version 27.0.41 of After Effects Beta introduces support for 3D Materials on Text & Shapes. You can now apply Substance materials directly to 3D text and shape layers in Advanced 3D, replacing their default legacy materials with something photo-real or stylized — think wood, stone, brushed metal, or sci-fi surfaces. You can assign different materials to the front, bevel, side, and back, and bevel independently, following the same material assignment workflow you'd use on parametric meshes and 3D models. It works together with the Layers as Material Sources feature, so you can use animated pre-comps, solids, images, and video as materials on your 3D text and shapes too, not just Substance (SBSAR) materials. Getting StartedSelect a 3D text or shape layer, then open the Material Assignment dropdown in the Timeline or use the Properties panel to assign a Substance material (or a layer, if you also have Layers as Material Sources enabled). Use the per-face options to apply separate mate

Starting with After Effects Beta 27.0x41, a new Audio De-esser effect is now available. This compliments the previous audio effect updates released in 26.0 (e.g. compressor, noise gate, distortion). What is a de-esser?If you've ever recorded a voiceover or narration and noticed that the "s", "sh", "z", and "t" sounds jump out sharp and hissy — almost whistling — that's sibilance. It's completely normal, especially with certain microphones, close-mic'd voices, or bright EQ. But it can be fatiguing to listen to and makes an otherwise clean recording feel harsh.A de-esser fixes exactly this. It's a smart, automatic volume control that only kicks in on those harsh high-frequency sounds and gently turns the the audio down automatically. You get a smoother, more polished vocal without dulling the whole track.The new De-esser effect in After Effects lives under Effect > Audio > De-esser. Drop it on any audio layer and you're ready to go.  Why use it?Vocals and narration — the most commo

I’m using After Effects (Beta) 27.0.0 (Build 37) on macOS.When I open Window > Assistant, the Assistant panel opens, but it remains on the star icon and the prompt bar never appears. Waiting several minutes does not change anything.I have tried the following:Restarted After Effects (Beta) Closed and reopened the Assistant panel Tested in a new empty project Started After Effects in Safe Mode and tested againThe issue is the same in all cases.Creative Cloud is signed in with my Creative Cloud Pro account. Adobe Firefly works normally in Chrome, including the Firefly AI Assistant (Beta).Is there anything else I should try, or is this a known issue with the current After Effects Beta?System information copied from After Effects is included below.System info:Application: After Effects (Beta) v27.0.0.37OS: macOS v26.6.2, RAM: 24.00 GB, CPUs (logical): 15

Steps to reproduce:Add a layer style > Outer Glow to a layerSet it to “Gradient”Edit the gradient, moving the colour and opacity stops independently (I want white at location 0%, then cyan at location ~25% and opacity 100% at 35% and 0% at position 100%), so it set it thus and click OK.Click Edit Gradient again, and see how AE has added random opacity stops hither and thither:Can AE not have a colour stop without an opacity stop? System info    Application: After Effects (Beta) v26.5.0.76    OS: Windows v10.0.26200, RAM: 127.91 GB GB, CPUs (logical): 32

Hey dev team, I see a silent update to OCIO has snuck it's way into the latest builds. It now supports and provides the built-in ACES 2.0 configs which is very welcome. With that I do want to point out again that I feel the implementation leaves many things to be desired.The LUT based 1.2 config is still present. The issue is that not only is this very legacy already and even ACES 1.x users should not use this config anymore, it's the default when you switch to OCIO color management because it's in the first spot of the list. The OCIO Configuration dropdown menu also does not remember last choice when swtiching between OCIO and Adobe managed so you switch to the thing that shouldn't exist in the software anymore every time. Also consider making ACES 2.0 Studio the default. Lastly this LUT based config also takes up 530MB of additional installation storage. Please I ask you again to remove this from the build. Users that need it for whatever reason can always source it themselves. The p

I think something this might have been suggested many years ago, but nothing came of it:I occasionally add something such as a ‘corner bug’, a safe zone, etc. on a comp that I want to just sit there for the entire duration of the comp. If I extend the duration of the comp, it’d be nice if I could set this layer to be an ‘infinite layer’ (infinite in time). That way, if my comp was 10secs long, and I then added this layer, I could then set it to be ‘infinite’, so if I then extend the comp to 20secs, the layer will automagically extend until the end of the comp.I propose this would be an option that would sit under ‘Guide Layer’ in the right-click menu. An icon, next to the Guide Layer icon, could then appear to show that it’s an Infinite Layer. Maybe a stopwatch icon? Or an infinity symbol?

We've been having a lot of fun with a new effect we're calling Curl Noise, and we want you to try it.If you've ever wanted a noise effect that feels less like static grain and more like smoke, flowing water, or swirling ink— that's the space Curl Noise is aimed at. It generates smooth, animated 2D noise with a fluid, organic quality that's naturally well-suited to backgrounds, texture overlays, abstract motion, and anywhere you want movement that flows rather than flickers.The reason it feels different from other noise effects is in how the noise field is curled — the vectors that define the noise are rotated so they always flow tangentially, which is what gives the result that characteristic fluid quality. Crank up Swirl and it starts to coil and spiral. Push Turbulence Speed and it churns. Keep things subtle and it just... drifts. Here are some examples… Curl Noise with Default SettingsModify the Transform properties and add some swirlReduce the swirl, add in smoothness and a little

Steps to reproduce:    1. ...The All Caps toggle button in the text dialogue does not appear to function on any comp I’ve tested. Result: ...Mixed upper lower caseExpected: ...All caps System info    Application: After Effects (Beta) v27.0.0.14    OS: macOS v26.5.1, RAM: 128.00 GB GB, CPUs (logical): 20

After Effects Beta now supports native fullscreen on macOS. Click the green button in the top-left of the window to expand AE into its own fullscreen Space — complete with menu bar auto-hide and Mission Control swipe support, just like other native Mac apps.  We've also cleaned up the title bar to match macOS conventions:Now shows just your project filename instead of "After Effects - filename." Cmd-click (or right-click) the filename to get the standard macOS path popup, letting you jump straight to any folder in the project's file path. Unsaved changes are now reflected with the native "edited" indicator alongside the existing asterisk. Click-drag the project icon (when a project is saved) to access the underlying project file for drag-and-drop.Let us know if this is working for you. 

The usual behavior used to be that no matter where in the UI, you hit Numpad 0 and AE starts caching/playing back the timeline. Now when in active Effects Controls window it doesn't work. When in Comp, Project or any other window, it works fine.

Use scenario:Being able to change the font or font properties on text layers with multiple sourceText keyframes. Only realised today that the Properties panel and Character panel behave differently when taking the same steps. I have been manually updating each keyframe because I thought this didn’t work and I was mis-remembering having done it in the past 🤦🏾‍♂️ Steps to reproduce:Create a text layer Set multiple keyframes on the sourcetext property For ease of comparison, duplicate the text layer and move so both are visible seperately On text layer 1, select some/all keyframes, ensure the playhead is on a selected keyframe Using the Properties panel, change a setting’s value (e.g. selected font, change font weight or size) On text layer 2, do the same operations, but use the Character panel instead. Then move the playhead between keyframes to see the resultResult:On the layer where the Properties panel was used, only they keyframe under the playhead will have updated with the change

Starting in the AE Beta 27.0x7, we've changed how text animators handle combining marks — the tone marks, vowel signs, and diacritics that sit above, below, or around a base character in scripts such as Thai, Arabic, and many Indic languages. Scope of the changeThis affects the per-character text animator properties:Scale Skew Rotation Tracking Variable Font axes that change a character's width (not only an axis literally named "Width" — any axis whose effect widens or narrows the glyph) What used to happenWhen you animated one of these properties on text containing combining marks, each glyph/mark was positioned independently. As the base character moved, scaled, rotated, or changed width, its marks did not travel with it and they drifted away from the character they belong to, so the mark could end up detached and floating over a neighboring character. What happens nowMarks are now grouped with their base character and transform as a single unit. As you animate, the whole cluster (ba

For the past couple of weeks I’ve ben working on a job that has a Premiere project and a DL AE project. This morning I updated AE to v27. Then when I loaded that same Premiere project, it just showed the ‘media offline’ slate where the DL comps should be. I tried to relink one of the comps, but Premiere threw the error “After Effects (beta) must be installed”. I guess Premiere 26.x is not talking to AE 27 yet.I’ve just installed AE 26.5 (beta) from the CC app, then relaunched Premiere and loaded that same project, and it all seems to sync up ok. I guess I should wait until Premiere gets updated too before updating AE!But that now gives me a giant headache because I’ve worked on another project today in AE v27, which now won’t open in AE 26!