"After effects warning :cant use roto brush tool because the paint effect plugin is missing"

[lordnaps]

Hello,

I've been working on a shot requiring me to isolate my subject from the green screen behind him. I chose to go with Rotobrush over keying the subject. I used the refine edge tool as well. In the middle of me finalizing this shot, my AE crashes on me giving me multiple error messages including "After Effects warning: Cant use the Roto Brush tool because the "Paint" effect plugin is missing. You may need to reinstall." Im very confused because I hadnt messed with any settings beforehand, I'm not using a third party plug in or anything, Roto brush was working fine, and then it just happened in the middle of me editing the shot. I've uninstalled and reinstalled twice now. I cant even open After Effects (Beta) or even open a project, the message shows up as soon as AE shows the startup screen. Help!

[Ishan Y]

Hey lordnaps,

Welcome to the community. I'm sorry to hear about this. Do you only see this issue with a specific project file? Could you open the Creative Cloud App, hold down Ctrl + Shift + Alt, launch After Effects, and select the Manage Plugins option? In the Effect Manager window, uncheck the "Only Show Third-Party Effects" option and check if there are any effects that are disabled. If that doesn't work for you, please follow the steps mentioned in this post: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/how-to-troubleshoot-startup-issues-in-after.... Let us know how it goes.

Thanks,

Ishan

[avril68]

Hi, 

Did you figure out a solve for this? I'm having the same problem. 

[windows32894956yxyb]

I figure out this problem. 1st thing 1st, when you open your project file as soon as possibe you must move your timeline playhead at the begining, and also your selected area of preview part. now you are safe. your after effect is not crashing.    then, you find out which thing of your timeline you select before rotor scoping. then deseble this or delete this. to do this work. be careful you play you play head, slowly go forward and go forward. when you reach your rotor scoping your problem, then suddently your after effet again crash. don't worry. open again, and delete the object you last see after crashing. That's it. done.

[alexandra_3887]

Im sporadically havign teh same issue in AE2025
"After Effects Warning: Can't use the Roto Brush tool because the "Paint" effect plugin is missing. You may need to reinstall" ...happy to do so, but where do I find it?

[alexandra_3887]

Im having the same issue with ae and as a result- cant use the program. 

[Alireza MO]

Justed happened to me while working with the roto brush tool and I found a way around it.

After few attempts in safe mode and preferences etc., I realized that I could open the project some time without getting the error if I don't move the cursor on the timeline - As if by doing so I was activating a faulty plugin or command! So without moving the cursor, I went down on the footage I was doing rotoscopy on and I found out there were two roto brush effects applied on it, although one of them was off, the problem might have arised from such combination. Therefore, I unchecked all the roto brush effects in my timeline and then moved my cursor and everything worked! Finally, I removed the footage I was doing roto brush on, and did the whole process from scratch.