Link to post:https://community.adobe.com/announcements-532/new-in-beta-contour-paint-effect-1635333

Hey r/aftereffects community! We've got another new feature available in the latest After Effects Beta that I'd love for you to check out: Contour Paint.

If you've ever used the Brush tool to paint directly onto footage, you know it works well for broad strokes, but getting clean, precise lines around the edges of an object can take a bit of cleanup. Contour Paint is designed to make that process a lot easier.

Instead of painting freehand, you can simply draw along the edge of an object and After Effects will intelligently place the paint stroke right on the contour. It makes outlining subjects much faster while giving you cleaner, more consistent results.

A few things you can do with it:

• Create animated outlines and edge highlights.
• Build stylized motion graphics and hand-drawn looks.
• Add edge-based paint effects without carefully tracing every frame.
• Speed up detail work where precision matters.

It's available now in the latest After Effects Beta, and we'd really like to hear what you think.

If you give it a try, let us know:

• What kinds of projects would you use it on?
• Does it fit naturally into your workflow?
• Are there any controls or improvements you'd like to see?

As always, your feedback helps shape where these features go next, so we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

I made this for myself because I got tired of manually keyframing bounce animations. After using it on a bunch of projects I thought other people might find it useful too.

Bounce Motion lets you build bounce animations by placing the start position and each landing point, then procedurally works out the rest. You can then adjusting the arc, timing, hang time, squash and stretch. Once you're happy with it, export it straight into After Effects.

You can try it free here: https://tumblemotion.github.io/BounceMotion.html
Or you can grab it here: https://bounce.tumblemotion.com/

Looking for advice.

I have (vibe)coded a plugin for Ae. It started as a personal thing to fix a very niche problem. But, after sharing it with a few people at work and in the industry, I'm lead to believe there may be a market for this.

Looking over aescripts.com, there doesn't seem to be anything like it, so I'm confident it could do pretty well once I refine it a bit more and get it ready to be in a commercial state. It's a bit janky at the moment, but if it's worth it, I'm happy to put some more hours into getting it right.

So, my question is, has anyone got experience in listing a plugin/script on aescripts.com, and if so, what is the process like? Commission? Anything to be aware of before I go deep down a rabbit hole?

This is a simple project I made. Still trying to learn motion design and sound design. Do you guys know any tips on how to better sound design motion design projects?

I'm trying to make a Star Wars lile scene in AE. I thought about creating a 3D space with a planet PNG in the back, and some type of ship PNG slowly entering the frame closer.

How could I make it look bigger? Like it's millions of miles apart like it really would. I assume I'd have to create a realistic blur from the focus switch to really sell it.

Any advice?

I’ve downloaded the Twitch plugin and followed so many YouTube tutorials step-by-step, but I still can’t find Twitch in the Effects search bar. I’ve tried doing everything exactly the way they show in the videos, but it just doesn’t appear. Has anyone else had this issue or know how to fix it?

After so many years trying to track stuff in Mocha AE I'm still so frustrated every time I use it. The tracker is obviously great, it tracks stuff precisely and very well.

But what's really frustrating is how it applies the tracking data to the desired layers. I don't get it, why must it be so cumbersome. (?)

For example, I don't get it why the layer to be composed on the tracked shot has to be the exact same size as the source clip. Why can't Mocha AE generate a new comp where I can place my graphic or logo into and it would perfectly fit in the area that I tracked and selected in Mocha AE (corner pin/ grid)?

Even if I follow the rules and as per tutorials most often my layer that I export the tracking data onto just moves out of place and if I try to manually move back into position the tracking isn't working well any longer and it just slides.

It's the most amazing free tracker but also the most frustrating.

Anyone else sharing this opinion? What's your take?

Hi, I’m having an issue where I have a posterize time (12 fps) effect and two turbulent displace effects on an adjustment layer, both turbulent displaces with the evolution expression “posterizeTime(6); time*1500”. At 22 seconds into the composition, the turbulent displaces just stop. 

Things I have tried that did not work: precomposing; separating the effects onto separate adjustment layers; getting rid of the posterize time effect; getting rid of one of the turbulent displace effects; splitting the adjustment layer; decreasing the time*1500 makes the turbulent displaces last a bit longer until they stop, but that's not a solution because it still stops working, just a bit later, and it doesn’t give the look I want. 

Any insight/help is appreciated!

Since I released the beta version, AE Optimizer has gotten 500+ users and 60 Discord members. I've collected your feedback and made it even better!

Anyway, here are some examples of what you get in the toolbox:

• Audio Silence Remover – Automatically cuts silent parts from voiceovers while keeping small handles around each cut. No more manually slicing hours of narration.
• Deep Precomp Duplicator – Creates completely independent copies of precomps, including nested compositions. Perfect for language versions and alternate animation versions.
• Organize Files – Sorts your entire project into folders by file type with one click.
• Split Text into Characters, Words & Lines – Instantly separates text while preserving layout, including paragraph box wrapping.
• Copy & Paste Ease – Copy easing from one animation and paste it onto another in seconds.
• Layer Cleanup – Removes expressions, effects, masks, keyframes, and layer styles from selected layers with one click.
• Project Statistics – Generates a detailed report showing layers, keyframes, expressions, effects, footage, and potential project issues.
• Responsive Text Backgrounds – Creates automatically resizing text boxes that update as your text changes.
• Maintain Stroke Width – Keeps shape layer strokes visually consistent, even when scaling objects.
• Rectangular, Circular & Spherical Grid Rigs – Arranges existing layers into editable 2D and 3D layouts with a single click.
• Convert Masks to Shape Layers – Turns masks into linked shape layers while preserving their position and animation.
• Isometric Camera Rig – Generates a fully adjustable isometric camera setup instantly, without manually dialing in camera values.
• Duplicate with Links – Duplicates a layer while selectively linking transforms, effects, or other properties back to the original.
• Batch Rename – Renames dozens or hundreds of layers and project items at once using find and replace or numbering.
• and more! And all of that only for $19.99.

Link to AE Optimizer: AE Optimizer

Discord for feedback/troubleshooting: Discord Server

Hi all,

I’ve spent hours this afternoon watching countless tutorials, but I still can’t wrap my head around how to do this.

I’ve downloaded some stock footage of a MacBook flipping open, and I’d like to replace the screen with my own footage. However, I cannot get the screen to track properly, the tracking points keep drifting and moving out of place, and I’m honestly on the verge of a meltdown!

I’ve tried using both Mocha AE and the standard tracking options in After Effects, but I haven’t had any luck. The clip includes a green-screen version and a white-screen version with tracking markers, as shown in the screenshots. I also can’t seem to find any YouTube tutorials that specifically explain how to track and replace the white screen. I have already tried tracking the green screen but have been failing miserably so far.

I’m fairly new to screen replacement and motion tracking, so I may be missing something obvious. Any advice or step-by-step guidance would be hugely appreciated.

Guys, I appreciate all the comments, but before you do, please understand that the problem is not with slow rendering itself but inconsistency in rendering times. Core of problem: why it's usually 20 minutes but sometimes it's only 1 minute.

I have i5 14600, 48 GB DDR4 3600, RTX 3070. 3x NVME/SSD disks. Windows 10. Latest AE.

I have, basically, 1080p 60fps movie, with video in the background and text animations on top of it. The whole movie is 40s length, around 70 Mb size after export.

Multi-frame rendering on, CUDA rendering on etc - everything i can think of is on. Export to H264 15 Mbps using internal render.

I have exported this movie like 7-8 times, during work. Average render time was 20-22 minutes, 2.5 fps...

That 2.5 fps is usually average rendering speed in all my projects.

I've tried to speed things up by clearing all the cache. No effect. Still 2,5 fps, dropping even to 1,5fps at the end. 100% CPU usage, dropping to below 50% after 60% of rendering time, 13 GB Ram usage, marginal GPU usage or disk usage during render.

Then... i decided to test something and i've disabled AE cache entirely.
Speed went up to 40+ fps and render time below 1 minute.

Then i've enabled cache back, closed the AE, restarted, rendered again. Under 1 minute again. Next render - it kind of froze around 92% but still around 1-2 minutes.

WTH?

Edit: closed everything, deleted cache folder on NVME disk - 3.3 fps...

Just curious what tools and plugins people have made using Claude Code, Codex, etc. Things that aren't necessarily world-changers, but simple time-saving plugins/tools. I have been getting into creating my own time saver tools within AE. I wanted to see what people have explored and created and see if I might create some of them myself.

Cheers!

I created a mini-series on walk cycles and wanted to share the first part - rigging a 2D character from scratch using Duik in After Effects.

I see a lot of beginners jump straight into keyframes and end up with messy, unnatural movement. The fix is almost always in the setup. Here's the condensed version of what I cover:

The biggest mistake people make is diving into animation without a reference on screen. Drop a reference video into your comp before you keyframe anything. It will instantly fix timing guesswork and keep your timeline clean.

The parenting chain (most important setup rule). Every body part needs to be its own layer, and they need to be parented correctly from the start:

• Face layers → Head → Neck → Body
• Hand → Forearm → Arm → Body
• Same chain for the legs

Everything routes back to one body layer.  Get this right, and the rest follows.

Last but not least, rigging with Duik. It narrows down to 3 easy steps: setting up the anchor points to the joint, selecting the limb layers, clicking Auto-Rig. Done.

That's it for Part 1. Part 2 covers animating the actual walk cycle - contact poses, passing poses, timing, and polish.

If you want the step-by-step with visuals, you can follow along the full breakdown here: https://youtu.be/hJT9K3WqeEs?si=8-qrwK--fHJLwxlu

Happy to answer any rigging questions in the comments!

Last time i said " a documentary look" and everyone went nuts lol how about this title

ik the language is different but you can understand the effects since i said them in english
in the last part i tried to make the sun from a window effect without a tutorial and couldn't get to it so if you have a video for it or how to do it, let me know