20 useful plugins and scripts for After Effects

It's no secret that After Effects, being a monopoly in its software segment, isn't developing fast enough and doesn't always meet the user's needs. Therefore, it is natural that the number of its scripts and plugins grows exponentially. This article is intended to help the novice (and not only) motion designer to pick out the most necessary and useful ones.?

Let's specify right away: the presented list is far from being complete (it's impossible to cover everything), but most of the listed plugins will definitely be useful for practical work.

So, what plugins and scripts, in our opinion, can greatly facilitate the life of digital creators and save them a lot of time and nerves???

MOTION

https://www.mtmograph.com/products/motion-4

A lifesaver for many motion designers. A kind of "Swiss knife".? The most popular and very convenient function is the management of speed and value graphs. You no longer need to constantly refer to the charts: you can change the "keys" with a click of the mouse.?

There is also the ability to reposition Anchor Point, line up layers in a sequence with a certain step, clone them, as well as the indispensable functions of creating elastic and bounce animations with a single click.

PAST MULTIPLE KEYFRAMES

https://aescripts.com/paste-multiple-keyframes/

It's a simple script, but it saves a lot of time! AE, for some reason, doesn't know how to correctly copy the keys selected from multiple layers. That's where this simple tool comes in handy.

SMART KEY REVERSE

https://aescripts.com/smart-key-reverse/

Also simple, but just as often helpful.? Sometimes we need not only the initial animation, but also a similar final animation. For example, we have a complex appearance of an object and we need the same hiding, i.e. the keys must go in reverse order.? When it's two keys, that's easy. But what if there are a lot of keys?? This script will do it for us.?

TRAPCODE PARTICULAR, STARDUST, PARTICLE WORLD (the latter built into AE)

https://www.maxon.net/en/red-giant/trapcode/particular

https://aescripts.com/stardust/

Every motion designer must know how to create and work with particle systems. Particles are an essential part of design: snow, dust, dirt, rain, sparks, bubbles, you name it!

For a long time Particular was the absolute leader, but in the last few years it was seriously competed by no less powerful Stardust.? Both have their pros and cons. We recommend you to get acquainted with both of them, at least on a basic level.?

Both of them have presets that allow you to start not from scratch, but with a ready-made set-up.?

This, as they say, is a "must have".

SABER

https://www.videocopilot.net/blog/2016/03/new-plug-in-saber-now-available-100-free/

Oh, how many wonderful super-beautiful things have been created with this plugin!

With the help of the mask paths we can create amazing glow lines. ? There are many presets present that simulate fire, energy and other light lines of different shapes and colors.

NEWTON

https://aescripts.com/newton/

Do you want an apple to fall from a tree realistically? Or a box falling off a table, hitting a chair, and then flipping over and hitting the floor? Or make a realistic fall of a ball, hundreds of balls hitting each other? Forget about the long minutes of setting up charts!

"Newton will do it all for you!

A great physics simulator. Not only allows you to simulate solid objects, but also create realistic liquids. There are many tutorial videos on this topic on YouTube.?

DUIK

https://rxlaboratory.org/tools/duik/

The number one tool for the character animator in After Effects.?

It contains not only a system of "bones" that allows you to link the body parts of a character into a single skeleton, but also numerous animation presets that automate many processes. For example, you can create a gait or a running character with a single click.

It also contains many different utilities to make life easier for the animator.?

OPTICAL FLARES and DEEP GLOW

https://www.videocopilot.net/products/opticalflares/

https://aescripts.com/deep-glow/

VideoCopilot's customizable highlights and highlights are great! They will bring your scene to life and give it depth and atmosphere.? Even if you just want a glimmer of a coin in the trunk, Optical Flares is indispensable!

Unfortunately, the built-in glow effect in AE does not always work satisfactorily and has many limitations.? The "Deep Glow" plugin removes all these limitations and gives the user a truly beautiful and deep glow.

BG RENDERER and AFTER CODECS

https://aescripts.com/bg-renderer/

https://aescripts.com/aftercodecs/

Multi-core processors have not surprised anyone for a long time. Amazingly, up until the latest versions, After Effects only uses one CPU core when rendering to the maximum!? This problem is solved plugin BG Render.? Not only will it be able to squeeze the most out of your CPU, but it will do so in the background, allowing you to continue to work in AE.

Alas, the developers removed the popular x264 and x265 codecs from the list of available codecs for rendering. This option is left to Media Encoder.

This is not always convenient, so we advise you to have the "After Codecs" plugin handy, which will give you back the ability to render with these codecs directly in After Effects

OVERLORD

https://www.battleaxe.co/overlord

A kind of "teleport" between After Effects and Illustrator.?

With it you can import layers from AI to AE as shapes in one click. Or send back as a vector image.

VIDEOLANSER'S TRANSITIONS (Seamless Transitions)

https://videohive.net/item/handy-seamless-transitions-pack-script/18967340

The most popular and most frequently used tool for creating transitions. You will come in handy in most of your works, no matter what field of the motion design industry you work in.?

There is also a version for Premiere Pro

FX MONSTER, RTFX GENERATOR

https://fxmonster.net/

https://videohive.net/item/rtfx-generator-440-fx-pack/19563523

At the moment leaders among providers of quality animation assets for motion design. We mention them here because they come with a plugin that has a friendly interface that allows you to see a preview of the animation, as in Explorer and one-click transfer the desired assembly in your project.?

In some areas of motion design, such as the creation of advertising creatives, are vital.

PT_EXPRESSEDIT, PT_EFFECTSEARCH, PT_TEXTEDIT

https://aescripts.com/pt_expressedit/

https://aescripts.com/pt_effectsearch/

https://aescripts.com/pt_textedit/

The importance and necessity of these three great scripts from Paul Tuersley cannot be overstated!

If you often use a lot of expressions in your projects, you probably know how difficult and time-consuming it can be to make changes to all the defined expressions. Or find and replace this or that word, code, reference.?

pt_expressEdit is an indispensable tool for searching, replacing, copying, deleting expressions. Once you start using it, you will save a lot of time,?

The same goes for effects and text. Easily and efficiently work with effects and text on different layers and compositions in one place!? If you want to remove a certain effect at once (selectively, perhaps), be my guest!? Want to find text that isn't recognized by the system without opening all your project compositions? Or want to change the font of specific text layers throughout the project?? No problem!? pt_effectSearch and pt_textEdit will help you

GIFGUN

https://aescripts.com/gifgun/

A great script that creates a gif from your animation.

EXPRESSION UNIVERSALIZER

https://aescripts.com/expressionuniversalizer/

An extremely useful script for those who use expressions in projects.

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Finally, we want to remind you of a few scripts that are built into AE, but, as practice shows, for some reason, not very widely known to users.

They are called via "File - Dependencies - ...".

Collect Files - source materials are often located in different folders on the disk, and if you delete those folders, you will lose important for the project assemblies.? This script collects all the materials you need for your project in one place. It is strictly necessary to use this tool when transferring a project to a customer, for example.?

Remove Unused Footage - the name speaks for itself.)

Reduce Project - reduces the project to its minimum size. You select the compositions you want to keep, and the script will delete all unrelated and unattached Items in that composition.? The script is extremely useful when working with large, voluminous projects, but be careful when working with expressions. The script does not take into account references in the code of expressions. That is, if your expression refers to a layer or comosa that is not nested in your selected compositions, you will get an error when you delete unnecessary items.?

Find Missing Effects, Find Missing Fonts, Find Missing Footage are self-explanatory. They can also be called through the search bar in the Project panel.

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As stated earlier, this is not a complete list of plugins and scripts you will probably need. And not even a hundredth of it.? We just wanted to mention the most popular and most frequently used by motion designers around the world.?

If you'd like to share information about your other favorite After Effects add-ons, please do so in the comments.? Our readers, your colleagues, will be very grateful!?

We hope that this article will help you become more efficient and save one of life's most important values - time!