After Effects is the king of motion graphics. Its extensive tools, effects, and sheer power of movement manipulation, along with a plethora of functions allow it to appear almost everywhere you look. Youtube intros, TV commercials, movies, etc.
But even the all-powerful needs help, so here are my top 10 scripts or plug-ins for After Effects.
- Console FX - Free.
This free plug-in by VideoCopilot is one of the most useful and most time-saving ones you'll find. With a shortcut you can bring up a small menu where you can type effects to apply to your layers. No more going through the effects window (also saves space by eliminating the effects and presets window from your layout!)
- Rubberhose - $45
Every animator's dream. While Duik is still the king in character animation (check it out if you don't know it), some people think it's too saturated with features. With rubberhose you can quickly create paths that behave as limbs or the body of your character. Easily customizable, quickworkflow and a lot of options, can't be overlooked.
- Trapcode Particular - $400
Most people know about Particular, but to those who don't, it's an extremely powerful particle simulator right inside of After Effects. Motion Designers have been creating stunning work with it since its beginnings.
- Optical Flares - $125
Even if flares have been used and abused, this plug-in earns its place due to its extensive library and versatility to create your own flares to match any project.
- RSMB - $90 or $150
Reel smart motion blur is an essential tool I've been using more and more. Especially with 3D renders, it's a lot faster to apply RSMB to a 3D sequence than rendering it out with motion blur from the 3D program.
- Squash & Stretch - Free or $100 for pro
Squash & Stretch is a handy script with some awesome pre-made animations and sound effects.
However, I mostly use it for it's couple of workflow enhancer buttons. There's one that staggers AE layers (a lot better than AE's solution to it) Another one that explodes individual letters from a word and gives them their own precomps (a text exploder), and one that will precomp any layer you select and crop it to its dimensions, as opposed to what AE does which is precomp it the same size as your comp settings.
- Explode Shape Layers - $30
This one is a very useful script for working with shape layers, especially from Illustrator files. It has a lot of other workflow enhancers as well. Well worth a look.
- SpringyFX - $40
Springy FX is one of those scripts that you don't know you need until you get it. It's a set of tools that enhance your current motion by adding secondary motion. It works great with other scripts and plug-ins such as Element 3D (also worth checking out), rubberhose, and duik.
- Ray Dynamic Color - $30
There's nothing more frustrating than handling color in after effects, you'd think Adobe would bring Adobe Color's great functionality into after effects.... in a good way. But no, it's terrible. But good for us, Ray Dynamic Color exists!
If you haven't checked it out yet, I recommend it 100%.
- Motion v2.0 - $35
Probably the best workflow enhancer out there right now, Motion was made by motion designer Matt Jylkka, and it has anchor point controls, quick keyframe and curves controls, as well as things like sorting the project out, creating a null parented to any selected layer, etc etc etc.
$35 is a steal for this script.
And that's it!
Do you have any favorites that I didn't include or might not know about? Let me know, I like to try everything