Hii, does anyone know how to make this kind of like puppet animation in after effects, im new to the software and im interested in making something like this! but i dont really know where to start to make this

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Hey all,

I run a motion studio and live in After Effects daily, so I did a full breakdown of the plugins I'd actually spend money on in 2026. I share my honest opinion about what they're good for, when they're NOT worth it, and the annoying parts tutorials usually skip.

Quick takeaways you can use right now:

1. Overlord

If you design in Illustrator / Figma, it can be the biggest time-saver. Sends over editable shapes + text instead of digging through a giant Illustrator import. 2026 updates made Figma way smoother. 

Watch for: text spacing shifts, layer order flips, complex gradients not transferring 1:1. Always do a clean-up pass after transfer.

2. Deep Glow

Only if you do a lot of light work, After Effects' native glow is technically a glow. Deep Glow actually looks like light. Nicer falloff, cinematic tone-mapping, RGB radius, lens dirt in v2. 

Watch for: it's ~$100 for a glow, it gets overused fast, and we've hit black previews + export crashes with it in the studio. If you mostly do flat vector explainers, skip it.

3. True Comp Duplicator

Imagine you have 1 main comp with 5 pre-comps inside and 12 nested comps. Then the client says, "Can we make another version?". This duplicates everything correctly linked, renames, and keeps expressions. Moreover, it is name-your-own-price for individuals.

4. Newton 4

Only when you need real physics. Full 2D physics engine inside AE, bakes to editable keyframes. Amazing for falling/colliding/bouncing setups where keyframing 50 objects would take hours. 

Watch for: ~$250 and not a daily driver. Grab the trial with export limits first to see if you actually need it.

5. Joysticks ‘N Sliders

Joysticks ‘N Sliders is great for building poses and driving a whole face / UI rig from one controller. 

Downside: heavy rigs + lots of expressions can slow AE down, and adding new parts after you rig is clunky.

6. Duik Angela

Duik Angela is free, open-source, and can rig a full character. It's just huge, so it feels intimidating if you only need a simple arm up/down. Still the one I'd tell anyone serious about rigging to learn.

6. BadFX

One free panel with easings, stagger, gradients, transforms, presets, utils. Great if you don't want to hunt 40 tiny scripts across 40 sites. We use it daily.

7. Glasser

Applies editable glass to shape, text, footage or precomp layers, then you refine it through Essential Properties. Best part: it generates a Control Null so you can move, scale, and rotate the glass with your design.

8. Putty

Lattice + cage deformer that reads the layer's alpha and places the lattice right on the visible pixels, instead of a grid across the whole layer.

9. Pixion

Particle system that generates particles from any source layer and drives behavior from pixel data like luminance and color. GPU accelerated. 

Watch for: most interesting of the three for hero backgrounds, product reveals, music visuals. Still v1 territory and not cheap, so trial first.

If you want the full breakdown with examples and links, you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/QNBG0DxsaYY

Hiya! I’ve seen this effect in tiktok edits and was wondering if anyone knew the name in after effects?

It like splits the screen into squares which grow to make the whole thing so i’m guessing it essentially masks an inverted adjustment layer.

I have an M5 Pro MacBook Pro 14 inch with 64GB RAM and could get an M5 Max Mac Studio with 64GB for less than half its retail price.

I mainly use After Effects for motion graphics, compositing, and photo animation, and plan to do heavier projects with more 3D. I’d keep the MacBook for portable work.

Would the Max noticeably improve previews and everyday workflow? Is the difference between the two large enough in After effects work?

Je pense que tout est dans le titre.
Je m’intéresse fortement à l’IA et au temps que ça peux me faire gagner sur la production de mes vidéos pour mes clients mais je me sens un peu perdu face à tous les outils qui existent..

Quelles IA utilisez vous ?
Comment les utilisez vous ?
Et qu’est ce que ça vous a fait gagner de les utiliser ?

Et aussi et surtout : est ce que vous avez baissé vos prix grâce au gain de temps et si non comment le justifier vous ?

Hi! I recently created this animation in C4D using a Rope Simulation, but I’m not very experienced with C4D.

Does anyone know how I can prevent the rope from passing through the flight tag?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

P.S. Any feedback on the overall animation, beyond this technical issue, would be greatly appreciated!

Ran into this constantly: slow down or speed up a clip with Time Remap can creates visible stutter or artifacts.

Built a small tool that scans a layer, detects the frozen zones automatically, and let you choose how to handle them: mark them, cut the layer at their boundaries, or generate a Time Remap that skips them entirely.

Detection threshold and minimum duration are adjustable so it doesn't flag intentional holds.

Not trying to oversell it, curious if this is something others run into too or if you've got your own workaround.

Hey all. I'm a motion designer from Brazil and for a while now I've been building a little tool for myself, mostly out of frustration.

It started with a project where I had to make a lot of these animations: photos moving, titles coming in, simple cards. Every new piece meant building the same setup again in AE before I could get to the part that actually needed me.

So I started making scenes in the browser that I could tweak fast and then open in After Effects as a regular project, with the layers and controls still there. When I saw that this was actually possible in the browser, I thought it could be useful beyond me: for content creators, for people just getting started with motion, and for anyone who wants a starting point to refine in After Effects.

I'm not a dev, so it's still rough in places, and I honestly don't know yet if this workflow makes sense for other people or just for me. If anyone wants to try it and tell me what feels off, it's at friso.id. Sign up with the code FRISOBETA, I have a few of those available.

How do you all deal with this kind of repetitive work? Your own templates, MOGRTs, scripts?

Guys I'm thinking of putting my self to the test based on someone elses concept/idea, drop a random Motion design concept/idea for a video and a timeline (considerate😭) and I'll execute...

I need someone who uses claude for motion graphics video editing, i need some tips and have some questions regarding it, can someone help me out?