5 Of The Best Plugins For After Effects

Key Takeaways

Explore free and paid alternatives to Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite, except for After Effects which reigns supreme for VFX and graphics.
Essential plugins like TimeOffset and Overlord simplify complex tasks, while Duik Angela enhances 2D animations in After Effects.
Streamline your workflow in After Effects with plugins like FX Console, Newton 4 for realistic physics, and explore other third-party extensions.

If you’re wary of Adobe’s business practices, the offerings in the company’s Creative Cloud suite have plenty of free and paid alternatives. Many of these apps are just as good, or sometimes, even better than their Adobe counterparts. However, After Effects is a major exception to this statement, as you won’t find the same robust set of tools for VFX generation and graphics manipulation anywhere else.

Editing an image in Adobe Photoshop with the help of Nik 7 Silver Efex

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As if that’s not enough, After Effects lets you import plugins that can further boost your creativity by adding even more features to the app. So, we’ve put together a list of the most essential ones that are worth using regardless of whether you’re a newcomer or a motion graphics maestro.

5 TimeOffset

To simplify the use of Timelines

While motion graphics is After Effects’ forte, video editing is not. As such, the situation can get rather cumbersome if you have multiple layers and keyframes that require precise timing calibrations.

That’s where TimeOffset comes in handy by allowing you to offset the timing of any layer in accordance with the Playhead. While its functionality is a bit limited, the ability to move keyframes as you please can be a godsend for anyone whose AE workload involves extensive use of the Timeline panel.

4 Overlord

Its features are even more impressive than its name

Adobe After Effects and Illustrator running side by side

Although After Effects is compatible with other Creative Cloud products, going through multiple menus just to import your designs from Illustrator can get tedious at times. Overlord simplifies this procedure by letting you send all the layers of your design from Illustrator to After Effects with the press of a button.

The best part is that Overlord preserves the text elements, guide layers, centered anchor points, and linear and gradient colors when importing the shapes or layers to After Effects. What’s more, the plugin also lets you send the layers back and forth between the two apps, allowing you to fine-tune your illustrations without navigating through a series of options.

3 Dive Angela

Perfect for 2D animators

The After Effects interface with the Duik Angela plugins

Since Animation isn’t After Effects’ strong point, the rudimentary tools in AE are quite lacking for anyone who wants to create correctly rigged 2D animations. Fortunately, the Duik Angela plugin contains a host of scripts developed specifically for rigging.

Installing it is slightly more difficult than your average After Effects plugin, but the sheer number of bone, controller, and expression scripts make Duik Angel worth it for any 2D animator.

2 FX Console

To simplify the process of inserting your favorite effects

After Effects supports multiple visual effects, though adding them to your project involves going through a plethora of tabs, menus, and sub-menus. FX Console streamlines your workflow by letting you browse all the effects using a simple search-based UI.

Once you’ve selected a layer, pressing Ctrl+Spacebar will bring up the FX Console plugin, where you can search for the specific VFX and add it to your footage. You can also create multiple presets for your often-used effects and switch between them seamlessly.

1 Newton 4

Ultra-realistic physics, for a price

The Newton 4 plug in highlighted in After Effects

Simulating real-life physics without dedicated tools can be a daunting task, regardless of your skill level. Newton 4 is a physics engine that can turn any 2D object on your After Effects layer into a rigid body element with its own density, dampening, bounciness, and other physics parameters.

Apart from that, the plugin also supports explosion effects, soft body simulations, and can even provide life-like motion for objects floating on water. Its $249 price tag is on the expensive side, but there’s no better 2D physics simulator than Newton 4 for After Effects users.

Which After Effects plugin is your favorite?

Besides these five plugins, there are plenty of other third-party additions that can improve your workflow in After Effects. For instance, KBar3 provides an interactive toolbar where you place your frequently used tools and effects for easy access. Likewise, DOF PRO is a powerful plugin for anyone who needs realistic depth-of-field VFX in their projects. If you find the glow effects in AE to be lacking, Deep Glow is worth checking out, though you’ll need a decent GPU to utilize this plugin.

Affinity Photo, Publisher, and Designer app icons.

If you’re still not satisfied with the tools available on After Effects, you might want to visit the AEScripts website and the official Adobe Exchange marketplace. Fair warning, you might end up spending a lot of time (and money) on the platforms, as they are chock-full of handy AE plugins.