After Effects Plug-ins Every User Should Demo

Lets face it. All companies involved with any kind of post-production deal with the same problem. Given there are a few times in a producers life when one can play with effects for hours to get just the right look, feel and style, most of the time we’re forced to crank it out to be ready yesterday while still maintaining a graphical quality similar to the other high budget projects. At times, it’s enough to make a producer go crazy. Well thanks to the wonderful world of plug-ins life is a whole lot easier. This post is for fellow After Effects users looking for the right plug-in to either save time and/or make stuff look really really ridiculously good looking. So without further impedance here’s my personal list of the top After Effects Plug-ins I’ve been fortunate enough to use. (In no particular order)

• TRAPCODE PLUGS:

- PARTICULAR is a 3D particle system which you control via the built in or comp camera. To see examples visit their GALLERY.
- 3D SROKE is exactly what it sounds like. You’ve seen this on the WB as well as many other commercials. 3D Stroke allows you to animate organic lines based off the mask shape in a layer.
- SHINE is the overly used effect that clients will actually ask for by name. It emits rays of light from the layer applied. Word of caution on this one. Do not use the default Shine settings unless you want your project to look like the cookie cutter Shine logo animation that the world has seen over and over. In talking with Peter Norby (creator of Trapcode) he commented that Trapcode prides themselves in the fact that you can apply the raw effect and it looks great without any tweaking which I agree with 100% but the only problem is that it’s so good that everyone uses it’s default. Which I guess isn’t a problem for sales, but as far as being original well, you get my point. Please use tastefully for your own sake.
- STARGLOW creates a unique glow with angled rays. You can customize each rays length and color, nice.
- SOUND KEYS - Someone out there right now is looking for this plug-in. Sound Keys will save you hours animating an object to audio. With this plug-in you can set the level marker of your bass, mid, and treble and tell the object to animate somehow (scale, position, etc.) only whenever the audio hits that frequency. View the samples to get a real idea of what it can do.
- LUX – Ever needed for the light in After Effects to show the cone? Well now all you have to do is apply Lux. Yes, it’s that easy and that rocks.

• DIGITAL ANARCHY:

- SMOOTH TILER – Think of a kaleidoscope. It’s similar to that, in that this plug-in mirrors your image on different sides creating a very unusual outcome.
- DESIGNER BLUR is cool because it has preset shapes you can blur your image into (circle, square, star) and the thing I like best about this plug is that you can choose custom and import your own shape to blur. I think I may die from the overwhelming joy.
- NOISE COMPLEX makes some very nice noise, which will aid nicely when attempting to recreate the old time footage of a history portion of a video.
- PSUNAMI WATER – Holy crap, this is by far the best water I’ve ever seen created with After Effects. If you need water and you need it to be done in AE look no further. Try the demo!

• MAGIC BULLET SUITE:

- LETTERBOXER – Hmm, I wonder what this does? Yes it’s simple, but how often do you spend time creating a black solid and adding a mask to it to crop your video to letterbox? This effective plug allows you to manipulate the aspect ratio of the letter box quickly and easily.
- LOOK SUITE – And yes it certainly does! Polish off your finished video with a film look or apply a color tint to it, adjust the contrast, gamma, saturation and add diffusion all in one place! Gives video that extra something that so many others lack.
- MISFIRE – The MisFire is a complete set of effects that has anything to do with fire. Need the little pieces of ash flying up through the air, no problem. Heat waves above the flames warping the background? Done deal. It’s not just fire however, there are also effects such as “Basic (and Deep) Scratches” making video look like old film and “Vignette” which I used to create from scratch using another black layer and a feathered mask. This is way easier and faster. You’ll be seeing me use this one in the future.

• OBVIOUS FX:

- ERODILATION – Hooray for free-ness! Seems to blur the image in box form creating a nice stylized look when applied in moderation.

• ZAXWERKS:

- 3D INVIGORATOR – After picking my jaw up off the floor, this plug-in allowed me to produce the most professional-looking 3D text in After Effects I have ever seen! Zaxwerks will save you tons of time by adding z-depth to text or any Illustrator 8 file. Very clean and effective. They also have a stand-alone program called Pro Animator if you’re not so AE friendly.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I have. Learn to use them tastefully behind a strong creative idea and you’re on your way to creating award-winning motion graphics!