Top 20 Free After Effects Plugins You Need in 2022

now some of these plugins are the big  fancy look at me type effect that will   open up a world of possibilities in  your work most are tools that do one   really specific task really well and  i guarantee that you'll find at least   something in this video that will improve your  workflow in after effects or your money back now all of these are free some have a name  your price option so you can pay what you want   but if you find them useful and you have the  means send some dosh their way they're almost all   independent developers and a lot of these tools  are better than some of the most popular paid   plugins you'll find links to everything in the  description and these are no particular order   until we get to the top four that's when the  knights come out ae juice gif lets you in one   click render out a gif of your comp and it's got  a fair few useful settings there as well next is   butt capper and this lets you quickly adjust the  caps of your stroke if we want rounded caps we can   click the rounded caps icon and if we want rounded  corners we hold alt or option and click that icon   again and do the same for modded all bevel caps as  well displacer pro this is essentially an upgraded   version of the displacement map effect that lets  you not just displace with the x and y position   but with rotation and scale as well and you can  also add chromatic aberration as well this is   really cool for a data moshing style glitch effect  decomposed text allows you to split up text layers   by word or character into separate layers in one  click so you can animate them each individually   create 3d shapes generates common 3d objects  in one click pyramids cubes cylinders they're   all here no mucking about reposition anchor point  this does exactly what it says on the tin you can   quickly and easily reposition the anchor points  of your layers it works on multiple layers too   rd composition setter this allows you to change  the composition settings of multiple comps at once   it's really helpful if you need to adjust the  frame rate of your whole project or just resize   some comps advanced selection allows you to select  multiple layers based on any parameter that you   can think of the layer type the blending mode or  even a string of characters in the layer name this   is super useful in complex projects with lots of  layers bendy nulls allows you to bend layers using   the cc bend effect but it links the ends to nulls  so you can easily reposition your layer without   the effect breaking shape repeater baker this  allows you to select any repeater you have on a   shape layer hit bake repeater and will separate  them all into separate shapes within that layer   rigged box an effect preset that you can apply  to a shape layer and it creates this rectangle   or rigged box and you can adjust all of its  properties up here in the effects control panel   without having to toggle down and adjust all of  these settings it is great for ui animation the   next is type array it applies custom interpolation  to your characters or words using delays or   markers now it's pretty hard to explain concisely  but if you work with type animators do check this   out next is sorti this allows you to quickly  sort your layers in your layer stack based on   a whole bunch of properties if we want to sort the  order of these squares in our timeline by opacity   we can select opacity select ascending hit the  play button and now they're all rearranged from   most opaque to least opaque rift now this lets  you sequence and move your layers really easily   across your timeline there are a whole bunch of  options we can easily put them into a sequence   but also have them ease in on this curve we can  even randomize them as well true comp duplicator   this lets you duplicate your entire hierarchy of  comps and pre-comps without the need to duplicate   and replace each one here we've got three comps  nested within one another but we can select   our top comp adjust any settings we need and hit  duplicate selected and that will create duplicates   of those that we can adjust without messing with  the original comps highly in now this is a single   button that duplicates the layer you have selected  but also links all of the animated properties to   the original so you can make any adjustment to  the original layer and it will be duplicated on   the duplicate now we're at the top four and these  are the best plugins that money can buy but free   saber by video copilot if you've seen a lightsaber  in absolutely anything made in the last five years   chances are it was made with saber you can create  energy beams lasers portals neon lights with no   trouble at all and with a ton of customization  options and for an honorable mention on this list   what saber does for lightsabers orb does for  planets so if you want to make ominous planet   shots check out all from video copilot which is  also free next is Duik Bassel 2 by rainbox lab   it is an incredible open source character rigging  plugin it can be intimidating at first because of   just how deep it is but it contains pretty much  any tool you need to rig any sort of creature you   can imagine doing is what i use to teach character  animation in my master motion design course   and if you're new to rigging and just want to get  started with something simple i would recommend   limber it is the most simple and intuitive rigging  tool that i've used it is paid but worth every   penny and number two on my list is fx console by  video copilot now absolutely everybody that has   after effects should have this installed it's  essentially a search bar for effects but it is   way more useful than that makes it out to be so  with a layer selected we can trigger it with a   shortcut and the search bar pops up or we can  search for an effect and simply hit enter to   add it to that layer you can save your favorite  effects in the toolbar as well so if i want to   add a fill i can just hit one on my keyboard and  it's also really useful for saving a screenshot   of your composition or my favorite technique is  to copy it to the clipboard and then just paste   it directly into photoshop now i use this all  the time when i'm making my thumbnails but also   for any documents that i need to send to a client  and the number one free plugin that i would say   ranks very highly amongst paid plugins as well  is ease copy now this is a brilliant plugin that   allows you to copy and paste easing values from  your keyframes say you've just animated your   favorite yellow square rotating you spent ages  in the graph editor getting the motion curve   just right and now you want to animate its  position and scale as well all you need to do is   select your ease keyframes hit copy select your  other keyframes and hit paste ease and you are   done that same graph that same motion curve and  acceleration is applied to those keyframes as well   now it might seem really basic and it kind of  is but it is so useful especially if you want   to add any overlapping action which you can do  by simply offsetting these keyframes trust me   it is 10 times more useful than however useful  you think it is at the moment i use it so much   i wouldn't be surprised if it showed up on my  spotify wrapped now if this is how useful the   free plugins are you can imagine how useful they  get once you start exchanging money for them   here's a completely unrelated video of my top 10  paid plugins do with that information or you will

Channel: Ben Marriott

Views: 661,774

Keywords: After Effects, Adobe After Effects, After Effects Plugins, Free plugins, best plugins, top plugins, after effects workflow, after effects faster, learn after effects, best after effects, top after effects, best free plugins, ease copy, saber, duik bassel, character rigging, fx console, after effects tricks, after effects tips, motion graphic design, motion graphics, gfx, vfx, motion design, mograph, ben marriott

Id: URm9aFOEGfU

Length: 6min 26sec (386 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 13 2022