Top 12 Best Essential After Effects Plugins for Both Free and Paid
After Effects, plugins are a great way to save time and effort when creating animation elements from scratch as opposed to After Effects project templates. Plugins make the Backend of After Effects as user-friendly as the built-in effects by adding tools and features. We’ve compiled a list of the best paid and free After Effects plugins to help you quickly create animations.
1. Integration of Adobe Motion Matrix:
You can easily access the entire Motion Array file library within After Effects by installing the Motion Array Adobe Integrations plugin. No more downloading music, videos, or resources for website templates. Instead, you get a control panel from the Motion Array plugin that you can drag and drop directly onto your timeline.
2. Displacer:
Cool hover effects that can be rotated and scaled for a more polished appearance are easy to create for your videos. This plugin is a great addition to your arsenal because it offers powerful map adjustments like smoothness, acceleration, and gamma.
3. Stardust Faster Than Light Version 1.5.0:
Stardust is an After Effects 3D particle creator that lets you make 3D particle elements that look great. You can exist and interact in the same shared space by combining 3D models, particles, and effects with this modern plugin. You can make motion graphics and beautiful 3D animations with Stardust.
4. Maker of Free Action Effects:
Free Action FX Builder is a plugin for 2D animation that makes it easier to create stunning motion shapes, energy, fire, water, smoke, and explosion effects. This plugin’s 2D cartoon style makes it ideal for creating custom text and transition effects and 2D animation sequences.
5. Free reflection:
You can control the reflection of two-dimensional shapes in three-dimensional space with the free plugin for Video Copilot called Reflection. Slideshows, presentations, and in-product videos all benefit greatly from this plugin. Your highlights can be manipulated in a variety of ways, including blur, tilt, tint, and blend style.
6. Hologram Maker for Free:
With this plugin, you can easily create your hologram effect with just a few clicks thanks to its great design and fine details. The direction and size of the scan lines, interference, flicker, color, and brightness are just a few of the settings you can change.
7. Saber Plugin for Free:
Any entertainer must have a saber! You can make amazing stroke-based light effects, neon text effects, lightning bolts, laser shots, and even lightsaber effects with this straightforward plugin. The Saber plugin also provides a variety of styles, including lava, electricity, and energy, each of which can be customized in terms of color and intensity. The use of this plugin is surprisingly simple, and it’s great.
8. Magic and ease:
For animators working with iconography, typography, or infographics, Ease, and Wizz is a handy little plugin. Quart, Sine, Bounce, and Elastic are just a few of the in/out animation presets that can be easily controlled with this plugin’s new After Effects panel.
Also Read – How to Edit and Make Awesome Audio Effects in After Effects?
9. Cheap DUIK:
After Effects has a fantastic rigging plugin called Duik Bassel.2 for 2D animation. This plugin is for you if you want to make animations of characters in two dimensions. Although DUIK is a complex piece of equipment that requires some time to learn, once it is operational, 2D animation and camera work are a breeze.
10. Cause of failure:
It does exactly what you think it does, given its name, Glitch Builder. It gives you access to a glitch panel that includes 100 amazing glitch effects that you can apply directly to your video, image, shape, and text layers. Build millions of combinations using each effect’s noise, flicker, color, and waves with increased control.
11. Plexus:
A truly advanced animation style is provided by the Plexus plugin. You can generate stunning 3D plexus shapes, create relationships between them, and move them as flexible shapes with Composer. Your imagination is your only constraint at this point.
12. Flow:
You never knew you needed the plugin Flow. The graphics editor in After Effects is probably familiar to anyone who spends time keyframing animation. Preset animation settings, intuitive panels, and controls for adjusting animations replace graphics in Flow.
The plugin’s benefits and drawbacks:
Plugins help you get more done and save a lot of time, but they need to be installed correctly for them to work. These plugins are easy to install, and most of them come with instructions. However, if you want more information on how to use After Effects plugins, this video will be of assistance.
Maintain project organization:
You should organize your project both in AE and on your hard drive because some plugins can use a lot of processing power. Try to regularly back up your work, create sequences in your projects with a lot of effects, and import them into the main when you’re finished.
Seek out updates:
You ought to be informed whenever your plugin receives updates, and you ought to ensure that everything is up to date. Some old plugins are useless. Additionally, attempting to do so may break your project, depending on the plugin. Similarly, some plugins may cease to function aftereffects have been updated. If you encounter this problem, please inquire with the developer for information regarding a bug fix or solution.
Using After Effects, you can make your own.
Using plugins, you can make your version of After Effects with unique animation features. Using plugins, you can learn new skills and come up with innovative new ways to make your work. Create a plugin collection that meets your requirements.
When creating keyframed animations and effects from scratch, plugins are an excellent way to save time and effort. But more than that, it may be able to assist you in developing novel effects and introducing novel modes of operation that you may not have considered before. Download the best Adobe After Effects plugins now that you know where to find them.