I haven’t had time this year to make a wee halloween anim so thought i’d pull this from the archive. Made for last year’s Motion Collab, where the theme was “dancing skeletons!” ✨💀✨

Problem: I make motion graphics for a living, and maps come up all the time: explainers, news, documentaries, travel pieces, data stories etc. But the map tool options for After Effects are expensive, the full feature set sits behind a monthly subscription (designed base maps, satellite imagery), for the best results you often need other plugins on top, and setting up complex data visualisations can be very hard to do.

Comparison: GEOlayers is the long-standing default for maps inside AE, and it is an excellent plugin. But its full functionality (designed base maps, satellite imagery, 3D buildings etc.) comes through a MapTiler subscription of about $30 a month, on top of the $329 plugin price. Its 3D landscapes and globe also rely on other plugins (Helium, Plexus, FreeForm Pro, Trapcode Mir, Video Copilot Orb), some of which are also very expensive, another expense on top of the subscription. That puts it out of reach for a lot of people.

Atlas is one price with everything included, built from free open data, with its own globe and no subscription or extra plugins required.

Quick and easy: Just pick a place and a look, press Build Map, and you have a map in seconds. By default it's one sharp raster image that plays at footage speed, even through big camera moves. Or build it as native, editable vector shape layers when you want to recolour or animate every element. Animate however you like, press Update map, and Atlas makes the map cover and stay sharp through your whole move, from a country right down to street level.

It's very intuitive, extremely fast, and powerful. If you can use AE, you can use Atlas.

Two things no other map tool for AE does:

• Atlas Particles: a free, bundled, companion particle effect that turns your data into motion. For example, animate every flight from a hub, a day of bike journeys, a month of earthquakes, GPS tracks, flows along routes, live heat maps and 3D point clouds. Have a stream of particles show the route between two places. It plays real time in your comp, and you can have thousands of particles flying around in very intricate setups, and it is brilliant for data vis.
• Atlas MCP: ask Claude (or any AI app that speaks MCP) in plain words, such as "a dark map of Europe, pins on these five cities, arcs from London, fly in to Paris", and it builds it in your comp as real, editable layers. It also reads Atlas's full manual, so it knows what every button does. It runs on your own machine. You can also use Claude to drive your data visualisations. Just point it at your data file (.csv, .gpx etc) and tell Claude what you want. It'll do the setup in a few seconds.

Pricing: $149 one-off, on sale now for $119: https://aescripts.com/atlas/

Docs and tutorials: https://mooviemakers-docs.pages.dev/atlas/

Maintenance/Support: Atlas has a full roadmap, so it will only get better. I have a proven track record of supporting my products (have a look at the release history of Pluck and PreFlight), and I aim to answer support tickets the same day. 1.0.1 came out today, three days after launch, fixing expression errors in non-English After Effects and adding full online docs.

AI: AI Disclaimer: Human Validated

The linear propogation, one fucking frame at a time. It is so incredibly time consuming. It feels like a feature released in 2004 and never updated. I am on a M4 Max Mac Studio, AE is using only ONE core of my absolute tank of a CPU. It's unacceptable. Then God forbid you move your playhead, gotta repropagate everything all over. Want it locked? Oh gotta repropagate for the freeze AGAIN! Adobe get your shit together.

5,000 downloads in the first week! Holy moly thanks so much for that.

A bunch of you asked for a longer walkthrough, so I made five little scenes and used each new tool. You can see what they actually do and where they fit. It's about 10 minutes and there are chapters if you want to jump to a tool.

Motion Dock is completely free. No trial, no watermark and nothing locked. I don't even collect your email unless you want updates on more free tools. Works with After Effects 2022 and newer.

https://motionfun.net/motion-dock

What I build next comes from your requests, so let me know what tools you'd want. For bugs email [hey@davey.design](mailto:hey@davey.design) or DM me here.

AI Disclaimer: I use an AI-assisted workflow, but I've been a dev for years before AI (FreqReact). I design the structure myself, review it deeply, and have thousands of people using Motion Fun tools :]

This was genuinely one of those projects I loved working on.

The client was looking for someone who could take ownership of the entire project, from understanding the product and shaping the visual direction to refining individual scenes and bringing everything together, without needing constant back and forth.

Before jumping into the visuals, I spent time researching how INFLUCTS actually works, understanding its core principles, and figuring out how to communicate a fairly complex product through a clean, engaging visual story.

From refining the creative direction to improving specific segments, I handled the entire process independently. And honestly, one of the best parts was hearing back from the client. The video required zero revision requests, and the client mentioned how happy they were that I understood the product so well.

That kind of feedback makes all the research and effort worthwhile.

Of course, there's always room to improve. I'm always open to honest feedback, constructive criticism, and different perspectives, so I'd genuinely love to hear what you think about the video.

Check out the product: https://influcts.com

I'm also currently open to new projects. If you have a project in mind, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram.

Reposts and sharing with anyone who might find this work interesting are always appreciated!

Hi all. I’m importing some components into AE from Ai, and I’m looking to see why my blend/shadow effect is not importing correctly… any help is super appreciated.

I previously posted QuickEase to help me beta test it and now it's finally ready :)

Problem:
Most plugins are a panel that you have to dock somewhere, and either support only speed or value easing, and you have to dig through menus to find the right tool etc. Easing should be simple, with all the required tools available right at your cursor.

What it does:
It's a popup right at your cursor that lets you set easing with just click and drag (think Motion but also for value graph). Select your keys, pick an ease, done.

Core features:

• Curve Repair - keeps easing exactly the same when you move your keys or change their values
• Supports both speed and value graph
• Copy/paste easing, values and multikey
• Workflow tools for handing layers and keyframes
• Preset library

Pricing:
$30 $24 launch week price. One time purchase, no subscription.
And a 7 day free trial.
https://suky.design/plugins/quickease

Maintenance/Support plan:
I plan to support this as I primarily built it for myself. There are support steps in the plugin settings or you can email me at [support@suky.design](mailto:support@suky.design)

AI Disclaimer:
AI assisted coding with human validation

Hello! I have been banging my head against a wall trying to figure this out. This is my first time trying to install a plugin for after effects and as soon as I finally get it to install properly it just won't open. Does anyone have any experience with either this plugin or this issue? Thanks!

So I made this Daima composition and here’s my process

1.redrew a render from an old dbz special and gave it colors from the Daima character sheet using clip studio

1. Imported it into adobe after effects

3.made a composition using multiple effects

If you have any questions about a specific effect, feel free to ask.

Hey everyone! I'm a beginner video editor focused on cinematic edits in DaVinci Resolve. I've used Fusion a little, but I'm now learning After Effects to create motion graphics.

I'm familiar with basic editing, but I'm still figuring out how to animate elements properly, especially keyframes, easing, and the graph editor.

I've been wondering whether it's better to recreate animations I like to understand how they're built or practice individual techniques before attempting full projects.

For those who learned motion design alongside video editing, how did you approach practicing these skills? I'd appreciate advice based on your own experience.

Hey everyone!

I run a small animation studio. While everything we deliver is still custom, we do use AI every day as an internal assistant to get to the boring work faster.

1. Visualizing vague client ideas before we design anything

Instead of spending 2-3 days designing directions that might be totally off, we generate 10-15 quick visual interpretations first. Not for final use. Just to align on: does "human" mean warm colors + hand-drawn textures, or real people inside a tech world?

2. References for stuff that's hard to find or shoot

This is our most-used one. A clear guidance for the artist:

• weird camera angles you can't easily stage
• hands holding a specific product
• complex machinery/product internals
• complicated character poses
• lighting and perspective refs for complex scenes

Think of it as a super-powered visual research assistant. You still draw/model everything, you just start from a clear target.

3. Expressions, scripts and boring automation

Huge time saver if you're not an expression wizard:

• ask for a starting expression, then debug it together
• clean up and comment old expressions so someone else can read them

4. The AI that's already inside AE + Premiere

Two we use constantly:

• Content-Aware Fill in After Effects: mask the unwanted object/rig/person in the corner, generate fill layer, let AE reconstruct from surrounding frames. Perfect for cleanup shots.
• Scene Edit Detection in Premiere: right-click a flattened render, Premiere finds all the original cuts and makes subclips / markers. No more scrubbing to find 40+ cuts manually.

5. Character performance refs for tricky movement

We don't generate final animation. We generate references for body mechanics when it's impractical to film. For example, wrong proportions, impossible camera angle, stylized character.

What helps most is seeing silhouette, weight shift, and how one pose could transition to the next. Then our animators do the real blocking on top of that.

6. Fixing renders instead of re-rendering

Before you re-render for 6 hours or re-shoot:

• denoise noisy footage/renders
• upscale low-res client assets
• sharpen soft details

Bottom line for us: don't ask "How can AI do my job?". Instead, ask "How can AI remove the boring exploration so I can do my job faster?"

What's the AI use you've actually kept in your workflow?

If you want to see the full breakdown with real examples from our work, you can check out this video: https://youtu.be/naU6nKZ1p4s?si=b_qpffbsMvLOFPdr

A VFX breakdown from my music video "The River, the Shore".

2+ years in the making, the music video combines real footage with Blender composited in After Effects and Resolve - with many scenes being fully CG!

Full music video in the link below: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrrZCnXuPCs&lc=UgxA5OVrazcW0YI43B54AaABAg

Let me know what you think :)

No generative AI was used for this work.

no simple motion graphics

please dm your best 30 seconds work - one piece only

no overlay vfx, all graphics made from scratch!! will check composition. do not send other people’s work !!

project is for an event

india only

NOTE: I want to clarify that this is not a generative tool.
CucoStudio does not require you to plug any API or use an LLM to make videos.
It's purely deterministic and it runs in your computer.

A designer creates a motion design system and any creator can make stories that look and feel cohesive.

-------
I've been working on CucoStudio for a long time and I'm looking for a few testers.

Problem: If you work on many videos using the same brand, or you are part of a team that needs to follow a brand language, this will make your life easier.
The idea: you build **"Styles"*\* in After Effects; a structured set of shots (comps) that pack typography, colors, animation, voiceover, and creative direction in general. Those Styles becomes reusable.

Comparison: There are other automation tools, ours includes speech2text and text2speech built in, a standardized way of making the styles,

Writers or clients compose their stories, pick your "S t y l e", and CucoStudio assembles a finished video. Output is a full video with it's AE project you can still tweak.

**It runs 100% locally.*\* No cloud, no subscription.

Price: **One time payment of $135*\*
Mac (Apple Silicon) only for now; Windows coming soon.

**Not vibecoded*\* - 3 people team working on it for a very long time, and offering long term support.

I have a handful of dev licenses to give away. DM me if you're interested.
Also, feel free to chat with us over Discord, we are a small team, but we are usually online.

PS: MOD I followed the structure to publish but kept getting your message. Please let me know what in the post structure is wrong

I got a CC license on my work laptop and would love to hand off rendering to my personal computer.

I remember ✨back in the days✨ I could just install AE on a PC and place an empty file named ae_render_only_node.txt in a certain folder and then use After Effects in in render only mode (e.g. for network rendering).

Is that still a thing or do we have to purchase licenses for render machines these days?

i spend a lot of time rewatching saas launch videos for ui animation, pacing and how they open and close, and the good ones kept getting buried in my timeline.

so i put 500+ handpicked ones into a searchable gallery, free to browse.

site -> https://launchgallery.video

- filter by tag (yc, agents, fintech, design and more) and sort by most viewed
- search by company or title
- save the ones you want to study into your own collections
- submit a launch video you think belongs

figured it might help when you're hunting for motion references before starting a launch video in after effects.

and what would make this more useful, notes on how each video was made, or something else?

I don't know why the text flickers randomly in this footage, I tried to match the framerate on composition to 24 fps from 29 fps? Any thoughts and prayers? Thanks!

This was an interesting solve - setting the Anchor Point for a 3D Model in AE.

This took a while - hopefully it can inspire others.

** There are caveats - the default Anchor Point needs to be at one of the 3D Model's 'default' 3x3 grid points. Perhaps, someone has a better solve or can come up with a better solve?