After Effects Portal May 2026

Rich Young

2 months ago

After a breakneck few months of big features, AI and freemium competition, news on Adobe After Effects has returned to a more normal pace. The current release of AE was discussed last month in After Effects 26.2 (April 2026 release).

Release 26.2 included:

AI-powered Object Matte
Displacement support for 3D materials on parametric meshes
Search and instantly apply effects, presets, or commands
Proportional Scrubbing in timeline
Import SVG file as footage or as a composition

There’s still a ton of activity in the beta app. Top features in beta include:

Duplicate layers using Alt/Option-drag
Change anchor point in a more efficient way
Create and use Depth of Field in the Advanced 3D renderer
Curl Noise effect for swirling animated 2D patterns
Quickly Find Variable Fonts by Axis
Effect Controls panel modernization
Copy a frame to the clipboard
Copy and paste Illustrator and SVG content
Updated Mask Tracker
Color labels for effects

While AE specialists have already covered the many features of 2026 in previous roundups, Premiere Gal takes stock of features that might appeal to NLE users in After Effects 2026 is Here: What’s New?

SonduckFilm has a similar whirlwind tour in All the New After Effects Features in 2026 So Far.

Ethan Robbins is still riding the doom hype train, this time with After Effects Just Lost. Four Free Alternatives Dropped in One Month. AEP covered new alternatives in Free After Effects, or freemium loss leaders.

If you need a free lite copy of Photoshop try the free PhotoGIMP.

There is yet another new competitor, Caddis. See A Vibe-Coded After Effects competitor? from Jake In Motion, who was joined by the creator of Caddis to help answer questions and explain the project.

Motion Fun is making some of its plug-ins free (Petals, AEbar, Picky, Slingshot, Noted, and Anchored):

I was planning on making paid tools for Motion Fun, but the software industry is changing so fast thanks to LLM’s, and we are trending towards all offline software being free in 10 years or less, so I’d rather get ahead of it. Read more…

@ElementSupplyCo has several new plug-ins in its stable of products. These involved blurs, threshold, and ramps; see the below sample. Then in The Future of After Effects Plugins?, Jake in Motion looked at two of their new plug-ins: Mask Blur and Better Ramp. Rumor is that AI aided the creation of both of these, and other recent tool releases…

Also, Lewis_Orton shared ReRamp, a free AE plug-in for better-looking gradients, advanced color blending algorithms + opacity support.

@DanneDamm sells DIIS, an After Effects extension for quickly stylizing animations. Also, there’s background on doing something similar by hand, Adding Shadows, Lighting and Texture to an 2D Animated Character on the Arttista Channel.

MotionLens adds .mogrt previews to the Finder. For more see MOGRT Files Revealed | “MotionLens” Plugin from Mograph Mindset and Captioneer.

After Effects Basics discusses the PluginPlay browser for AE, which has some free plug-ins, in This FREE PLUGIN Makes After Effects 10x BETTER! PluginPlay is a subscription service for Tools And Assets for Adobe products for $24.99/month.

Here on PVC Chris Zwar shared a video in After Effects Guru Meditation: Different displacement options.

As usual, Eran Stern has several recent tutorials. In Realistic 3D Integration in After Effects. you’ll see how to integrate 3D elements into real footage inside After Effects, combining a drone shot, 3D text, a couple of 3D models, realistic lighting, shadows, object masking, etc.

Lines To Designs says that After Effects 2026 Variable Fonts Are a GAME CHANGER for Text Animations.

Konstantin Novikov released course “Generative Motion in After Effects”, about building generative graphics and kinetic typography directly inside AE. “No plugins: Just expressions, sine, noise, and coordinate systems. No advanced math required.”

Vlad Sateev shared How to Create Viral SaaS Animations with Figma in After Effects.

Let’s Make Motion shared Vibe Coding a Custom Timer in After Effects (Start to Finish). Seems to be a popular thing to do.

Keeping an eye on AI video…

Artturi Jalli says I Compared EVERY AI Platform Costs – Here’s The Cheapest. Since genAI tools are now subsidized by VC funding, prices most likely will rise when they monetize their tools. In any case, Adobe has pages and pages of Byzantine credits charges for the various models available in Firefly. Maybe the Photoshop credits tracker will be available elsewhere someday.