One of the best ways to start off your animation journey is by installing useful plug-ins, to help you and make things easier for you. It is also good for learning the steps and perfecting them. In this Article on the Top 10 After Effects Animation Plug-ins we will show you how and which plug-ins to install. All of the plug-ins listed are Simple to use, Safe to use, Easy to install and Feature-Rich.
On top of the 10 plug-ins, there will be a bonus tool at the end, for people who really want to make things easy and effective for themselves.
DISCLAIMER: We are NOT promoting After Effects plug-ins for financial gain and we are NOT Adobe affiliate associates.
After Effects plug-in PROS and CONS:
PROS:
- It does not require any coding knowledge
- Lets you learn to animate faster
- Brings out more of your creativity
- Allows you to work with 3D models right in After Effects
- You can create effects much faster
CONS:
- Some plug-ins take up a lot of space and might slow down your program
- Many plug-ins have long render times
- The cost of some of the plug-ins can be pretty high
AFTER EFFECTS ANIMATION PLUG-INS:
- Parrot:
Simply put, this plug-in will help you to “parrot” your elements, so you can animate them. This will help you save some time and patience from all of the copy and pasting keyframes. It’s a great animation plug-in for repetitive and boring tasks.
But How Does It Work? It’s Pretty Simple:
- Select the element that you want to animate
- Send the rest to follow the lead
- Flow:
This After Effects changes the game with graph editing. With many features and presets, this After Effects plug-in is one of the best for graphing. It brings an easy interface for customizing animation curves, without having to deal with the old default graph editor.
Features:
- It comes with 25 commonly used motion curves for you to use.
- You can create your custom curves and share them with the world.
- Copying curves from other animators is also an option.
- Save your curves to the library, where you can leave them for later
Price: 30$
3. Optical Flare:
This is a great After Effects plug-in for designing and animating realistic lens flares in After Effects.
Uses:
- Final touches to Motion Graphics
- Blending 3D animation
- Adding Flares to live action footage
- Adding realism to virtual sets
- etc.
Features:
- 3D Lens Flares
- Intuitive design interface
- Texture Support
- Dynamic triggering animations
Price: 124$
4. RowByte – Plexus 3:
This After Effects plug-in lets you create, manipulate and visualize data. Not only can you render the particles, but also create interesting relationships between them, using lines and triangles.
Features:
- Motion Blur
- Sound Effector
- Slicer Object
- Seamless Beams
- OBJ import
- Death map culling
- Unified rendering
- etc.
Price: 249.99$
5. Trapcode Particular:
This helpful After Effects plug-in lets you add particles to your compositions with ease. It brings your motion graphic to life. You can also use 3D objects for even more Awesomeness.
Features:
- Visual Effects: Create the elements of nature (Water, Fire, Snow, Smoke etc.) and many other organic effects. ou can combine multiple systems in one 3D space for maximized results.
- Designer: The plug-in allows you to create particle effects visually, with a powerful designing engine that makes effect creating easier and more creative.
- Physics: The plug-in’s new physics engine has more features like new behaviors, controls and forces. Combine and play with all types of effects and forces.
- Presets: Explore over 350 presets, made so you can have a head start.
6. Shadow Studio 2:
This After Effects plug-in is very useful for simulating shadows. Everyone hates rendering shadows, as they can take forever. Not anymore, because this plug-in fakes the shadow so well, it can easily be mistaken for a real one.
Features:
- Quality controls to optimize render times
- 3 Modes: regular, inner & radial
- Great control over Faloff
- Many presets to get started on
- Custom texture layer
System Requirements:
- After Effects CS6 or newer
- Windows 7 or newer
- GPU
- OSX 10.14 or newer
Price: 49$
7. DataMosh 2:
This After Effects plug-in is amazing at glitching, that allows you to break video files however your heart desires.
Remove Frames: This feature offers intense precision and stickier moshes. You just have to click & drag.
Swap Motion: This effects makes it simple to steal and inject motion from marked areas you chose.
Hijack Motion: The pixel power is completely in your hands. This new workflow makes use of layer markers to construct moshes however you want to mess them up, so have fun!
Price: 49$
BONUS TOOL:
If you are really tired of breaking your back behind the computer animating, you are at the right place. This Tool offers everything that you would wish for, including:
- 1530 Unique Character Designs that you can use in your videos and experiment with them.
- Explainer Animation Bundle creates visually pretty and engaging explainer videos, you can use for getting some recognition.
- Whiteboard Animation Bundle is very similar to the Explainer bundle, except that you can make any whiteboard animated video that you want.
- Logo Intro Pack has tons of different logo intro presets, the only thing left for you to do is put in your logo
- Kinetic Bundle creates business promotional videos with the Kinetic template bundle. 3 different templates, each with 60+ different animations, 120+ text placeholders and transitions.
These were just 5 features out of a total 110. For the one-time price of 297$ or 3 times 100$, you are really getting the most for your money. Saving over 19k$ and countless hours of long work, we consider this the best tool out of all of them.
You can check out more here, or watch the free video sample.
CONCLUSION:
You can really get some valuable After Effects plug-ins and other tools for your animation experience, while learning and making things easier for yourself. Some have more features, some less and some cost more than others. You should only purchase tools that you think you would need when animating. Or, you just want to try out some of them and have fun with them. There are really lots of options out there, so we wish you the best of luck finding the right ones!