What are Plug-ins in Adobe After Effects?

Plug-ins or add-ons are pieces of code that you can add to After Effects to help you accomplish particular actions like animations, text graphics, color correction and compositing. There are plug-ins that you pay for, but many of them are created by After Effects users and offered to other users for free. These add-ons can make the workflow easier and faster because someone else did the work in After Effects and put it together for others to use.

Useful Plug-ins

Here is a list of some of the most popular free plug-ins for Adobe After Effects.

1. Video Copilot: Orb

Video Copilot’s orb plug-in creates 3D spheres. Orb comes with shading and masking for realistic looking planets.

2. Video Copilot: Saber

Another fun free plug-in from Video Copilot is the saber effect that lets you add fun lightsabers in your videos. Video Copilot also offers tutorials on how to use their plug-ins.

3. Video Copilot: Sure Target 2

Upgrade of earlier Sure Target plug-in camera controller. 

4. Video Copilot: FX Console

FX Console lets you create shortcuts and overrides and access other FX presets easier. This is a plug-in to improve workflow.

5. Un Precompose

Un-PreCompose gets rid of the layers in a nested composition and places them into the parent composition without changing the effects and other properties.

6. Counter Pro

Counter Pro creates animated numbers.

7. Digital Typewriter Text Preset

Typominal creates a computer terminal font for use in motion graphics. This can be useful in titles or credits and some sci fi scenes.

8. Duik Bassel

Duik Bassel from Rainbox Lab is a collection of animation and rigging tools for creating 2D characters. Duik also has many automations for wiggling, swinging, springing, and others. 

9. Masks to Layers

Masks to Layers transfers a mask from a selected layer on other layers.

10. Split Image

Split Image separates the image you are working with into rectangular sections.

11. Easy Path Arrow

Easy Path Arrow takes the work out of making arrows in After Effects.

12. Instagram Plug-in by Cineblur

As its name suggests, Instagram plug-in lets you create footage that looks like you have applied Instagram filters. This could be useful for animating screens in videos.

13. Displacer Pro

Displacer Pro displaces an image in various ways.

14. Buttcapper

Buttcapper is a stroke cap selector. It changes stroke caps and joins quickly. Incredible time saver.

15. Squash and Stretch Free

Squash and Stretch is an animation plug-in that makes elements move in a natural looking manner to basically squash and stretch.

16. Ease & Whizz

Ease and Wizz is a motion graphics plugin for After Effects that lets you control the movement of text into a frame.

17. Decompose Text

Decompose Text lets you break out text into separate layers.

18. DoCharts 

DoCharts can be used to easily create bar graphs.

19. Add Grid

Add Grid creates guidelines and grids.

19. Reposition/Anchor Point

Reposition/Anchor Point lets you move the anchor point of various layers and keep the layers the same in the composition window.

20.  PD Perspective Guide

PD Perspective Guide is a fast and powerful way to find your vanishing points in an image. This is useful for video compositing.

21. Particle Illusion

BorisFX Particle Illusion is a standalone particle generator.