Top 12 must-have After Effects Compositing Plugins

Adobe After Effects is a very advanced program that has been adopted by many animators around the world. Whether it be professionals or beginners, for career purposes or just as a hobby. Your arsenal of graphic design software is very likely to include After Effects to use for various ends. But what if you can extend the power of the software even more and take your potential to the next level? It’s certainly one hell of an opportunity to take interest in After Effects compositing plugins. Let’s find out why! (we bet many of these plugins will end up in your arsenal).

How can these After Effects Compositing plugins be useful?

Extending the power of the software is very possible if you use After Effects plugins to achieve more. We have been covering many of them to help you make the best out of the software. To make it digestible, we have been dividing them on categories. So if you’re looking for animation plugins or something more specific like character animation plugins, we’ve got you covered.

Compositing with After Effects is demanding

Compositing with after effects is a hefty task. There are many ways that these tools can be useful to make it a lot more productive:

• Reducing the boring repetitive tasks into simple clicks. You’re a creative person, right? So you wouldn’t want your creative spirit to go to waste just because of repetition (thus boredom). You want to focus on what matters and leave the dirty work to After Effects plugins.
• Saving tons of time while achieving a lot more. You can create intricate compositions that usually take weeks in a very time efficient way.
• Achieving your end goals without having to meddle with the technicity of the process too much. Let’s say you wanted to create an Ad video that will have a huge potential in revenue. Instead of spending time with additional technical aspects, you can rely on After Effects plugins to make shortcuts for your project.

Let’s look at these After Effects compositing plugins closer, and see how you can incorporate them in your workflow.

12. RIFT

Compositing with After Effects depends on many properties, especially if you’re working on many layers. This may result in a slow workflow since keeping an eye on all the properties can definitely be time-consuming.

To get around this common obstacle, we highly recommend using RIFT. This After Effects plugin for compositing is quite simple and easy to get a grip of. It deals with the various layers and properties in a way that allows you to shift, stagger, or randomize them to make your animation process a lot smoother. It’s featured with compact panels, so you can perform all the adjustments in the intuitive UI.

You can get RIFT on aescript’s website.

11. OVERLORD

Another plugin that serves as a linking bridge, this time between Adobe After Effects and Illustrator.

This plugin comes in very handy for animators who use Adobe Illustrator to create their designs and then animating them using AE. Because compositing with After Effects might require end-to-end integration in the production pipeline for better results. OVERLORD simply connects the two software to ensure that the workflow is smooth without any clunky steps in between. And above all of this, it’s one of the greatest After Effects compositing plugins that you can get under $50.

Find it here on BattleAxe’s website.

10. Motion Array Adobe Integrations

If you have tried compositing with After Effects, you know that it requires you to deal with various elements that range from graphics, visuals, videos and so on. This is where Motion Array Adobe Integrations plugin will prove itself to be tremendously handy. 

The plugin is basically one way to quickly access the Motion Array, which will provide you with the complete stock elements in the library. Not to mention that it’s one of the free After Effects plugins (so it’s budget-friendly!)

In other words, you can access the Motion Array and add presets from it directly into Adobe After Effects. In addition to that, whether you want to import a video, an audio or a template, you can just drag and drop it into your timeline and you’re ready to go. 

For more information, you can check the official website.

9. Animation Composer

If you want a quicker and more reliable key-framing and to make compositing with After Effects better, you might want to check Animation Composer. This free After Effects compositing plugin is ideal for artists who use many shapes in their animations.

Developed and introduced by Mister Horse, it’s an extremely useful tool even though it’s quite recent. Being one of the free After Effects plugins is only the cherry on the top.

Animation Composer allows you to animate a bunch of layers with the same effect. Animating graphics like text and icons is an easy task with this tool. It comes with a range of pre-defined effects and transitions. Not to mention that it comes with awesome motion presets, pre-comps, 2D and 3D presets in addition to sounds.

It’s equipped with additional advanced features such as Anchor Point Mover, Key-frame Wingman, and Transition Shifter.

Find it here on Mr. Horse’s website.

8. GridGuide

One of the key practices for a good animation is keeping the harmony of the elements to fit the overall design.

GridGuide is one of the best After Effects compositing plugins that can make that happen, by allowing you to automatically add grids and guides to your layouts. It has snappable guiding grids in addition to shape layer guides that are modifiable.

GridGuide allows you to freely rotate, move, scale, and parent or even keyframe any grid layer since the grids are based on a shape layer. With this awesome feature, GridGuide will allow you to create dynamic designs and have everything animated in very balanced harmony. 

Find it here on aescript’s Website.

7. AE InfoGraphics

Infographics require you to merge data, shapes and elements to create stunning templates that convey the information through aesthetic motion. Combining the process of compositing with After Effects and infographics will turn out to be enjoyable.

And with the AE InfoGraphics plugin, it will be even more fun and practical. It’s one of the exclusive after effects compositing plugins that will automatically create infographics for you based on your data. It spares you the burden of creating templates from scratch and dealing with technical aspects.   

AE InfoGraphics allows you to design outstanding chart animations in a very quick way. It’s featured with import options to add CSV files. It also has a quite intuitive interface that will simplify the compositing process and a library of pre-designed chart templates.

Find it here on aescript’s website. 

6. Quick Menu

Another handy thing while compositing with After Effects or in any software is having quick access to any tool you need. With all the powerful and rich tools available, it might become daunting to quickly find or access what you need. Now wouldn’t be better to have them all near you!

This is specifically why the Quick Menu plugin was introduced. Basically, it’s a launcher that can hover over your interface. And as the name suggests, it gives you a quick access to the tooling shortcuts that you can pre-define.

With a simple and very intuitive interface, it allows you to shortcut plugins from scripts, presets and extensions. Not to mention that it grants you quick access to effects, expressions and any other command in AE.

Find it here on aescript’s website.

5. Parrot

It’s a super handy tool that will allow you to deal perfectly and effectively with layers. Using Parrot, your composting process will no more need copying and pasting keyframes. It will provide you with a fast process of creating a master layer for quick editing.

You need to create a master layer and connect other layers to it. Then you can animate any effect, mask, shape or element in the master layer. Following that, you can apply the same keyframe animation to the rest of the layers.  

So in other words and as the name suggests, this compositing plugin will allow you to create elements that “parrot” one main element (or follow the lead). This will save you tons of time and spare you the burden of repeating the keyframing process over and over again.  

Find it here on aescript’s website.

4. MochaImport+

After effects compositing plugins can sometimes serve as a linking bridge. It simplifies the workflow between After Effects and Mocha for end-to-end integration. This tool is highly advanced no wonder it’s an award-winning one. 

MochaImport+ is featured with a pre-comp stabilizer; it allows you to move masks. In addition to that, you can affect points as well as layers, and you can also distort them in perspective.

You can add compositions using expressions; MochaImport+ can improve your tracks thanks to the tracking data that are expression-based. This plugin is compatible with all Mocha versions and it comes bundled with Adobe After Effects.

Find it here on aescript’s website.

3. Pins & Boxes

This one is an interesting little After Effects plugin for compositing. Pins & Boxes is a wonderful tool that will help you ease many tasks, especially with the very easy to use interface. With this tool, you are no longer obliged to write expressions, either simple or complex.

It will sparer you the burden with its dynamic layout creation, and you can even create your own customized templates. Pins & Boxes will automatically apply the necessary adjustments for you when designing motion graphics.

For example, it can adjust the size whenever you modify the text or another graphic element. 

Find it here on aescript’s website.

2. Flow

It’s a very handy plugin that will allow you to animate layers very effectively. In addition to the intuitive interface, it allows you to customize and animate curves with ease. The variety of features for this matter will solve many problems related to curve editing, such as slow and heavy expressions, but also speed and influence issues. 

Flow comes with a library of 25 pre-designed motion curves. You can apply them directly to your composition. All you need to do is to pick the curve and click “apply”. Moreover, you can add and import any presets (even from other animations) right into your workspace.

Furthermore, Flow enables you to create your own composition, curves and libraries and even export and share them. When it comes to the price, it will cost you $30 that are totally worth it. We wouldn’t say that it falls under the category of pricy After Effects plugins, but it’s not free nonetheless.

Find it here on aescript’s website.

1. Sapphire

Sapphire is a plugin from Boris FX, it is intended for compositing and editing besides other applications. This plugin is very rich with over 3000 presets of fantastic visuals, graphics and effects that you can easily use and add to your composition. It releases new updates with more advanced features regularly. 

You can use it with After Effects besides other software: It’s available for Nuke, Adobe Premiere Pro and many others. It comes with masking and tracking features, and it produces high-quality videos that can go up to 8K resolution. You can get it for around $500, which is totally worth it in my opinion. It’s one of the most expensive After Effects compositing plugins, but it will make you upgrade your work to the industry standards.

Find it here on BorisFX’s website.

Final Thoughts

We hope you found this list useful and informative, comment below if you think that we’ve missed something or if you have any other suggestions. Thank you for reading!