FX Console is one of those now indispensable enhancements for After Effects. In addition to easily searching for effects and presets to apply, it also serves as a gallery for taking, comparing, and exporting screen shots of your comps. KBar is another great extension to create custom toolbars …

Sometimes you want to select a group of layers in After Effects, and just move them all to the current time indicator and keep their relative timing. So you think ”I’ll just hit [ and move them all!” Only then you’re immediately hitting undo as you notice all …

Update: Turbulent Wipe is now a Fractal Wipe and part of Conigs Mixtape complete with a custom controller! Download it today! Last week I posted on Twitter about an effects stack for a less boring linear wipe. Enough people asked for a preset, so you'll find the base …

Last week I was working on a retail spot where we needed a product that wasn't shot on-figure. But we did have a shot of a similar product. It just needed a little work. This is what I mean by "a little:" I'm pretty pleased with the end …

If you've worked on commercial project, you know there's only one constant: change… especially at the last minute. One of the things that seems to frequently change is color choice. If you have a complicated AE animation and many layers that use the same colors, this can be …

Being a Mac guy who works with After Effects, this news really bothers me. Keven Schmidt at Creative Mac benchmarked renders in After Effects CS4 on Mac OS X and Windows. The result? AE still renders faster in Windows, by roughly 1.2x. Now, AE has traditionally rendered faster …

Andrew Kramer posted another tutorial in the Meteor Crash series. The best piece of advise from the tutorial: Now, if you don't have Particular, what you can do is go in your back yard, and get a pile of dirt together. Put it in your hand, along with …