My TOP After Effects updates for 2025

[@MrPondo17]

Now, for the sake of universe balance - you should make a top 5 list of things you hate in after effects and want them fixed/added. I'll write one of them: I hate that when duplicating or copying a layer, effects with layer control type refer to the wrong layers, or the link disappears altogether.

[@hrihori_art]

It would be great to limit the effect of adjustment layers so that their effects don’t apply to all the layers below.

[@AndrewS-rt4we]

Hahaha they don’t want you to know but this is Big After Effects Tutorial lobby ensuring Element3D gets surpassed to force Andrew Kramer back into the game. It’s all a ploy! But it’ll be nice to get a tutorial from him in the mid-2020s 😂

[@JakeInMotion]

🤫

[@sunsetpark_fpv]

There's a plugin called "Helium" that seems very similar to E3D but maybe even better in some regards

[@RobertSimmonsAirship]

Unfortuntately, we never got Nebulae3D. I think hes gone for good.

[@NawazAlamgir]

@@RobertSimmonsAirship Its coming, this year...trust me

[@JakeInMotion]

Yep, that and Half Life 3

[@joostdehaas]

It kind of annoys me that Adobe is focusing so much on 3D in AE, while there are so many essential things missing from the basic 2D toolset... I mean, timeline folders? Seems like a no brainer, and people have only asked for it for about 20 years. Native looping options without having to know case-sensitive javascript like we're in 1998? Native ways to copy an easing curve? Heck I even have to pay for a plugin to change the position of an anchor point of a layer... I would love to have easy access to common expressions in the form of behaviors like Wiggle / Noise / Ramp / etc. that we can place on any and all properties. And I'm not even yet talking about actual inventive stuff like parenting groups of keyframes to markers, or cool stuff like 2d physics simulation, because I gave up on the idea that that is ever going to happen. All while AE is also still so slow it sometimes can't even play a video at the full framerate (even without any effects applied to it). Very nice that we have a fresh new UI update, but really: I don't care. This is the industry standard of animation apps and it seems like the developers have never tried to actually use the app to create something. Please Jake, tell em! For now I'm looking at faster and more capable alternatives like Cavalry or even Apple Motion.

[@simontrickfilmer]

+1 to everything! so much more workflow stuff missing. bad; also my english to explain 😞

[@acuredreamgift]

This guy f...animates

[@emevlk]

ae for 2d (hell, most things) is still super hacky. cavarly looks interesting

[@alejandrovargas1171]

True!

[@stephanzammit]

Thank you so much for the shout out Jake! You’re a creator that really inspires me… I am very humbled. Really appreciate! 😊

[@JakeInMotion]

You're welcome, and thank YOU for the incredible tutorials!

[@niklas296]

you are a wizard! love your tuts

[@stephanzammit]

@ Thank you :)

[@aleksaharovsky]

It's not about whether Kramer did it better or not. Everyone who said that (myself included) isn't attacking the programmers. The issue is with Adobe taking more than a decade to implement features we were all requesting when we started our careers. Then, they suddenly release it as a 'groundbreaking update'-something Kramer was doing 15 years ago. The same applies to tapered strokes 😂 And even now, there’s still no onion-skinning features in a software that's supposed to be used for… well, animation.

[@stemfourvisual]

I think you might need to keep in mind that criticism is generally aimed at Adobe, the multi-billion dollar, monopolistic company, not your personal friends.

[@JakeInMotion]

Yes, I am very aware of that. But the reality is most people don't distinguish between the two. With the size of the After Effects user base imagine being on a relatively small team and being bombarded with negative criticism inappropriately directed at you on a daily basis? I've seen so many responses to feature updates that boil down to "that's a stupid update you should've done X instead".

[@stemfourvisual]

@ yes but any online presence representing the company is exactly where any criticism will land.

[@stemfourvisual]

@ anyway, appreciate you’re just sticking up for individuals, which I also firmly support, but in this case those individuals, when posting stuff under the Adobe banner, aren’t representing themselves, they’re speaking for Adobe. Therefore, while I’m sure it’s easier said than done, they would need to not take negative feedback personally. Especially when that criticism is usually about policy, the decisions made by Adobe, ie not within the control of these individuals anyway.

[@realxrust]

So true man :( I’m sure devs would do great things with Ae if they had the permission from the corp

[@StarQualityVideo]

Adobe has a BIG problem with gui font size. Someone really dropped the ball on font size for all their programs. Thanks for the awesome vid!

[@ujwalvibing]

copy pasting keyframe feature should be called "fixes" not "UPDATE"

[@JakeInMotion]

You're not wrong. Kinda like calling presets, scripts and extensions "plugins" .

[@ujwalvibing]

@@JakeInMotion ​ what i mean is they should add more of those small features cause after effects still heavily relys on plugins and script 😭😭 and these fixes are too small and not many to be called updates

[@SJ98296]

Great video Jake! I 100% agree that animated comps applied as textures would truly make 3d in AE a viable tool. I would be completely fine keeping the 3d lighting, tools, and integration simplified (as it currently is) if you could integrate UI animations (or other animated textures) and apply them through a texture pre-comp. This would be extremely useful for various workflows beyond just UI animations...and I would definitely start using AE's 3d workflow in production projects. Another extremely useful update would be point level animation support for the GLB file import. Right now, or as of my last testing, GLB imports only include skeletal / armature (bone-based) animations. This means that deformer based animations don't transfer, and baked animations (such as dynamics influenced animations) don't transfer. These two features would open up a world of possibilities for my use cases.

[@Johnny0258]

Great breakdown of the new stuff Jake! I would love to see Timewarp get a new maximum speed other than 5000 - maybe 10,000! I work with a lot of slow motion footage and I need the extra speed to cut through the slow footage.

[@jerryodom4542]

Had NO IDEA about the new pasting keyframes thing! WOOT

[@nedschi]

I would like to see more motion design features, like in Cavalry. And also more audio features. If I want to do 3D, I use a 3D program.

[@broadcastbytes]

I would like a new text animator property called trim paths. trim paths on shapes is bog standard and I don't see why it's not for live type. Add an expression controller onto that and bammo very powerful.

[@gregkrazanski]

are you talking about the edges? or like writing on the type? i don't think it would be possible to trim paths the actual type since type is not designed that way

[@broadcastbytes]

@gregkrazanski why not you can stroke text with no fill

[@gdevfx]

nice one Jake, thank you for the video! It'd be great to have a script that allows you to select all visible keyframes from all layers at the Current Time Indicator. It seems to me quite a neat thing to have that's never been made. I've been trying to develop a script, but I struggle to find the time and get the knowledge to achieve that

My only request from Santa this year was "edge blur". What a shame..

[@zurasaur]

Couldn’t agree more, there are third party plugins that do edge blur perfectly but why tf have we not got an inbuilt effect

[@JakeInMotion]

I have never used Edge Blur before. Is it just blurring the alpha channel like the Channel Blur effect set to alpha? kzbin.info/www/bejne/rmXNeY2litBlq8U

[@zurasaur]

@@JakeInMotion it’s doing exactly that, however it’s basically doing an extension of the edge first so your aren’t just left with black pixels as you blur

[@JakeInMotion]

Ahh ok. I'll look into this but it seems like something you should be able to do in combination with a matte choker.

@@JakeInMotion There is a big difference between Channel Blur effect and (Red Giant Key Correct) Edge Blur. Also Channel blur effect may work well in vector materials. However, unfortunately it is insufficient for who try to do deep comp in After.

[@BobShurunkle]

They will never, ever, ever, EVER fix “edit in audition”. It will always be one audio layer - you can’t even send over an audio precomp.

[@JakeInMotion]

That's a new one for me. Do you do a lot of audio assembly work in AE?

[@BobShurunkle]

@@JakeInMotion i do, much to the chagrin of other AE users (and colleagues).

[@mohammedsalman292]

btw when exporting from blender, to maybe obj or glb, my textures dont appear for some reason, can u make a video, on how to make that possible?

[@JakeInMotion]

I didn't have any issues exporting the iPhone with textures, but I'll look into it.

[@proffesor8882]

if textures you want to export are procedural, they probably won’t work in Ae. try baking your textures as image textures. maybe this will help.

[@insomniartdesign]

Nice! Thank you!

[@spacetimeranus]

So bricked up for these updates!

[@paguasonfa]

😂😂😂 you way too excited!

[@Totorus]

We really had very good updates on 2025!

[@stanleychukwu]

i love you jake!

[@TheLizardKing752]

Not sure why people think graphics programming and software optimization are the same thing. Very different fields in software engineering, no programmer is automatically an expert in both.

[@kikon78]

I apreciate you Jake, together with Ben Marriot you two became the first people to inspire me the most in my animation/motion design joruney!

[@iamwoozy]

I’m waiting for the ability to change textures in After Effects for glb files

[@JakeInMotion]

That would be huuuuuge

[@maclad7763]

Other things I appreciate Ae being pushing a lot. But UI refresh, specifically windows version, Imo took a lot time and has still way too many places left untouched. Major is the the Menu bars and context menus (right click menu) are still jarringly white. RIP for OLED monitors (including mine :( ). Animation stretch was a hidden trick for me. Thank you for sharing!!!!

[@scottjordan4546]

I have a problem with the UI being too dark. I want to have complete control over darkness levels.

[@SternFX]

Awesome summary! Thanks a bunch for the shoutout, Highly appreciated 😀You’re the best!

[@moh1t]

Hi Jake, really dig your videos, do you think AE devs will ever implement a "sequence keyframes" feature similar to sequence layers? ie stagger/offset a group of keyframes on multiple layers without moving the layer itself?

[@JakeInMotion]

We can always hope, but since there are a handful of third-party tools that do this already I wouldn't count on it being high on their priority list.

[@simontrickfilmer]

btw. Where is Andrew???

[@Oddernod]

With as many times as Blender was mentioned, I'm getting a Blender For Motion Designers course on the horizon... 😁

[@JakeInMotion]

Man I wish I could respond with a gif on KZbin 😆

[@Rosomyat]

@0:24 After effects interface from an old #Andrew_Kramer first tutorial ever 01.Basic sky replace. 😮. When Super Andrew Kramer comes back with his E3D v. 3. I guess It will be a game changer. One time he declared in one of interviews not sure if it was by corridor crew interview or so he said the updated E3D will be a plug-in in a plug-in. But the issue #Andrew_Kramer might told to stop competing with Adobe. It could be a reason for his disappearance. Please share your thoughts 😮

[@JakeInMotion]

Yeah I mean if anyone could make someone "disappear" it'd be ebodA.

[@Rosomyat]

@@JakeInMotion 🙄

[@MuhammadAliSheikh-g8b]

Looks like Adobe design their app icons and design UI elements truly for Mac only. They don't blend well with Windows Ui Elements. Designer Knows what i am talking about.

[@matiassuarez8540]

Muy buen video! Hace algún tiempo que estoy aprendiendo After Effects y siento que es algo verdaderamente enorme. Quería decirte que en todas las versiones del programa no hay limpieza de memoria RAM. Si estoy trabajando en un proyecto y luego cierro ese proyecto, el consumo de memoria no se limpia. Tengo que salir del programa y volver a abrirlo. En cuanto a lo demás, amo After Effects. Te mando un gran abrazo desde Argentina, a vos por tus excelentes videos, y otro para tus amigos de After Effects! Gracias!

[@AbhiJ2000]

Many effects don't work with Advanced 3D renderer like in the Classic 3D renderer many effects work directly on the 3D layer.

[@JakeInMotion]

That's true, but you can use the calculations effect to render a 3d layer as a 2d layer and apply as many effects as you want. Most effects wouldn't translate well to 3d layers though. The most likely scenarios in my workflow would be basic color correction and blurs.

[@AbhiJ2000]

@JakeInMotion Could you make a short on this? Using effects with advanced 3d renderer. I think this would be quite helpful. Thanks.

[@JakeInMotion]

I actually shared this technique in a video when this feature was still in beta: kzbin.info/www/bejne/kJbXk5tqpZ6NbqM (Starting at 15 minutes)

[@emanonworks]

My journey with ae is toxic. Definitely feel like walking in a cliff, applying one random effect, or just sliding some value feel like horror movie.its keep crashing for some reason. I think Adobe only focusing to stack their brick higher without proper and safe foundation. In the end, im settling with cc 2020 as my risk management. Hope they back on the path of jesus and build a proper build like cs6...

[@AmrAmin86]

Great tut thank you. But illustrator gradients still a problem when converting to shapes.

[@JakeInMotion]

I told you not to get me started on shape layers 🤣

[@cyklzycia8814]

Also you can use womp to create fast cool 3D models and put to af fast

[@JakeInMotion]

Yes, there are many great options in 2025 for working with 3d.

[@primeshot-ls5jz]

I updated AE, and when copying keyframes from another layer, it still pastes them into different effects.

[@JakeInMotion]

Are you sure you're selecting just the keyframes and not the entire effect?

[@stillremain.artwork]

the best update of After Effects is Rive and blender

[@stillremain.artwork]

and Davinci Resolve :D

[@JakeInMotion]

Ha! Blender + Advanced 3D is working really well for me right now. Rive and AE are totally separate, and I haven't gotten into resolve yet 🙂

[@Bar-Animations]

yeah, but how do you change the texture map in the advanced 3d mode? meaning if i have a model of a smartphone and i want to animate the content on the screen... you can't do that.

[@JakeInMotion]

Yes that's exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned I want expanded material control. I want to be able to set an Ae layer as a material source just like you can with Element 3D.

[@Phillefx]

@@JakeInMotionLazy of the AE team tbh. Can’t be that hard to update the path of the texture input to the glb file to a composition or image sequence. Would be the same feature as the environment light texture selection but just for the texture on the model.

[@JakeInMotion]

That's just not true. I don't think you have a good picture of how complex software development is, especially for an app like After Effects. Different model formats handle materials in completely different ways, and After Effects would need to account for all of them. Plus, it’s not just about swapping out a single texture, it would need to manage textures for every individual object in the model. That’s a lot more complex than dealing with something like a single environment texture. I'm not saying I think it's too much for the Ae team, but I won't let you call them lazy.

[@Phillefx]

@ Phew.. well there are dozens of problems with AfterEffects and implementing a new render engine is never easy. I have a pretty good picture of software development, i just think they are implementing things in the wrong order. Problem is that Adobe is aquiring tools and software here and there and can’t integrate bridges into their other packages because of old infrastructure which limits the dev team of adobe itself I am pretty sure. So not really an error on the side of your colleagues so I take back my claim calling them lazy, they sadly cannot do anything against the big corp pushing weird goals. Speaking about different model formats I only see 3. Glb, gltf and obj. Implementing even 1 of them with a wider range of options would be more beneficial, or pushing USD as they should. Thats the whole reason abc or usd get pushed because they uniform exactly that problem. A live bridge to sampler or stager similar to AE Maya Livelink or Cineware would definitely have been a novel approach until they figure out an full fledged integration. But calling this anything of advanced is just bonkers to me. For the amount of time this advanced renderer has been out little to nothing has been accomplished in comparison to other software packages. Change my mind.

[@vladan.Poison]

is there a way to export animated rigged mesh from C4D ? i had no luck with that...

[@JakeInMotion]

It's been so long since I've used C4D I'm really not sure. We need @eyedesyn in the chat.

[@AtaurRaziq]

I believe exporting as alembic should do it. Meshes with animations embedded

[@vladan.Poison]

@@AtaurRaziq i meant GLB export of rigged meshes. Alembic worx of course as alyways, but its not yet supported by Ae.

[@vladan.Poison]

@@JakeInMotionKey framed objects are with PSR animations export well, rigs and cloner setups are not. (reffering to GLB export even in 2025.1)

[@Phillefx]

@@vladan.PoisonDid you try baking the animation inside c4d to an alembic object and then exporting it as glb?

[@murilomcl]

Just a COPY AND PASTE shapes from Illustrator. That would really help us.

[@juanjm12]

ae25 is pretty buggy for me sadly

[@JakeInMotion]

How so?

[@peterheynen]

Looking to the progress of the advnaced 3D engine it will be just a matter of time when native motionblur, depth of field will be included. I hope that they will also support soon FBX-files - especially in combination with mixamo 🙂 And layers as material will be simple AWESOME. For me as an specialist for MOGRTs the biggest update in 2025 are the enhanced expressions for character-styling and paragraph. 🙂

[@22carmoon]

E3D is 15 years old? Blimey

[@JakeInMotion]

I had to look it up, it was actually released in 2012, so 13 years old.

[@stemfourvisual]

‘If I can stay in AE, then I’m gonna stay in AE”, except Blender and C4D are more stable and faster to use than AE, which brings us back to Adobe being focused more on new feature gimmicks than fixing LONG term issues.

[@JakeInMotion]

That hasn't been my experience. After Effects has always been more stable than C4D or Blender in my projects. When Ae does crash, it's usually because of a third party tool, not a native feature. And when I was still working with C4D it would freeze or crash all the time. I also rarely run into the same performance issues I see users reporting for Ae, which might be more of a hardware thing.

[@stemfourvisual]

@@JakeInMotion well I think you have to accept that your own experience doesn’t discount the overwhelming online acknowledgement of widespread performance issues. I’m glad you haven’t had to suffer these yourself ( even though you also almost got in to that aspect of things, but instead ran with “don’t get me started” 😀 ) There are swathes of support threads on Adobe’s own forums with issues going back decades that haven’t been even replied to, never mind addressed.

[@JakeInMotion]

You're right, I should be clear that I do have my own issues with certain performance aspects of Ae and things I wish were different. I think I've just been using the program long enough to know how to work with it as it is, and put in my feature requests and bug reports through the official Adobe channels. I hope I'm not coming across as trying to silence users who are having a bad experience and are trying to express their frustration. I 100% get it. As a paying customer you absolutely have the right to request feature updates and report performance issues. There are certain things (like the shape layer performance issues you pointed out) that I still cannot believe exist in 2025. I just want users to understand that the Ae team is actually doing worthwhile work and are appreciated by me, and that the features the team are developing are almost definitely not chosen by them.

[@stemfourvisual]

@ yeah I understand - thanks for replying, appreciate the conversation.

[@chrispysaid]

Sorry Jake, I wish I could afford $300+ for your course but I simply cannot. I had hoped, but nope. 😢

[@JISON_df]

💖🇵🇭

[@tubeMonger]

I read everyone has left Adobe because they use your content to train their AI and make you pay for it. Apparently it isn't true.

[@robertdouble559]

Why is the 3d engine so controversial? Get over it losers! 😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@BlurryPuzzle]

Well unsubscribed you for sake of Element 3D .. You dont bring legend and criticise his plugin. I still love E3D and love it

[@JakeInMotion]

Understandable, have a great day ✌️