After Effects CS6 and later has many new and changed features that make use of the GPU (graphics processing unit) on your graphics card.

For a video explaining these GPU features and their requirements, see this:
“System Requirements for GPU Acceleration (OpenGL, CUDA)”

The GPU features in After Effects CS6 and later can be thought of in three categories:

• GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer (CUDA on specific graphics cards)
• Fast Draft mode, Hardware BlitPipe, and GPU acceleration of Cartoon effect (OpenGL with somewhat stringent requirements)
• OpenGL swap buffer (OpenGL with looser requirements)

IMPORTANT: A common misconception is that After Effects requires one of a specific set of Nvidia GPUs. That is not true. Only the GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer requires this. The other GPU features work on any GPU that meets certain basic requirements. See below for details.

One important point for users of previous versions of After Effects: The previous OpenGL renderer is gone. It was unreliable and problematic, and most people (rightly) turned it off except for OpenGL-Interactive mode. The OpenGL features in After Effects CS6 and later have been built fresh and do not attempt to solve the same problems as the previous OpenGL renderer. In other words, you no longer need to be scared by the appearance of the word ‘OpenGL’ as it relates to After Effects.

If you have questions, bring them to the After Effects forum; don’t ask in the comments on this blog post, which far fewer people will see.

After Effects CS6 and later includes a new ray-traced 3D environment, within which you can bend 2D layers, extrude text and shapes, and more.

The ray-traced 3D renderer can run on the CPU, but the CPU-based ray-traced 3D renderer is rather slow in Final Quality mode. That’s why After Effects also has a GPU-accelerated 3D renderer. To use the GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer, you must have one of a specific set of graphics cards.

The graphics cards that After Effects can use for the GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer are listed near the bottom of the system requirements page.

Note: To use Kepler-class graphics cards (such as the GTX 680) for the GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer in After Effects CS6, you need to install the After Effects CS6 (11.0.1) or (11.0.2) update.

You need to install the latest driver for you graphics card. You can update the CUDA driver via the CUDA panel in System Preferences or by going to the NVIDIA web site.

• (Windows) Install the latest WHQL-certified driver for your GPU.
• (Mac) Install the NVIDIA CUDA driver (v4.0.50 or later).

To use a Quadro 4000 on Mac OSX v10.6.8, install the Quadro 4000 driver for Mac OS.

If your GPU is not supported, or you have an old driver, the ray-traced 3D renderer will render on the CPU using all physical cores.

If you have multiple GPUs installed, the GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer will use the CUDA cores on all of them, as long as they are of the same CUDA compute level. (See the technical specifications of your GPU for its CUDA compute level.) After Effects will also use all of the VRAM on the installed GPUs, with the caveat that both cards will be treated as if they each have the amount of VRAM on the card with the lesser amount of VRAM.

The reason that the GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer is limited to working on only specific GPUs is simple: testing. We are committed to making After Effects stable and reliable—as well as fast—so we must thoroughly test every card that we say After Effects will use to provide these features.

If you want to request that a specific piece of hardware be added to our list, please submit a feature request.

Fast Draft is a preview mode created to make working with the ray-traced 3D renderer much, much faster. It is not a high-fidelity renderer, and it makes many sacrifices of visual fidelity for speed of manipulation. It is intended to be used when setting up 3D scenes, when working in Final Quality mode would be too slow. (See this video for a visual demonstration of this mode.)

The “Hardware BlitPipe” feature is a GPU acceleration feature that is only engaged when using color management output simulation on the screen and when using the exposure control in the viewer panels. The option to enable this feature is a preference: Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, And Footage Panels.

This level of GPU acceleration requires OpenGL 2.0 or higher (with Shader Model 4.0 or higher on Windows), and at least 256MB of texture memory. Most ATI and NVIDIA cards released in the past five years meet these requirements, as do the following Intel graphics chips:

• (Windows) Intel HD Graphics Family, Intel HD Graphics 4000, Intel HD Graphics P4000
• (Mac) Intel HD Graphics 3000

If your GPU does not meet these requirements, these features will be disabled:

• Fast Draft mode
• Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, and Footage Panels
• Use OpenGL When Available option in Cartoon effect

This video shows how to check the specifications of your GPU from within After Effects.

The OpenGL swap buffer feature relates to the drawing of pixels to the screen, which can be a performance bottleneck, especially with large monitors. Using the OpenGL swap buffer feature to accelerate the drawing of pixels to the screen makes working with After Effects much faster and smoother.

This level of GPU acceleration simply requires OpenGL 1.5 or higher with Shader Model 3.0 or higher. Most ATI and NVIDIA cards meet these requirements, as do the Intel HD Graphics 3000 and Intel HD Graphics 4000 chipsets. If your GPU does not support these requirements, After Effects CS6 and later will use the CPU as it did in After Effects CS5.5, although there are some improvements for the CPU version of this feature in After Effects CS6, too.

For complete details of what’s new and changed in After Effects, and how to get it, see this page.

See this page for a list of companies that provide plug-ins for After Effects:

Adobe After Effects CS6 In depth: Plug-ins

In addition to listing the plug-ins provided by each company, this page provides links to the companies’ websites, so that you can purchase these plug-ins or find how to contact them for technical support or customer service.

Another great place for information about plug-ins for Premiere Pro and After Effects is the Toolfarm website, which provides an online store as well as tutorials, a forum, and other supporting resources for using plug-ins.

The aescripts + aeplugins website also provides many plug-ins (and scripts) for After Effects.

If you want to develop plug-ins yourself, see the After Effects Developer Center, where you can download the After Effects SDK and supporting documentation.

Important: There have been few significant changes to the effect plug-in API for After Effects CS6, so you shouldn’t need new versions of most plug-ins for After Effects CS6, if you already have plug-ins that work for After Effects CS5 or CS5.5.

That said, there are a few changes that have required some vendors to need to update their plug-ins. E.g., RE:Vision Effects has an update to accommodate the new caching system, and Red Giant has updates to fix bugs and such. Check the websites of the vendors of your plug-ins to see if you need an update for any reason.

Separate from the issue of updates to the effect plug-ins themselves, there is the issue of their installers: Some plug-ins come with installers, and (as with CS5.5) these installers may need to be updated to install plug-ins into the correct location.

Toolfarm is maintaining a list of major plug-in vendors and the status of their updates for CS6, and they have some helpful resources for installing plug-ins for which the installers haven’t been updated.

After Effects CS5.5 and later and Premiere Pro CS6 include the Warp Stabilizer effect. After Effects CS6 includes the 3D Camera Tracker effect.

When applied to short clips, these effects work quickly with low memory requirements, but you can begin to notice some problems with longer clips, as the memory and storage requirements increase with the duration of the clips.

Both of these effects have an analysis phase (indicated by a blue banner) followed by a stabilization or camera solve phase (indicated by an orange banner).

The memory required during the stabilization or camera solve phase is released as soon as the orange banner disappears, but the memory required for the analysis phase is not released when the blue banner disappears; the memory required by the analysis phase continues to be consumed as long as the project is open. The analysis data is stored attached to the effect, which is saved in the project. When this data is large, it can slow down project loading and saving, as well as duplication of the effect.

Depending on the content of the video, the analysis phase for the Warp Stabilizer effect can require approximately 10KB (kilobytes) bytes of data per frame, or 20KB per frame when Detailed Analysis is chosen; for Synthesize Edges mode, slightly more data is required. (No, this does not depend significantly on the frame size of the video.) For the 3D Camera Tracker effect, the memory requirement for the analysis phase is about half the size as for the Warp Stabilizer effect.

For the 3D Camera Tracker effect only, once you have finished using the effect (i.e., you have created a good camera and don’t plan to tweak anything or create any new cameras or layers positioned with the target), you can delete the effect, which will remove the stored data from the project. This will speed up loading and saving of the project.

For the Warp Stabilizer effect, that’s not an option. Instead, make sure that you have trimmed the clip to just the portion that you need before you apply the Warp Stabilizer effect. If that’s still very long, you may want to work in a separate project and render the result out and bring it back into your main project, so as to speed up project loading and saving in the main project. If you plan to chop a clip into pieces, do this before stabilizing, not after.

Computer systems and other factors differ, but a rough estimate of when it’s time to consider taking steps to mitigate the demands on memory and storage is when you’re working on clips more than ~7,000 frames (~5 minutes at 24 frames per second, or ~2 minutes at 60 fields per second).

During the analysis and solving stages, the Warp Stabilizer effect and 3D Camera Tracker effect use memory outside of the pool shared by After Effects and Premiere Pro. Therefore, you can allocate more memory to the analysis and solving phases for these effects by increasing the RAM Reserved For Other Applications value in the Memory & Multiprocessing preferences.

After Effects CS6 is available, as are other professional video and audio applications in Creative Suite 6 Production Premium, including Adobe Prelude and SpeedGrade. You can order CS6 Production Premium now … or try it free for 30 days.

Note that After Effects CS6 and all of the other applications in CS6 Production Premium will also be available as part of Adobe Creative Cloud.

Here’s a link to the snazzy summary of what’s new in CS6 professional video and audio applications, with short overview movies about some of the top features. This PDF document is a much deeper look at what’s new, so be sure to check that out, too.

Here’s what Chris and Trish Meyer have to say about After Effects CS6. (They have a video training series about it, too.)

Video2Brain provides a comprehensive set of movies (by me) covering every new and changed feature in After Effects CS6.

Angie Taylor has an overview of what’s new, with links to more resources.

For details of what was added and changed from After Effects CS5 to After Effects CS5.5, see this page.

If you want to ask questions about these new and changed features, come on over to the After Effects user-to-user forum. That’s the best place for questions. Questions left in comments on a blog post are much harder to work with; the blog comment system just isn’t set up for conversations.

• Global Performance Cache
• 3D Camera Tracker
• ray-traced, extruded text and shapes
• conversion of Illustrator vector graphics to shape layers
• variable-width mask feather
• new Cycore (CC) effects and upgrade of dozens of effects to 16-bpc and 32-bpc color depth
• Pro Import After Effects functionality based on technology from Automatic Duck for importing projects from other applications, including Final Cut Pro and Avid software
• improved integration with mocha-AE
• new and greatly improved GPU acceleration features for previews and final-quality rendering
• Rolling Shutter Repair effect

Here is a virtually comprehensive list of changes, with detail beyond the summaries of the top items listed above. We’ll be posting a lot more detail over the coming weeks, and the outline below will be populated with links to in-depth articles and tutorials, so bookmark this page and check back.

importing

• conversion of Illustrator vector graphics to shape layers
• Pro Import After Effects functionality based on technology from Automatic Duck for importing projects from other applications, including Final Cut Pro and Avid software
• ability to import ARRIRAW footage from ARRIFLEX D-21 or Alexa digital cameras

compositing

• 3D Camera Tracker
• variable-width mask feather
• new preference: Pen Tool Shortcut Toggles Between Pen And Mask Feather Tools. If this preference setting is disabled, the G key cycles through all of the pen tools (including Add Vertex and Delete Vertex tools); if it is enabled, the G key toggles between the Pen tool and Mask Feather tool.
• improved integration with mocha-AE

extruded graphics and 3D animation

• ray-traced, extruded text and shapes
• bending 2D layers in 3D
• 3D environment maps
• new 3D material options
• new layer bounding boxes and selection indicators
• new draft preview modes

effects and color

• upgraded many effects to 16-bpc and 32-bpc color depth, including Drop Shadow, Spill Suppressor, Timewarp, Transform, Set Matte, Photo Filter, Fill, Linear Wipe, Iris Wipe, and Radial Wipe effects.
• new Cycore (CC) effects with inclusion of CycoreFX HD suite, all of which use 16-bpc or 32-bpc color
• Rolling Shutter Repair effect
• extended Apply Color LUT effect to use Adobe SpeedGrade .Look files, cineSpace .csp files, and overrange IRIDAS .cube files

performance

• Global Performance Cache, which caches frames and intermediate results so that After Effects doesn’t need to re-render any cached item
• persistent disk cache, which stores cached items between sessions and across projects
• Cache Work Area In Background, which fills the cache for one or more compositions as you work on something else
• new GPU-accelerated preview features
• new GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer

miscellaneous

• numerous scripting language additions and improvements, including support for the new variable-width mask feather feature
• ability to use network rendering (aerender and watch folder) without activation of render-only nodes: After Effects CS5.5 had to be activated (serial number entered) on render-only machines due to licensing restrictions for certain codecs. In After Effects CS6, you can now run aerender or use Watch Folder in a non-royalty-bearing mode, activation not required. In this mode, some codec-specific features are disabled—primarily use of MPEG codecs.

Andrew Devis (who has been creating a lot of great material lately) recently published a five-part series on setting up 3D scenes and animating cameras in After Effects. I appreciate how simple Andrew managed to keep these video tutorials, while still showing how to fine-tune and control 3D animations.

Here are direct links to all five parts in the series, with a very brief summary of what’s covered in each:

“Setting up a 3D Scene”: basics of 3D layer transformations, including orientation and rotation; how to modify a camera or 3D view “Setting up a Static 3D Particle System”: setting up a 3D particle system using the CC Particle World effect “Simple & Fast Camera Animation Technique”: basics of animating cameras using null object layers and simple keyframe copying “Finessing Camera Animation”: fine-tuning camera animations by modifying camera properties and finessing motion paths and keyframe interpolation “Panning Large Scenes Using Target Layers in 3D”: moving a camera around a large scene with target layers

If you haven’t already done so, you should also check out Andrew’s After Effects basics series.

There are a lot of tutorials about After Effects. A lot. But it’s rather uncommon to find a tutorial (let alone a whole series of tutorials) that does a good job of actually teaching the basics.

I’ve done my best to collect the best of these rare and precious high-quality getting-started resources on this page.

Andrew Devis has added a tremendous wealth of new material in this category in his After Effects basics series on the Creative COW website. The series is good at introducing a wide range of After Effects features, but it’s especially strong regarding shape layers, which are native vector graphics items in After Effects.

Because I couldn’t find a convenient table of contents on the Creative COW website that gave a list of these tutorials in order, here’s a set of links to them:

1. Workspaces
2. Importing Assets
3. Creating Compositions
4. Importing Photoshop Documents (PSDs)
5. Naming & Organising
6. Previewing Your Work
7. Timeline Basics, part 1 , Timeline Basics, part 2
8. Timeline Basics 3 – Work area & layer shortcuts
9. Fitting Items and Creating Solids
10. Transforms
11. Animation 1 – Creating Keyframes
12. Animation 2 – Easing Keyframes
13. Motion Paths Part 1 – The Basics
14. Motion Paths Part 2 – Additional Tools
15. Motion Paths Part 3 – Masks & Paths
16. Parenting
17. Shape Layers Part 1
18. Shape Layers Part 2 – Gradients & Properties
19. Shape Layers Part 3 – Text & The Pen Tool
20. AE Basics 20: Shape Layers Part 4 – Merge Paths
21. Shape Layers Part 5 – Offset Paths
22. Shape Layers Part 6 – Pucker & Bloat
23. Shape Layers Part 7 – The Repeater Operator
24. Shape Layers Part 8 – Round Corner & Stroke
25. Shape Layers Part 9 – Trim Paths
26. Shape Layers Part 10 – Twist & Wiggle Paths
27. Shape Layers Part 11 – Wiggle Transform
28. Shape Layers Part 12 – The Zig Zag Operand
29. Shape Layers Part 13 – Creating a True Spiral Using Illustrator Paths (Note the comments, which recommend using the Spiral animation preset.)
30. The Write-on Effect
31. Brainstorm & Shape Layers
32. Creating a Motion Background with Shapes Layers
33. Options for Creating Text
34. Font Selection and Faux Options
35. The Character Panel
36. Pimping Your Text with Layer Styles
37. Animating Source Text
38. Text Range Selectors, part 1
39. Text Range Selectors, part 2
40. Text Animators, part 1
41. Text Animators, part 2: Fill and Stroke
42. Text Animators, part 3: tracking and more
43. Text Animators, part 4: per-character 3D
44. Text Animators, part 5: shaping text and advanced text options
45. Text Animators, part 6: additional text selectors
46. Mask Feather tool (CS6 and above)
47. Paint: Creating and customizing brushes
48. Paint: panel options (part 1)
49. Paint: panel options (part 2)
50. Paint: Timeline panel
51. Paint: paths
52. Paint: spot & blemish removal
53. motion tracking (Part 1)
54. motion tracking (part 2)
55. Dynamic Link
56. Setting up for export

I hope that Andrew keeps going with this series, as it’s certainly helping a lot of people to get started with many of the key features of After Effects.

We like to point people to free video tutorials as much as possible, such as in this set of resources for beginners and this much more comprehensive set of resources; but we often get asked where people can get more complete, in-depth training materials. Of course, many of these in-depth materials are not free, since creating a lengthy, deep set of video training materials is the sort of work that people tend to want to get paid for. This article is a brief summary of the best providers of paid video training that I know of. In all cases, you can find free sample videos on the websites of these providers, which they’ve generously provided as a way for you to try out their materials before you buy anything.

• video2brain: In the past couple of years, video2brain has emerged to be one of the best providers of video training content for After Effects… and I don’t just say that because I helped to create many of the After Effects courses. The other person doing much of the training for video2brain is Angie Taylor, who is as delightful to listen to as she is informative. In addition to giving you the ability to purchase DVDs of individual courses, video2brain also has subscription options that give you access to all of their materials.

• Lynda.com: For several years, Lynda.com has been providing video training for After Effects, but I think that they’ve really improved their offerings lately with courses by Chris & Trish Meyer and Mark Christiansen. Lynda.com has several different subscription options.

• Total Training: I learned After Effects largely by using Total Training DVDs and tapes (yes, tapes) by Steve Holmes, Dean Velez, and Brian Maffitt. It was truly excellent training. (Thanks, guys!) Brian Maffitt did a set of training for After Effects CS6 recently, much of which is free on Adobe TV, and the After Effects CS5.5 and CS5 materials presented by Luisa Winters are quite good. You can order DVDs of the courses, or you can subscribe for online access.

• Motionworks: The Making It Look Great series from Motionworks is not the sort of video training that teaches a beginner the basics of how to use After Effects. Rather, this series presents detailed, real-world workflows and tips for creating motion graphics that… well… look great. The later DVDs in the series concentrate on Cinema 4D, whereas the first several concentrate on After Effects and companion plug-ins and applications.

• Creative COW: The Creative COW website is mostly known for its forums and free video tutorials, but they also produce some very good video training on DVDs for sale. For example, the best resource that I’ve ever seen for rotoscoping in After Effects is Pete O’Connell’s DVD, which is unforunately listed as “permanently out of stock”. (Maybe if enough people ask nicely, Creative COW can reissue that course.)

• Video Copilot: Video Copilot is another website that is mostly known for its free video tutorials, but they also sell some premium video tutorials on DVD that aren’t available online. Additionally, they collect their free tutorials into very reasonably priced DVDs so that they can be used offline. These training offering are available on their products page, along with all of their plug-ins, stock footage, et cetera.

• Creative Edge: The Creative Edge website collects resources from several providers into one subscription service, so you can watch videos by Total Training, some by video2brain, and so on–all in one place.

Did I miss any providers of video training that you like? Let me know in the comments.

Also see the companion to this article, “video training providers for Adobe Premiere Pro”.

(Full disclousure: I’ve worked with most of the organizations listed here–peforming such tasks as creating videos for them, helping them plan their courses, and reviewing their materials. None of them pay me, though.)

[UPDATE: Dan Gies has provided a free puppet rig for download, with versions for both FreeForm Pro and FreeForm V2.]

Daniel Gies has created a deep and detailed series of videos about rigging and animating a character in After Effects.

Here’s a 5-minute overview of the series:

This series is for intermediate and advanced users of After Effects; it moves rather quickly and assumes that the viewer already knows the basics of how to work with layers, properties, effects, and expressions. (If you don’t, then start here.) Also, the series does not walk the user through a set of steps to create a specific result; rather, it teaches principles and techniques that experienced users will be able to adapt and make use of in their own work.

The high points of the series include in-depth use of expressions, inverse kinematics (using the wonderful Duik script), the Puppet tools, and FreeForm Pro.

The series is broken up into pieces that are between 5 and 20 minutes, with the whole being around three hours. Here’s a link to part 1 on the AETUTS+ website, where you can also find links to the other parts.

Rich Young has mentioned Daniel’s series a couple of times already in his articles, including in this excellent roundup of character animation resources.

Adobe is inviting you to participate in the Adobe Reel Challenge.

If you don’t already have Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium or Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, we invite you to download the free 30-day trial version (or go ahead and buy the full version).

Once you have the software, check out the resources for learning Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, as well as resources from Carey Dissmore specifically tailored to give you what you need to edit your demo reel with Adobe Premiere Pro.

When you’re finished, you can upload your demo reel for others to see on the Adobe Reel Challenge group page on Vimeo.

Andrew Devis recently released a set of four video tutorials on the Creative COW website about color keying.

This series goes into more depth than many tutorials about color keying do, as Andrew shows how to use multiple layers to apply different color-keying settings to different parts of an image. This is a fundamental conceptual hurdle that I see many beginners struggling to clear—as they try instead to use one instance of Keylight on one layer to create a matte for a complex subject.

Here are direct links to Andrew’s tutorials:

• Pulling a basic key
• Dealing with multiple light spill issues
• Dealing with edge issues
• Creating variable-width edge feather with mocha-AE

For much more information about color keying in After Effects, see “Keying introduction and resources”.

Mark Christiansen covers color keying in great depth in the new edition of his book After Effects Visual Effects and Compositing Studio Techniques.