After Effects finally needs a competitive 3D Realtime Engine (GPU) for 3D compositing and virtual workflows of the future. The Link to Cinema is too slow, complicated and unstable for simple 3D compositing tasks. So it needs something like "3D Elements" on steroids and native in AE.

Dranging some 3D Assets into AE, add some effects, tweak and light them, is a must have in 2022. Compositing, Motion Graphics and VFX are not only 2D/2,5D! - they happen now also in 3D and Realtime!

What this new real time 3D Engine needs:
- 3D Geometry Support (import/export)
- PBR Shaders
- Link to Substance Painter/Designer
- Primitives' and very basics modeling (box, spline) and deformer Tools
- Raytrace Lighting, Reflections (GPU)
- Support of 3D Volumes and Point Clouds (vdb.)
- Camera Mapping Tools
- Advanced Camera Tracker (more manuell control, constrains, import/export)
- Smart 3D Particles with Physics (node editor)
- VR HMD Support

thx

PS: I wirte this since years. please don't delete my requests again.

I find that since audio is typically only referenced in AE rather than edited, I am often having to look for and manually disable all video clips that contain audio tracks within the project. This leads to recurring accidents of having surprise elements of audio in my renders and additional needless labor.

The alternative, to me, would be to have an option in preferences that, by default, disables the audio of video layers that contain audio tracks.

Please note that these audio channels would remain present and could manually be turned back on within the timeline.

This is only in regard to the speaker icon audio enable / disable switch of the layer once in the timeline.

Audio-only files (wav, aif, mp3 etc) would remain to default to the audio channel being enabled on that layer.

I think this approach would result in overall less clicks by all users.

I'd like to report an issue we are facing since After Effects 22.4 and 22.5 (it doesn't affect AE 22.3) on two different workstations running macOS 12.4 Monterey.
This, by the way, doesn't happen on a windows 10 workstation.

The problem is easily reproducible. In a project, create 3 compositions with different aspect ratio, 1920x1080, 1080x1080, 1080x1920 .
When you queue the composition in this order 16:9, 1:1, 9:16, the last rendered (9:16) seems to be squashed in a 1:1 ratio, with a green rectangle at the bottom.
When rendering in 16:9,9:16, 1:1, the last rendered (1:1) outputs to a corrupted file. I'm rendering to prores quicktime files.
I uploaded a frame from the wrong the 9:16 output.

How about a new type of Repeater for shape groups that looks pretty much the same as the existing one, except that values in it's Transform properties are not applied cumulatively, but rather have their expressions evaluated individually for every copy of the shape?

So if I add a random expression to the repeater's Position property, I get a bunch of randomly positioned copies. Ideally we'd get expression access to something like repeaterIndex (like textIndex in text layer expression selectors) but even without any new syntax it would be amazing. I can already imagine making a growing vine which automatically sprouts leaves as it gets longer.

Might save someone jumping over to Cavalry, and could provide some new possibilities to MGRTs too.

I'm unable to install latest After Effects BETA v23.1 2023 BETA on my Macbook M1 MAX, here is the crash log

Exit Code: 183
-------------------------------------- Summary --------------------------------------
- 2 fatal error(s), 2 error(s), 3 warnings(s)

FATAL: Error (Code = 183) executing in command 'RunProgramCommand' for package: 'AdobeAfterEffectsBetaBetaAllTrialmaxon-osx-arm64', version:23.1.0.17
FATAL: Error occurred in install of package (Name: AdobeAfterEffectsBetaBetaAllTrialmaxon-osx-arm64 Version: 23.1.0.17). Error code: '183'
ERROR: Inside LaunchProcess. Process does not exists at: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Keyfiles/AfterEffectsBeta/Beta/CustomHooks/dvaPlistGen2016
ERROR: Inside LaunchProcess. Process does not exists at: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Keyfiles/AfterEffectsBeta/Beta/CustomHooks/Maxon Cinema 4D Full Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/osx-arm64
WARN: Unable to run program "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Keyfiles/AfterEffectsBeta/Beta/CustomHooks/dvaPlistGen2016"
WARN: Warning (Code = 183) executing command RunProgramCommand

WARN: Unable to run program "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Keyfiles/AfterEffectsBeta/Beta/CustomHooks/Maxon Cinema 4D Full Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/osx-arm64"

it's in the title. it's mind boggling to me that the program still works, let alone can be in some ways considered stable, but let's face it:

multi-threading use is spotty at best
GPU usage remains under 10-30% on most GPU's
many plugins aren't even 16 or 32 bit
Export templates are no longer standard, can't export in several standards
almost entirely uses RAM for viewport acceleration instead of optimization
by default now uses 429 plugins instead of optimized, built in features
mixed support for different GPU architectures (mostly older ones)
CPU/RAM/GPU usage are all far higher per calculation than the competition.
almost 0 3D integration
unstable, inaccurate tracking
almost no way to work interchangeably with 3D software
only dying legacy support for modern cross-platform standards
workflow discrepancies between a number of standard plugins
3D is essentially unusable, and always has been.
RAM usage is extreme, to the point of reaching several operating system limits easily.
The UI, as nice as it used to be, is dated and unintuitive by modern standards.

and so on. It's been 30 years, and this Ship of Theseus has been taken apart and put together so many times the boards are worn and the lumber different, and the ship is taking on water (and leaking memory in no hypothetical manner). it's just not holding up. It used to be photoshop, but for video. Now it's... frankenshop, for VFX. After effects just hasn't caught up with the times.

I've been using AE since CS2, I've been here since the golden days, but even then, there were weird things that didn't make sense, plugins that didn't follow, or contradicted normal keymaps, things like that. I understand- it's hard to maintain something so big. That it's old is no issue to me. That its age is limiting its usefulness is.

sometimes, it's just time to drop the project and try again from scratch with what we've learned. If anyone knows that, it's a VFX editor.

Currently if you collect multiple projects with same assets it duplicates all the same assets in each collects footage folder.

A "Group Collect" could a consolidated Footage folder that avoids collecting multiple files that are the same an that use the same resource.

This would save on data sends to clients

You could begin this with an option in the current collect panel to 'start a group collect' option.
First project gets collected with a group footage folder created.

Second projects to collect could have a 'add to group collect' option and only the items that are different would be collected into the same group footage folder.

and so on.

There always has been a bug when some text layer contains glyphs that are not supported by the applied font. Example:

1. There is a text layer with some Hindi text and the applied font is Roboto Regular.

2. The Roboto Regular does not support Hindi letters so it's replaced with some default font BUT it does not show the font when the layer is selected.

3. When the text layer is not selected, and I choose some font (for example Noto Sans Devanagari), then I select the text layer, the font menu still shows my selected font instead of the real font of the text layer (the default one).

4. In this case I need to select some other font and then select the Noto Sans Devanagari again.

it's frustrating because sometimes it's very easy to overlook there is a wrong font.

After Effects could dominate the market if the developers simply did this:

Rewrite the software so that you have the option to work with nodes in a dedicated window AND still use layers as default (Blender does this, so I know it's possible).
The key to making After Effects the industry dominating software it ought to be, is by keeping the easy to use and super clean UI that it already has, while optimizing its functionality.
For instance, if After Effects had it's standard "layer" timeline, but also gave users the ability to work 'under the hood' for more complex tasks, it would be a game changer!

As it is now, if I have 20 layers that I want to apply a mask to, I have to make 20 copies of that layer (or do some weird precomping setup).
But if AE had nodes, the workflow would be amazing.

Additionally, we already have multiple functions for the 'pick whip,' but if it could also be utilized to connect layers (without jumping into the node window) that would be a major convenience.
For instance, if I held down Shift and Alt, then the pick whip could connect a layer to another layer's properties, like masks or color, instead of just its transform value, like parenting layers work currently.

Just look at the way Blender functions and model AE from that model.

After Effects could be the perfect solution for hobbyists and pros alike with just a rewrite and some stability tweaks.

Also, as a random note: if you changed your subscription model to à la carte, our minds would be blown.
How this could work: for 2 programs of our choosing, $20/per month (or whatever).
For 4 programs of our choosing, $50.
For 5 or more, $84.99.

And as a final note, if anyone is still reading this far -- if there was some way that Adobe could either acquire existing plugins to make them part of the software itself, or write its own code independently to accomplish the same ends, that would be fantastic.

It just seems that AE has been riding on its old tricks for too long, and is reliant on plugins to do more of the heavy lifting -- for compositing, Red Giant has Supercomp. The question then, is why can't that either be licensed and incorporated into the software itself, or just rewrite the code to allow native compositing in AE to function more intuitively (better glows, a new version of 3d Camera Tracker that allows the user more control, clean track points and troubleshoot instead of just hitting a button and hoping for the best).

After Effects is the software I grew up on, its the software that still makes the most sense and has the easiest to use interface. But it needs to grow up and become the effects powerhouse that it always should have been.
DaVinci Resolve is fine enough but its workflow is overcomplicated and Nuke is way out of most people's price range.

If AE could evolve, it could absolutely dominate.
Please consider any of these changes.

Thank you.