Assets for Artists, Free After Effects Plugin

After Effects, After Effects Plugins, Assets for After Effects

In this weeks Assets For After Effects post we take a look at a great free plugin , AEFlame. While it’s not the simplest plugin you will ever use, this plugin is very powerful with infinite options for animation. Check out the rest after the break.

AEFlame Free After Effects Plugin

Let’s go ahead and get the bad stuff out of the way right off the top. Take a look at this menu. Have you ever seen so many adjustments in one effect? Me neither.

To make matters worse, the presets normally built into this great plugin are not available for the CS4 or CS5 version at this time. But, it’s not all bad, and really, this is the only drawback of the plugin. You just have to jump in and start sliding stuff around to see what happens.

What you get with this Free After Effects Plugin

Once you have gotten over the menu shock, go ahead and open up the global parameters and start making adjustments. All of these parameters can be animated. One thing to keep in mind though, is that this is a VERY CPU INTENSIVE plugin. Work in a low resolution preview until you get ready to render or you run the risk of crashing After Effects. You really can’t go wrong with any of the sliders so change things around as much as you want, with two exceptions.

Sample Density is very processor intensive. Higher is better but don’t go too high or After Effects will crash. For the still below, I used a sample density of 32.

Spatial oversample factor. This is very similar to an anti aliasing setting on 3D programs. I left mine at the default and it seems to work fine.

If you want more information about this awesome free after effects plugin, visit Victoria Nece’s blog for an in-depth review of using this plugin for animation as well as creating some nice high quality stills. For a free after effects plugin, this one is definitely worth the download.

Click here to go to the plugin download.

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