r/motiongraphics • u/KashuAcademy • 9d ago
Plugins I Would Actually Pay For as a Motion Designer
Hey all,
I run a motion studio and live in After Effects daily, so I did a full breakdown of the plugins I'd actually spend money on in 2026. I share my honest opinion about what they're good for, when they're NOT worth it, and the annoying parts tutorials usually skip.
Quick takeaways you can use right now:
1. Overlord
If you design in Illustrator / Figma, it can be the biggest time-saver. Sends over editable shapes + text instead of digging through a giant Illustrator import. 2026 updates made Figma way smoother.
Watch for: text spacing shifts, layer order flips, complex gradients not transferring 1:1. Always do a clean-up pass after transfer.
2. Deep Glow
Only if you do a lot of light work, After Effects' native glow is technically a glow. Deep Glow actually looks like light. Nicer falloff, cinematic tone-mapping, RGB radius, lens dirt in v2.
Watch for: it's ~$100 for a glow, it gets overused fast, and we've hit black previews + export crashes with it in the studio. If you mostly do flat vector explainers, skip it.
3. True Comp Duplicator
Imagine you have 1 main comp with 5 pre-comps inside and 12 nested comps. Then the client says, "Can we make another version?". This duplicates everything correctly linked, renames, and keeps expressions. Moreover, it is name-your-own-price for individuals.
4. Newton 4
Only when you need real physics. Full 2D physics engine inside AE, bakes to editable keyframes. Amazing for falling/colliding/bouncing setups where keyframing 50 objects would take hours.
Watch for: ~$250 and not a daily driver. Grab the trial with export limits first to see if you actually need it.
5. Joysticks ‘N Sliders
Joysticks ‘N Sliders is great for building poses and driving a whole face / UI rig from one controller.
Downside: heavy rigs + lots of expressions can slow AE down, and adding new parts after you rig is clunky.
6. Duik Angela
Duik Angela is free, open-source, and can rig a full character. It's just huge, so it feels intimidating if you only need a simple arm up/down. Still the one I'd tell anyone serious about rigging to learn.
6. BadFX
One free panel with easings, stagger, gradients, transforms, presets, utils. Great if you don't want to hunt 40 tiny scripts across 40 sites. We use it daily.
7. Glasser
Applies editable glass to shape, text, footage or precomp layers, then you refine it through Essential Properties. Best part: it generates a Control Null so you can move, scale, and rotate the glass with your design.
8. Putty
Lattice + cage deformer that reads the layer's alpha and places the lattice right on the visible pixels, instead of a grid across the whole layer.
9. Pixion
Particle system that generates particles from any source layer and drives behavior from pixel data like luminance and color. GPU accelerated.
Watch for: most interesting of the three for hero backgrounds, product reveals, music visuals. Still v1 territory and not cheap, so trial first.
If you want the full breakdown with examples and links, you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/QNBG0DxsaYY
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u/gildedbluetrout 9d ago
Nice list ta! Putty looks nice hey. Gun to my head the only one I cant lose in a client prod environment is true comp duplicator tho. And as you say - it’s cheap as. I’ve mine tagged as an attachment in gmail to drop into the scripts panel on any machine I might end up on. Cant leave home without it.
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u/montycantsin777 8d ago
i dont understand how everones drooling over deepglow. the threshold doesnt even work properly…
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u/MercenaryOfOZ 7d ago
True Comp Duplicator is a life saver and it's insane After Effects STILL does not natively have this feature yet
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u/ImaDoughnut 9d ago
Can I play the devils advocate and ask what’s stopping me from building my own plugins nowadays?
I have overlord, it worked fine. Kept randomly breaking and I kept having to fix it. Not that big of a deal.
However, I’ve built my own version and added features that suit my own workflow and needs and I just use that nowadays. There’s nothing stopping me from open sourcing it on gh either
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u/gildedbluetrout 9d ago
Whats stopping you is that vibecoding produces unreliable shit, and all these subs are infested with rando wankers trying to get you to subscribe to their lightroom competitor they vibe coded over four weekends.
Total incompetents with no coding skill expecting to replicate the top tier of AE plugs deserve a Darwin award for time wasting = billable time to lost to peripheral areas of zero skill.
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u/ImaDoughnut 9d ago
I completely agree that most of the vibecoded stuff is trash, and it’s laughable when someone asks money for it. But I’ve literally done it for myself and it works better than overlord. Most importantly it adapts to me, not the other way around.
I’ve even built software for my kindle that’s over a decade old and it’s given it a new life instead of it becoming ewaste. It sits on my desk and I can run shortcuts, automations, whatever really.
I’m not pro AI, but I can’t pretend as if it’s not a powerful tool. You’d be a fool if you think these plugin creators don’t use it themselves.
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u/BramleyBear 9d ago
I slop coded myself a version of Newton and a fluid SIM app for AE, saved myself hundreds of pounds and does everything I need it to... crazy
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u/ImaDoughnut 9d ago
See this is exactly what I’m talking about. Is it slop? Sure, I’m not gonna pretend it isn’t. But it works for us and it works well. Saved myself money, and I did it all within an hour.
If the product is good, then people will pay for it regardless of how many free versions there may be. But if the free copies are just as good if not better, why would I spend money?
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u/DVNO4CAPITALETTERS 9d ago
Thanks for letting me know Putty exists! 🤯