Best AE Plug-Ins?

[Ron Lindeboom]

The Digital Anarchy plug-ins are amazing, as is Zaxwerks. Another favourite of mine (and which may not be effects, per se, but is *very* important) is Color Finesse from Synthetic Aperture.

You may also wish to check out BroadcastGEMs.com for their AE tools — while not plug-ins, per se, they are incredibly deep and rich. There is a review of BroadcastGEMs in the Cow’s features section.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net

[Tony! Hulette]

The best plugins are the ones that do whatever it is that you do (roto, color, 3D, lighting, morphing, distortion, etc). What’s best varies depending on your needs and your style. I would look at all of them and see what appeals to you and fits your situation best. If you can make it to one of the trade shows, where you can see them and talk with some of the developers, even better. For a good general workhorse package of plugins, I’m fond of the Boris continuum set. However, there are so many others that are just as good or better, that its hard to resist making a long list of them all. I’ll say it again: it depends on your needs and your style

[Joe Murray]

Twixtor…

[David Johnson]

Tony is very right that “it depends on your needs and your style”, but some definitely worth looking at if you have the budget are: Boris Continuum, GenArts Sapphire, Zaxwerks, DigiEffects, The Foundry, Cycore, Red Giant, Digital Film Tools, Digital Anarchy, ReVision & Panopticum. You can easily spend thousands on very cool AE plugins that you may rarely/never use so I’d strongly recommend deciding what you NEED before browsing the list above…Trapcode’s plugins are relatively cheap despite high quality and usefulness.