u/skellener

The guy who posted his list of useful plugins for his anime projects didn’t expand much on the tools, just made a list with no references. I took his list and tried to expand on what I’ve used them for. This will hopefully help anyone who was interested in them.

I work in animation professionally and we use some of these. There are some good time savers in there. We use Macs and not all of these are compatible. Here’s my take on his list of the ones I’ve used and links to where to get them.

OLM https://www.olm.co.jp/rd/categories/opentools

These are from a Japanese developer. We used to use their smoother tool (anti-alias), but OLM never recompiled their tools for M series chips, so we developed our smoother tool own based on an open source. I’ll add the link if I can find the open source. * Here’s the link to it https://github.com/loilo-inc/smooth?tab=readme-ov-file

- KW - never heard of this one, will need to look into it.

F’s https://github.com/bryful/F-s-PluginsProjects

Some very handy ones for color key (and changing many colors at once) color blends - typical  2D cel animation type stuff, very handy as presets - not all are available for Mac.

Plug-in Everything https://www.plugineverything.com/

Lots of great stuff on their own site and AEScripts.com - Deep Glow was a staple, but Red Giant Optical Glow if you have the subscription is even better. But go for Deep Glow for one time purchase - support small developers. These guys are awesome!

Maxon Red Giant Universe https://www.maxon.net/en/red-giant/universe

Yup, Particular is still worthy. Still slow. But if you have the dough, very useful. I am soooo not a master at Particular. A really good stand-alone pay once particle plug-in would still be welcome one day. Shine and Starglow are also fantastic. There’s so many good ones. 

Video CoPilot  https://www.videocopilot.net/

Just buy all the things! Optical Flares were a godsend on Motorcity. Saved us from tracking all the car headlights, etc… I did a couple of personal projects with Element 3D back in the day and built entire cities with the add on pack. Very cool stuff, and Andrew Kramer is the GOAT.

PSoft https://www.psoft.co.jp/en/product/

These are PC only, we don’t use them.

Boris Sapphire FX https://borisfx.com/products/sapphire/

I will never understand why people shell out for these. Everything these plugins can do can be done very simply with the built in tools in AE or with a much cheaper one offered elsewhere. These are 100% non-essential. Skip them. Mocha however for tracking, both the free AE built in version or the full blown pro tool they offer are very very useful.