10 After Effects Scripts and Tools Every Motion Designer Needs

After Effects is powerful out of the box, but scripts and extensions transform it into something significantly faster. I've tried dozens over the years. These are the 10 I actually use and recommend.

1. Script Timer

Shameless plug - this is my own tool. Paste your voiceover script and instantly know how long your video will be. I built it because I was tired of guessing and getting it wrong.

2. Flow

Absolutely a must-have. Flow lets you create your own library of easing curves that are easy to tweak and reuse. You can share curve presets with your team, which is huge for consistency across projects. The visual curve editor makes dialing in the right feel so much faster than messing with the graph editor.

3. Overlord

I couldn't live without Overlord. This is an evolution of AEUX and it's the cornerstone of UI animations. It transfers shapes between Illustrator and After Effects while preserving layers, groups, and paths perfectly. Shout out to Adam Plouff at Battle Axe for building this.

4. Bodymovin

Bodymovin is essential for exporting Lottie files. If you're delivering animations for web, this is how you get them out of AE and into lightweight, scalable JSON format. Great for web animations.

5. KBar3

KBar3 is the best toolbar out there. You can add buttons for expressions, effects, menus, scripts - anything. It's like working on steroids. I have custom buttons for my most-used expressions, effect stacks, and even script launchers. Completely customizable.

6. FX Console

FX Console by Video Copilot. It took me a while to get to it and now I feel like I can't live without it. Quick search and apply effects, save presets, take screenshots - all from a simple shortcut. Should honestly be built into AE.

7. AEC4D

AEC4D is a no-brainer if you need to bring stuff from Cinema 4D to After Effects. Seamless transfer of 3D data, cameras, and nulls. Saves hours of manual setup.

8. Keystone

Keystone is a combination of little tools for animation. Offset keyframes, duplicate them, reverse them, redistribute timing - all the small operations that add up to serious time savings when you're working with complex animations.

9. EaseCopy

EaseCopy is dead simple. Copy velocity parameters from an animation and paste them somewhere else. That's it. And it's exactly what you need when you want consistent easing across different properties or layers without manually matching curves.

10. Explode Shape Layers 3

Explode Shape Layers is great for separating shape layer objects into individual layers, or merging them together. Essential when you're working with complex Illustrator imports or need to animate individual elements from a grouped shape layer.