Adobe After Effects - Manual (Page 421)

Note:
the Timeline panel for the active composition, press FF.
Effect plug-ins
All effects are implemented as plug-ins, including the effects that are included with After Effects. Plug-ins are small software modules—with
filename extensions such as .aex, .pbk, and .pbg—that add functionality to an application. Not all plug-ins are effect plug-ins; for example, some
plug-ins provide features for importing and working with certain file formats. The Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in, for example, provides After
Effects with its ability to work with camera raw files. (See Plug-ins.)
Many effect plug-ins are written in C/C++; increasingly, many image-manipulation effect plug-ins are written in the Adobe Pixel Bender language.
Because effects are implemented as plug-ins, you can install and use additional effects that parties other than Adobe provide, including effects
that you create yourself. You can add a single new effect or an entire folder of new effects to the Plug-ins folder, which is located by default in one
of these folders:
(Windows) Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC\Support Files
(Mac OS) Applications/Adobe After Effects CC
When After Effects starts, it searches the Plug-ins folder and its subfolders for all installed effects and adds them to the Effect menu and to the
Effects & Presets panel. After Effects ignores the contents of folders with names that begin and end in parentheses; for example, the contents of
the folder (archived_effects) are not loaded.
After Effects comes with several third-party plug-ins, including Foundry Keylight, Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse, Digieffects FreeForm,
Imagineer mocha shape, fnord ProEXR, and Cycore FX (CS5.5, and earlier), CycoreFX HD (CS6 and later) plug-ins. These plug-ins are installed
by default with the full version of Adobe After Effects software. Some of these plug-ins are not included with the trial version of Adobe After Effects.
(See Third-party plug-ins included with After Effects.).
Digieffects FreeForm is not included with After Effects CS6.
After Effects CC and CS6 includes Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse 3.
The installers for some plug-ins install their documentation in the same directory as the plug-ins themselves.
The EXtractoR and IDentifier plug-ins from fnord software are included with After Effects to provide access to multiple layers and channels of
OpenEXR files. See ProEXR plug-ins, IDentifier and EXtractoR.
Animating effects
You animate effect properties in the same way that you animate any other properties—by adding keyframes or expressions to them. In most
cases, even effects that rely on animation for their normal use require that you set some keyframes or expressions. For example, animate the
Transition Completion property of a Transition effect or the Evolution setting of the Turbulent Noise effect to turn a static effect into a dynamic
effect.
Color depth
Many effects support processing of image color and alpha channel data at a depth of 16 or 32 bits per channel (bpc). Using an 8-bpc effect in a
16-bpc or 32-bpc project can result in a loss of color detail. If an effect supports only 8 bpc, and your project is set to 16 bpc or 32 bpc, the Effect
Controls panel displays a warning icon
next to the effect name. You can set the Effects & Presets panel to list only the effects that support the
color depth of the current project. (See Color depth and high dynamic range color.)
Render order
The order in which After Effects renders masks, effects, layer styles, and transform properties—called the render order—may affect the final result
of an applied effect. By default, effects appear in the Timeline panel and Effect Controls panel in the order in which they were applied. Effects are
rendered in order from top to bottom in this list. To change the order in which effects are rendered, drag the effect name to a new position in the
list. (See
Render order and collapsing transformations .)
Adjustment layers
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