On the flip side, it is Mac only, that means there is no way you can use these compositions on Windows. If you have no prior programming experience, Quartz Composer is probably the best tool to begin with. Now how do you create AE plugins from Quartz Compositions? Luckily, there are a couple of Amazing tools that help you do it. They are FxFactory Pro and Effect Builder AE. #AFTER EFFECTS PIXEL SORTER NO PLUG IN PRO#įxFactory Pro is CS5 compatible and it has many other advantages like, you can create plugins for FCP and Motion and synchronize all the presets. I have seen some beautiful plugins created with FxFactory and they all use Quartz Composer underneath.

Effect builder AE is another tool from Pixlock, which I don’t think is compatible with CS5, but it provides a unique advantage i.e. You don’t need to install a whole bundle like FxFactory and you can distribute just your plugin with ease.Įasy to learn, very artist friendly, no need to write any code. #AFTER EFFECTS PIXEL SORTER NO PLUG IN INSTALL# Mac-Only, dependent on third party frameworks. Pixel Bender is a technology created by Adobe that helps developers create Image manipulation kernels. It has an XML based language syntax and is very easy to learn if you have some sort of scripting or programming experience. Even if you don’t its very easy to pick up. Pixel Bender is a relatively young technology with a promising future. Right now, Pixel Bender support in After Effects is pretty basic, but it is enough to create some very cool plugins for After Effects. Now technically speaking, Pixel Bender doesn’t create After Effects ‘plugins’.

But, After Effects recognizes Pixel Bender Kernel files and treats them as ‘Effect plugins’.

If you want to know how Pixel Bender works, you can view my introductory tutorial. Not going into too much details, Pixel Bender kernels treat every pixel individually. So every output pixel is processed individually and there is no way you can process the whole image since they don’t have memory. To understand better, take After Effects Expressions as an example. Expressions are calculated every frame and they don’t have any memory. In the same way, Pixel Bender kernels are processed for every pixel and no data from a previously processed pixel is available. Now, before you get all confused, watch the introductory tutorial for much detailed explanation. #AFTER EFFECTS PIXEL SORTER NO PLUG IN PRO#.#AFTER EFFECTS PIXEL SORTER NO PLUG IN INSTALL#.#AFTER EFFECTS PIXEL SORTER NO PLUG IN MAC OS#.

Pixel sorter plugin after effects