After Effects 2027 learned to build compositions on request

Adobe has begun a phased rollout of After Effects 2027 (version 27.0). The main thing in the release: part of a motion designer's routine moves into text prompts. The new AI Assistant panel organizes your project from a description, writes and fixes expressions, generates images and video, and builds compositions. The second major theme concerns 3D. In the Advanced 3D renderer, animated precomps, solids, images, and video can now serve as the material for a 3D object, and Substance 3D materials can be assigned to 3D text and shape layers.

The announcement was published on November 7 on the Adobe Community forum. The update is arriving in the Creative Cloud app in stages, and for some users it will only appear in a few days. Adobe promised to show the full release notes, documentation, and official announcements at Adobe MAX on Tuesday, November 10. You don't have to wait for the rollout: all the new features are already in the latest build of the After Effects Beta.

The assistant takes on expressions and scene assembly

Expressions usually eat up a good deal of a motion designer's time: tying a wiggle to a slider, looping an animation, hunting for an error in an expression. Now the task can be described in words in the AI Assistant panel. This is how its purpose is phrased in Adobe's announcement:

"Describe what you need in the new AI Assistant panel and let it organize your project, write and fix expressions, generate images and video, build compositions, and much more".

Which models are behind the generation, whether the assistant spends generative credits, and which actions in the project it performs without confirmation are not stated in the announcement. At least one serious problem is known from the beta testing. On October 12, one participant reported in the bug reports section that the assistant in the beta on macOS did not respond at all. To any request, down to a simple "hello" in an empty project, the panel returned a processing error. Neither reinstalling, nor signing back in to Creative Cloud, nor granting full disk access helped. Whether the problem has been fixed in the released 27.0 is unclear from what has been published.

Layers become materials in 3D

When working with Advanced 3D, animated precomps, solids, images, and video now work as materials for 3D objects. For example, an animated pattern or footage can be used as an object's surface material right inside After Effects. Layer materials and Substance 3D Materials can be assigned to 3D text and shape layers, replacing the standard materials with photorealistic or stylized ones. For titles and logos in 3D this probably means you will have to turn to an external 3D package less often for metal, plastic, or a stylized look. Which parts of the object (the face, the sides, the bevel) the material goes onto and whether there are limitations when switching to other renderers, Adobe has not yet specified.

Text from Illustrator arrives editable

To animate lettering from an Illustrator layout letter by letter, it often had to be retyped by hand. Now After Effects turns Illustrator text into editable text layers. Fonts, type size, fills, position, styles, and variable font settings are preserved in the process. Adobe Stock assets can also be added without leaving the program: the new Adobe Stock panel loads them straight into the Project panel.

Contour Paint stylizes footage as a drawing

The Contour Paint effect appeared in the beta back in August, starting with build 27.0 Build 6. It finds contours in the frame along the edges of shapes and smears the image along them, as if finger painting. If desired, the effect posterizes the resulting patches with solid fills from a reduced palette. The result is an illustration, an image in the spirit of print graphics, or near abstraction. The key element for understanding the settings is the View dropdown menu. It switches the view between the final result (Final Result) and the edge map (Edge Map) in the form in which the effect builds it. The view modes in Keylight are arranged in a similar way. A breakdown of all the parameters with examples featuring a skateboarder and a frog can be found in the team's post about Contour Paint.

Auto-save is no longer reset by a manual save

For those working with heavy projects, the updated auto-save may turn out to be important. Previously the auto-save timer was reset with every manual save. For an artist who saves manually often, auto-save rarely fired. If the working file got corrupted, there was nothing to roll back to. Adobe described the updated system in September, when it appeared in the beta starting with build 27.0.044. Here is what changed:

• auto-save fires at a fixed interval counted from the previous auto-copy, and a manual save no longer resets it;
• copies are also created for projects that have never been saved, and file names have become clearer;
• after a crash the program itself offers to open the last auto-copy, and there is no longer any need to look for it in the Auto-Save folder;
• the recovered copy opens as an unnamed Recovered Project, so the first save creates a new file and overwrites nothing.

In addition, the release contains more than 50 bug fixes and minor improvements, among them support for native macOS full-screen mode.

What studios should take into account

The release is uneven in its degree of readiness. Contour Paint and the new auto-save went through the beta over several months and are described in detail; they can be put to work right away. With AI Assistant the picture is different. The release's headline feature is so far described in a single sentence, and the terms of its use (models, credits, handling of project data) have not been disclosed. Studios with confidentiality requirements for their materials would do well to clarify these questions before adoption. Layers in the role of materials change the approach to 3D graphics inside After Effects, but judging by the description, this capability is tied to the Advanced 3D renderer. The phased rollout also gives a practical reason not to hurry: for a team in the middle of a project it is sensible to wait for the full release notes and test the new version on a copy of the project.

Community reaction

The reaction is mostly informational and cautiously interested: users are relaying the announcement of the phased release of After Effects 2027 (27.0) and listing the new features, that is, the AI Assistant panel, layer materials for three-dimensional text, and Contour Paint. Japanese authors note that the assistant will be able to fix expressions and build compositions, and see in it an extra helper for when work has stalled. Skepticism sounds cautious and concerns practical details: the assistant's actions spend credits, for enterprise users access is off by default, and nobody has tested performance yet. Some of the questions were prompted by the absence of documentation. Adobe employee Sean Jenkin explained that in a global phased release the help materials are published closer to the end of the rollout, and the full release notes are promised at MAX on November 10.

"The assistant's actions spend credits, for enterprise users access is off by default."

— @park_danie36173 (X)

"With AI Assistant you can ask it to fix expressions or create a composition. There's one more helper for when work has ground to a halt."

— @asteazd (X)

"The release isn't reaching everyone at once, detailed materials are promised for November 10. Performance hasn't been tested yet."

— @gibashi_news (X)

Why did Adobe make the AI assistant the headline feature of After Effects 2027: pressure from competitors, the fashion for generative AI, a desire to sell credits?