Not another After Effects plugin.

[u/volpmatt]

The explosion of vibe-coded and badly built, pro-in-the-name-for-no-reason plugins and extensions is out of control. So much so that the number of Reddit posts discussing this fact has also gone through the roof—what a time to be alive.

I bet you can name the main culprit, after they have seemingly completely abandoned their infamous strict application process, and with it any shred of curation, and in some cases even their morals.

I have nothing against AI. It's an incredible tool for education, efficiency and engineering (except the gen AI stuff—that can get in the bin). But surely those who are motion designers one day and magically turn into product developers the next can't seriously think that there is bags of money to be made in using it to make and sell their half-baked, copycat plugins on a marketplace that condones plagiarism and takes 30% of every sale, right?!

I know what you're thinking. Is this guy for real? He literally sells After Effects plugins. And you'd be right. But hear me out. I've been at this for years, learning the After Effects API docs back-to-front, left-to-right, upside down and any other direction-themed idiom you can throw at me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, like all good things, it takes time. And you won't find any millionaire plugin devs knocking about, except maybe the guys behind Flow, or maybe Deep Glow—but trust me, those were built long before Claude Code came along, and they will still be here long after it's gone.

EDIT: Well, that was a fun discussion! I appreciate all of your comments and insights—even when it got a little heated. Let's celebrate the fact we can still have constructive and interesting debates in this ever-divisive world we live in. You can use code C7N3XTE7 to get 50% off any of our tools at tackstudio.co. But be quick, it only has 20 uses.

[u/Mangelius]

A friend of mine released a plugin on AEScripts like 10 years ago, and the hoops he had to jump through we're crazy. They were giving him feedback on his trailer, making him change aspects of the UI, and were very strict about making sure it doesn't overlap with any existing plugins on the platform.

How many plugins do they have that are basically copies of Flow now?

What a joke they've become.

[u/volpmatt → u/Mangelius]

Couldn't agree more. When I released my first tool on there around the same time (admittedly, it was pretty mediocre) I experienced all of the same hoops you describe.

I was even told never to refer to it as a script, but as a tool instead, so as not to confuse the users—and as we all know, aescripts is not a confusing place at all...

[u/Calumface]

The whole "what's one thing that would save you so much time..." posts. I see them across multiple creative disciplines daily. I know you're a vibe coder, you know you're a vibe coder. If I needed a script to help me, I'll make it myself, just like you.

I do appreciate they are willing to try, but jeez, can't they see they are merely a tree in a forest of others.

[u/volpmatt → u/Calumface]

What's one thing that would save me so much time? Not having to wade through a river of ai slop every time I open social media would be a start.

[u/SirFoggyMirror]

I look at half of the stuff offered and wonder why anybody would need it. Lots of it I can easily do within AE already and some of it does things I'll never use. I also suspect installing this badly vibe coded stuff is why people seem to have so many weird issues I've never seen in 30 years of using AE.

I appreciate people trying to come up with stuff to solve actual AE deficiencies but some of it seems to be trying to invent problems.

[u/AbstrctBlck]

I hate these plugins.

I hate them because they are simple and don’t force people to learn the program rather than than just buying a one click button and just using that forever.

[u/volpmatt → u/AbstrctBlck]

Yes, yes and yes again. If you wanna learn motion design, then learn motion design. God, I remember the days when all we had to get annoyed about was finding Ease and Wizz expressions littered throughout designers project files who had absolutely no idea what a sine wave even was.

[u/ImAlsoRan]

Seeing a lot of panels that could've been a preset

[u/themotionguy]

So which recent plugin releases trigged this? I saw a few and thought the same

[u/volpmatt → u/themotionguy]

I mean, no one thing in particular, but where do I start? The blatant Overlord clone, or maybe the 437th layer renamer script. I dunno, take your pick...