Thursday, May 2nd, 2019 Posted by Jim Thacker

Crunchy Creatives ships Physics Now! for After Effects


Crunchy Creatives – aka motion designer Jakob Wagner – has released Physics Now!, a promising new integrated 2D physics engine for After Efects.

The plugin automatically turns shape and text layers into physics objects, enabling them to fly around automatically under the influence of gravity or collision forces.

Create common motion graphics effects using standard After Effects workflows
In the workflow overview video, Physics Now! comes across like a streamlined version of Motion Boutique’s Newton, making it possible to create a range of common motion graphics effects intuitively.

Its toolbar contains just seven buttons, with the rest of the work being done by adjusting settings on standard After Effects layers and the timeline.

The plugin automatically converts shape and text layers into physics elements – for image layers, you can define custom collision shapes – and generates a rigid body simulation from them.

Shape layers can be made solid or hollow – so one shape can move around inside another – while text can be made a single layer or split into individual characters.

Users can set a set of basic physics properties for each layer, including bounce, friction, damping and density, or animate them from the timeline.

Layers can be temporarily enabled or disabled in a simulation, and the simulation can be set to take over where a conventional keyframe or expression-driven animation stops.

Physics Now! also adds physics capabilities to ExtendScript Toolkit, Adobe’s JavaScript development and debugging environment, making it possible to use in scripted workflows.

Pricing and system requirements
Physics Now! is available for After Effects CC 2018+. It costs $129.

Read more about Physics Now! on Crunchy Creatives’ website