After Effects' Luma Key removes everything darker (or brighter) than Threshold
and ignores Tolerance for those two key types; Tolerance only sets the band of
Key Out Similar / Dissimilar. EffectCraft ramped the matte over Tolerance, so
case 719 (a 50 % grey, Key Out Darker, Threshold 140, Tolerance 20) kept about
80 % of the layer where AE keys it out completely.
Measured in AE 2026 on a vertical grey ramp (cases 812-814): Darker keys up to
level 139.9 and keeps 140.1 (EffectCraft now the same row); Similar keys levels
120.3-160.0; with Edge Thin 1 / Edge Feather 2.5 the matte rises over rows
591-596 (EffectCraft within 0.2 of AE's alpha there). CPU and GPU.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
In After Effects 2026 the non-legacy curve of Brightness -40 is the inverse
of Brightness +40 (within 2.6/255 on a full black-to-white ramp) and Contrast
-50 the inverse of Contrast +50. EffectCraft fitted the negative brightness
with its own power (2^(1.32 |b|) on v), 20/255 off AE at -40; the negatives
now use the reciprocal exponents of the positive curves: Brightness -40 max
6.2/255 (was 19.8), Contrast -50 4.1 (was 7.0); positives unchanged (40:
5.5, 80: 7.8, Contrast 50: 2.7, 90: 5.0; B20 C30: 6.6, which confirms
brightness before contrast). The #681 oracle samples still pass. CPU and GPU.
The positive curves' remaining 5-8/255 needs a better curve family (a
two-point spline fits each capture within 1.6/255), left open.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
After Effects 2026 in a 32 bpc project, Levels (Individual Controls) with RGB
(0.1, 0.9, gamma 1.5, 0.05, 0.95), Red Gamma 0.8, Green Input White 0.8 and
Blue Output Black 0.2 on grey steps 0..255 (case 904 E07): every step matches
"each channel's controls, then the RGB controls" with nothing clipped
(values below Input Black end below Output Black, above Input White above
Output White). EffectCraft ran RGB first and clipped "Off for 32 bpc Color"
(it could not see the bit depth): up to 27/255 off on 95 % of the grid; now
0 grid points off, max 1/255, CPU and GPU.
EffectEnv gains float_depth (the renderer sets it for 32 bpc projects), so
"Off for 32 bpc Color" clips in 8 / 16 bpc projects as before. Unclipped
values below 0 take the gamma mirrored through 0. Plain Levels keeps its
order (its channel controls were not measured); its clipping follows the same
rule. EffectCraft's own projects default to 8 bpc and are unchanged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
All twelve sliders (Master, Red, Green, Blue) take After Effects'
ranges: Exposure valid -100..100, slider -4..4, 2 decimals (was -20..20,
slider -5..5); Offset -2..2, slider -0.5..0.5, 4 decimals (unchanged);
Gamma Correction valid and slider 0.1..10, 2 decimals (was 0.01..9.99,
slider 0.1..3).
Every value inside the old Exposure and Offset ranges stays valid. Saved
values are not clamped on load, so a gamma below 0.1 from an older
project or a Photoshop import (0.01..9.99) is kept and still renders
(the renderer's 0.01 floor is unchanged); only new edits clamp to 0.1.
Test of the ranges and of an old gamma surviving the load refresh.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
With Bypass Linear Light Conversion off, Exposure decoded and re-encoded
with the piecewise sRGB curve. After Effects 2026 renders (sRGB working
space, 32 bpc) of Offset 0.0005 / 0.002 / 0.02 / 0.1 on black measure
8 / 15 / 43 / 90, which a pure 2.2 power predicts (8.06 / 15.13 / 43.08 /
89.54) and the sRGB curve does not (1.65 / 6.59 / 38.68 / 89.04).
The effect now uses its own 2.2 power curve on the CPU and in the GPU
kernel; the shared colour functions and other effects are unchanged. As
before, the conversion applies whatever the working space, also a
linearised one. Negative values go through both curves mirrored (input
was clamped at 0 before), so defaults are an identity for 32-bpc values
and a negative Offset darkens past black without NaN.
New test against the AE values; existing Exposure tests still hold.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
After Effects tints Black & White's gray like a Color blend: the tint colour's
hue and saturation at the gray's luminosity (weights 0.3 / 0.59 / 0.11, channels
outside 0..1 pulled back toward the gray). EffectCraft used the gray as HSL
lightness. Measured in AE 2026, Tint Color [1, 0.5, 0]: a red solid at Reds 10
(case 717) AE (43, 21, 0), EffectCraft was (51, 26, 0), now (43, 21, 0); a
yellow solid at the default sliders (gray 0.6, case 825) AE (255, 129, 2), now
(255, 129, 3); white stays white. The six sliders already matched AE on eight
colours (cases 816, 817). CPU and GPU.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
After Effects' Tritone weighs the working-space values with Rec. 601 (0.299,
0.587, 0.114), as its Tint does; EffectCraft used Rec. 709. Case 718 (red solid,
Highlights [1,1,0.8], Midtones [0.6,0.2,0.2], Shadows [0,0,0.3], Blend 25):
AE (132, 23, 46), EffectCraft was (113, 16, 49), now (132, 23, 46). On a grey
ramp (case 815) the shadows / midtones / highlights mapping already matched and
still does within 1/255. CPU and GPU (fx_color op 4).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
After Effects 2026 (sRGB working space, not linearised) maps red, green,
blue and 50% grey solids at Tint's defaults to 76, 150, 29 and 128/255:
Rec. 601 weights on the working-space values, not Rec. 709. CPU and GPU
kernel changed; tests pin the four greys within 1/255.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
At preview scales from 0.75 to 1 footage keeps native pixels, a proxy sets
its own buffer scale at any render scale, a Preserve Resolution precomp is
drawn at full size, and earlier effects can pad or offset the buffer, so
snapping to the preview grid could pick a different ID than the rendered
matte. Use the scale and offset of the buffer the Cryptomatte effect
receives (layer_input, rendered once and then cached).
The pixel centre goes to an aux point through effectcraft_effects::aux_point,
which index_map_at now calls too, so the two round identically (a division
vs the reciprocal picked the other ID on a 104 px proxy of 1920 px footage).
An unknown effect uid errors "no such effect" and a layer without pixels
"this layer has no pixels", as effect.pickColor does.
Engine part of viewer picking: replace / add / remove the top-coverage ID at a
layer-space point in one undo step, at the time the Selection was read. The
aux channels come from the render's own path (Renderer::layer_aux, shared with
the effect host; footage at its source time, 3D precomps) through a renderer
set up like Session::render (expressions, render prefs, layer cache). An
optional scale snaps the point to the pixel a preview at that resolution
samples. New effects::crypto_select quotes names and falls back to <hex> for
unnamed, wildcard-looking or ambiguous names. effect.cryptomatteAt is the
read-only hover query.
Keep the existing regression and tolerance while preserving upstream
WireRemoval and test-service recovery changes.
Co-authored-by: Codex <codex@openai.com>
The menu had an extra "Half On" at position 10, where After Effects has
"Full Off", so a project or script written for After Effects set a channel
to 50 % grey instead of turning it off, with no error: the RGB-split recipe
(three copies, each keeping one channel and setting the other two to Full
Off, blended with Add) rendered pastel instead of pure red, green and blue.
After Effects' ten options now come first, in its order, and "Half On" sits
last as an EffectCraft extra, so values 1 to 10 mean what they mean in After
Effects and nothing is lost. Instances saved with the old order keep the
option they chose: upgrade_instance already remaps popup values by label.
The GPU path keeps its own copy of the table, so it is reordered to match;
a GPU-vs-CPU parity case now covers the constant sources at the end of the
menu, where the two tables could drift apart unnoticed. Both paths clamped
the index to a hardcoded 10 and now use SHIFT_ORDER.len() - 1, so the clamp
cannot go stale if the list changes again.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
crypto_aux_image_with now takes CryptoAux::{ColorsAndMatte, MatteOnly}
instead of a bool, and CryptoAux::for_display holds the rule for which
displays read the ID colours (Colors without Matte Only). IdColorMemo uses
get_mut instead of indexing, and the CPU effect zips the pixels with the
aux index map instead of indexing it. No behaviour change.
crypto_aux_image_with takes CryptoAux::{ColorsAndMatte, MatteOnly}, and
CryptoAux::for_display holds the rule for which displays read the ID
colours. A new GPU test checks every display x Matte Only against the CPU,
so the GPU fails the test if the shader starts reading RGB in a mode that
skips it (checked by mutation: forcing MatteOnly fails display 0).
The old check zipped the padded output with the unpadded source, so pixels never lined up and
it always passed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Output is bit-identical (all displays, CPU and GPU). At 2560x1440 with 3 ranks and 2000 IDs on 8 cores the CPU effect drops from ~87-135 ms to ~44-54 ms and the GPU path's aux reduction from 38 to 8 ms for Matte, Preview and Matte Only.
Black & White offset each pixel's luminance by (hue weight - 0.5) times
its HSL saturation. HSL saturation is near 1 for any tinted near-black
pixel, so the code or two of colour noise in compressed footage's
shadows came out as bright and black blocks, and a 32-bpc overbright
such as (1.5, 0.5, 0.5) divided by zero and went black.
The gray is now the pixel's smallest channel plus its chroma (largest -
smallest channel) times the same hue-interpolated slider weight. Neutral
pixels keep their value, a pure hue becomes its slider's percentage
(Reds 40% turns pure red into 40% gray), noise moves the gray by no
more than its own size, and nothing divides. The CPU effect and the GPU
kernel change the same way.
They now read their Birth Rate at earlier times too, so
effects::reads_param_history names them along with CC Particle World. A
layer key can't see what an expression returned then.
For both: a burst lives on after Birth Rate drops to 0, and is drawn
(particles, blobs) where a constant 0 draws nothing. Its particles move
and age, and are gone after their Longevity. Seeking matches a
simulation from 0, and moving an earlier key with the same current rate
and cache key isn't served from stale checkpoints. A constant rate gives
exactly the constant-rate simulation's particles, with or without a
host.
Both simulate from layer time 0, as CC Particle World does, and used
the Birth Rate of the rendered frame for every step. A rate keyed down
to 0 emptied them the frame it got there, although their particles (and
Mercury's blobs) were within their Longevity.
CC Particle World's simulation path becomes Stepped: Birth Rate sampled
at every step (rate_history), a cache key without it, and checkpoints
resumed only with the same rate history. Particle World, Particle
Systems II (60 particles a second per unit, CPU or GPU) and Mr. Mercury
(10 blobs a second per unit, CPU) now all use it. A constant Birth Rate
gives exactly the particles it did.
The constant-rate step, key and simulation (Phys::step, sim_key,
simulate) are now only the tests' reference. Mr. Mercury's physics move
into mercury_phys.
The simulation checks its checkpoints against the Birth Rate history,
but a cached layer is returned before the effect runs. The layer key
sees the layer's keyframes and its current values, not what an
expression returned at earlier times: a Birth Rate expression reading
another layer could change the history while the current rate, 0, stayed
the same.
effects::reads_param_history names CC Particle World. The renderer
already declines to cache layers whose time effects (ec.time.*) meet
expressions. It now treats Particle World the same way, in the layer key,
the input key (only for the effects that input runs) and the dependency
walk.
FxHost::param_at mapped the requested layer time to comp time, and
EvalCtx::value mapped it back. Under a fractional stretch (33.3 %,
133.33 %) that round trip truncates a tick early, so a Hold key at
0.5 s read its previous value at the step starting there: a Birth Rate
cut to 0 at 0.5 s bore one more step of particles (six).
EvalCtx::value_at_layer_time reads the keyframes at the given layer
time exactly, and still runs an expression at the comp time.
EvalCtx::value now uses it, and param_at reads through it.
EffectHost::param_is_static says when a parameter has no keyframes and
no expression. CC Particle World then skips sampling its Birth Rate at
every step, since it's the same throughout.
A burst lives on after the rate drops to 0: as a constant rate during
it, only its particles afterwards, still moving, gone after their
Longevity. Another effect's history isn't used. A ramp bears what each
moment asked for. Seeking backward and forward matches a simulation
from 0. Moving an earlier key isn't served from stale checkpoints with
the same current rate. A constant rate is unchanged. The birth schedule
matches the CPU's ids.
The simulation runs from layer time 0, but it used the Birth Rate of the
rendered frame for every step. A rate keyed from 3 down to 0 simulated
no births at all once it reached 0, so the burst's particles vanished
that frame although their Longevity had not run out. A ramped rate was
simulated as if its current value had always applied.
Each step now samples Birth Rate at its own layer time through
EffectHost::param_at (with the effect's own index). Without such a host
the current value applies throughout, as before. Particles already alive
keep moving and ageing whatever the rate. The carry and particle ids
continue across rate changes.
Birth Rate is left out of the simulation cache key, so an animated rate
no longer restarts the simulation every frame. In its place:
- The CPU state keeps a hash of the rates it was stepped with (hist). A
checkpoint is resumed only when that matches the current history, so
moving an earlier key is never served from a stale checkpoint.
- The GPU gets the birth schedule of the sampled rates (births_at). Its
checkpoints record which births they hold, and are resumed only when
the request's births before that step are the same.
A constant Birth Rate gives exactly the particles it did. CC Particle
Systems II and CC Mr. Mercury keep their constant-rate simulation.
psim::births_at builds the GPU's birth schedule (the birth step of every
particle id) from the rate of each step, with the CPU step's carry
arithmetic. births() for a constant rate now uses it. It stops as soon
as the cap would be passed, before adding a step's births, so a huge
rate can't build a huge list first.
SimCache::run_where takes a check on each checkpoint (its step and
state). A simulation whose steps depend on inputs outside its key, such
as a parameter's values over time, resumes only from a checkpoint
reached with the same inputs. A fresh checkpoint now replaces one at the
same step, so a changed history doesn't leave stale checkpoints behind.
run() is run_where with no check.
EffectHost::param_at(effect_index, id, layer_time) evaluates a single
parameter (by its flattened id, such as birthRate or group/param) of the
effect at that index in the layer's stack. A simulation can then sample
one parameter at every step without flattening the whole effect each
time.
The effect index is passed in, rather than read from the renderer's
running-effect index as params_at does: GPU-batched effects never update
that index, so a batched effect would read another effect's parameters.
The renderer's implementation walks the effect group by match id and
evaluates just that property (keyframes and expressions) at the comp
time of the layer time.
After Effects' Liquify shows Distortion ▸ Offset (x, y), and the renderer
already applied distortionMeshOffset — sampling the mesh at layer
coordinates minus the offset — but the parameter was declared hidden, so
users could neither see nor edit it, and #1194 read as 'the effect does
not work and the Offset option is missing'.
It is now a visible 2D Point control (still defaulting to 0,0, still
scriptable by its old path). Regression test: the spec exposes it as a
Point, a [20,0] offset moves the displaced-region centroid right by the
offset (the render differs, and the left of the shifted mesh is back to
untouched pixels), docs/effects.md refreshed via UPDATE_DOCS.
With the comp's and the layer's motion-blur switches on, the renderer
hands effects the shutter (angle, phase, samples) — CC Particle World
now uses it: eight to sixty-four sprite fields sampled across the shutter
are averaged into the transfer, so fast particles draw the motion trails
After Effects shows instead of one sharp frozen field.
The GPU particle pass defers to the CPU while the shutter is open
(catalog::gpu_supported), keeping the oracle identical on both backends.
Tests: sim::particle_world_motion_blur_trails (blurred differs from
sharp, lights more pixels, keeps alpha energy) and a catalog assertion
for the CPU gate; effects 450 and gpu 212 lib tests pass; fmt and
clippy -D warnings clean.
The pinning regression only exercised All Edges (and Left Edge in the CPU
unit test), so the reported 'does not work with Top/Bottom Edge' had no
coverage to catch or clear it. This holds the pinned first/last row in a
CPU test at Direction 90, and adds CPU/GPU parity cases for Top (4),
Bottom (6), diagonal directions, and single-edge pinning on shape layers.
CPU pinning verified correct on main: the guards in dst_wave_pin/wave_pin
agree; the gap was that neither edge path was tested.
- Cryptomatte (#1183): planes shorter than the image read as empty instead of panicking.
- layer.addMarker (#1180): a comp marker no longer replaces one at the same time.
- Desktop (#1005): ignore macOS's -psn_ argument instead of refusing to launch.
- Doc comments put back on their own items (#1153, #1037).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Gradient Ramp wrote alpha 1.0 to every pixel, so a shape layer's transparent area filled up with
the ramp and the layer's bounds showed instead of the shape. The ramp now uses the pixel's own alpha
on the CPU and in the GPU kernel, as the #939 fix does for the noise effects. A regression test
checks that transparent pixels stay transparent at two Blend With Original values.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Haiku 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
vangel76andClaude Opus 5.5
NetterSilverandClaude Haiku 5.5
Matej Kozlovský
sanyamsingh001andCodex
Anubhav-RaiandClaude Opus 5
Brandon Thomas
MarekSpodBiedry
Vikram Bhaskaran
Marco Arnulfo
BFlat
Guillem Hermida
tylerjenningsw
Kristian MyramandClaude Haiku 5.5