features

Everything MatterAE does

The full list, in plain language, no engineering speak. If you just want the highlights, the home page has those. This is the complete tour.

Getting your layers in

When you open MatterAE before loading anything, you get a clean start screen.

Activate license. Right at the top. Paste your Gumroad key, or follow the link to grab one. Once it is in, the button is replaced by a quiet "Licensed to: you@email.com".
Load selected layers. Brings in just the layers you have highlighted in your timeline.
Load all layers. Pulls in every layer from your active comp at once.
Convert to bezier. After Effects shapes like rectangles, ellipses and stars do not expose their real outline. One click converts them so MatterAE can read their shape properly.
Split shape layers. Got one layer with several shapes in it? This splits it into one layer per shape, so each becomes its own physics object.
Open a saved setup. Pick up a physics setup you saved earlier, straight from the start screen.

Live preview. A real simulation area where your shapes fall, bounce and collide. It runs at your comp's frame rate, so what you see is what you bake.
Play and pause. Start and stop the sim. Even in the free version you can run it as long as you want to test a setup fully.
Reset. Snaps everything back to its frame-0 start and clears any built-up motion.
Hand tool. Pause and grab any shape to move it. Where you drop it becomes its new starting position.
Zoom in, out, fit. Standard zoom, plus a fit button that sizes the view to your panel.
Show outside comp. Doubles the view so you can watch things fly in from off-screen or fall away past the edge, with a clear border marking your real frame.
Shift-click to select. Hold shift and click shapes right on the canvas to build up a selection, even while the sim runs.

Every compatible layer gets its own row. Layers that cannot take physics (like nulls) show up grayed out, so nothing breaks.

Color dot. Mirrors your layer's comp color so you can spot it at a glance.
Rename. Click the name to rename it inside MatterAE, without touching the real layer name in AE.
Collision group. Drop a layer into a group (1 to 8). Same group means they pass through each other but still hit everything else. Set it to "-" and it collides with everything.
Layer mode. The big one. Five color-coded modes:
- Dynamic (blue). Full physics. Falls, blows in the wind, bounces.
- Static (gray). Never moves. Your floors, walls and ramps.
- Sleeping (orange). Frozen until something hits it, then it wakes up and behaves like Dynamic.
- Kinematic (purple). Follows your AE keyframes like a motor, shoving other things out of the way.
- Inactive (dark gray). Faded out and ignored completely. Reference only.
Weight. How heavy the object is. Heavier things carry more momentum and push lighter ones around.

Kinematic timing (only shows in Kinematic mode)

Original AE timing. Waits at its start until the sim reaches its first keyframe, then moves.
Start immediately. Ignores the timing and plays from frame 0.
On collision. Stays frozen until something bumps it, then plays its animation from the top. This is the hold-then-release trick.

Per-layer advanced settings

Corner rounding. Rounds the corners of the physics shape so boxes roll instead of catching. Only affects physics, not your artwork.
Hitbox shape. Use the exact outline, or swap in a circle or rectangle for simpler, faster collisions.
Hitbox padding. Grow or shrink the collision edge in pixels. MatterAE pre-fills this from your stroke width so things collide on their visible edge.
Spike filter. If a detailed shape (tight curves, serifs) throws out weird spikes, turn this up to clean it. Turn it down to match fine detail more closely.

The universal rules for the whole scene.

World presets. Instant moods: Default, Bouncy Castle, Slippery Ice, Moon Gravity, Heavy Sludge.
Reset to default. Snaps every global slider back to factory.
Gravity X and Y. Direction and strength. Positive Y falls down, negative floats up, X pulls sideways.
Gravity scale. How fast gravity accelerates everything.
Bounciness. How much energy shapes keep when they hit something.
Friction and static friction. How slippery things are, and how much of a nudge it takes to get a still object sliding.
Air resistance. Atmospheric drag. Crank it and light things drift down like feathers.
Sleep threshold. How still something has to be before it counts as asleep. Higher means things settle sooner, which keeps everything running smoothly.
Time scale. Speed up or slow down time for slow-mo effects.
Wind X and Y. A constant push across everything dynamic. Great for leaves, smoke or a steady drift.
Comp walls (top, bottom, left, right). Toggle invisible solid walls along your frame edges to keep things contained.

Appears when you select things.

Select group. With one layer picked, grabs every other layer in its group for fast bulk edits.
Pin to world. Pins a spot on a shape to a fixed point. An orange crosshair appears that you can drag, so things swing like a pendulum or hang like a sign.
Connect rigid. Links selected layers with solid rods that hold their distance.
Connect spring. Links them with stretchy springs that bounce on impact.
Connect chain. Opens a dialog to link things into a rope or chain, with control over stiffness, damping, length and a hard max stretch.
Randomize weights. Spreads varied weights across a selection for natural-looking chaos.
Batch editing. With several layers selected, changing one property on one row applies it to all of them at once.

Bake to new comp. The main event. Duplicates your comp, clears out conflicts, and lays down clean, editable AE keyframes of your whole simulation.
The free bake limit. You can simulate and preview as long as you like for free. Only the bake to AE is capped at 3 seconds until you unlock with a license.
Bake warning. If you are over 3 seconds without a license, a clear note appears in the Bake panel before you export, so there are no surprises.
Collision markers. Tick this before baking and MatterAE drops a marker on every frame two shapes hit, named after both, so your SFX line up perfectly.
Save setups in your project. Stores your whole setup (weights, links, walls, everything) right inside your AE project file, tucked out of the way.
Name, save, load. Name a setup and save it. It warns you before overwriting, and you can reload any setup from a dropdown.

Double-click any slider to reset it to its default.
Undo controls in the sidebar, up to 30 steps deep, covering slider moves, mode swaps, renames and links, with a step back or a full revert to the start.
Copy and paste layer settings in one click, carrying weight, mode, group, rounding, hitbox, padding and timing.
Deactivate license to free your key up and move it to another machine.

Free to try with the whole plugin in your hands, or unlock it fully for $35, once, no subscription.