Everything MatterAE does

• Rectangle, ellipse, polygon and star. Drag on the canvas to draw. Shift keeps a rectangle square or an ellipse round; polygon and star drag out from the center.
• Freeform pen. Click to add points, click the first point again to close the shape.
• Select and transform. Click a shape to select it, drag to move, corner handles resize, the top handle rotates.
• Per-shape color. Pick a color for each shape you draw. It carries through to the bake.
• Arrange tools. Fix Overlap nudges shapes apart so none touch, Duplicate copies a selection with a small offset, Scatter spreads a selection to random non-overlapping spots, and Align lines a selection up to the comp.

Shape Emitter

• Place it once, it keeps spawning. The Shape Emitter is a special studio tool: drop it on the canvas and it emits a stream of shapes over time from that fixed point.
• Direction and spread. A dial sets the launch direction; a spread angle adds a fan of variation around it.
• Speed and size, with variation. Set a base speed and size for spawned shapes, plus how much each one can randomly vary.
• Which shapes it emits. Pick from rectangle, ellipse, polygon or star. With more than one picked, it cycles through them in order.
• Shape settings per kind. Expand a shape type's arrow for a small live preview and its own controls: rounding plus a bar-to-square slider for rectangles, an egg-to-circle slider for ellipses, corner count for polygons, point count for stars.
• Isolated preview. Preview just the emitter and what it spawns, with everything else in the scene dimmed out of the way so you can judge it on its own.

• 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.
• On sensor hit. Stays frozen until something enters a sensor zone you link to it, then plays its animation from the top, no direct hit required.
• Auto-detected for you. Any layer animated by keyframes, or purely by an expression like wiggle() with no keyframes at all, imports as Kinematic automatically and drives the sim without you switching its mode by hand.

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, the new Convex Hull (its simplest solid wrap, fast and stable), or swap in a circle or rectangle for simpler 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.
• Simplify. If a detailed shape (tight curves, serifs) comes in jagged, turn this up to smooth the outline. Turn it down to keep fine detail. (This replaced the old Spike Filter.)

• Create it from a Kinematic or Sleeping layer. Open either mode's settings, switch its trigger to "On sensor hit", then add a new zone or pick an existing one.
• Its own row at the bottom of the layer list. A sensor gets a distinct SENSOR label and color, no mode dropdown (it is not a physics body), and an expandable note telling you exactly what it triggers.
• Edit Sensor Mode. Creating or selecting a sensor drops you into a focused editing view: the preview jumps to frame 0, every other shape dims and stops responding to clicks, and a clear badge with an Exit button keeps you oriented.
• Drag the four corners to resize it. It always stays a true rectangle, never a skewed shape, and marquee-select in the preview skips right over sensors.
• Invisible where it counts. A sensor never appears in your baked AE comp and never physically pushes anything. It draws under every other shape so it can never block a click.

• Stopwatch keyframes. Arm gravity, wind, or any animator's own sliders with a stopwatch, the same way you would in After Effects.
• Move the playhead, change the value. MatterAE places a real keyframe automatically; the physics follows it in the preview and in the bake.
• Drag keyframes to move them. Double-click a lane to add one directly.
• Easing. Click a selected keyframe to cycle Linear, Ease In, Ease Out and Easy Ease. Alt-click for a hold.
• Delete or right-click to remove a keyframe.
• Scrubbing matches the bake. Dragging the playhead re-simulates up to that exact frame, so the pose you see while scrubbing is exactly what the bake produces, not an approximation.

• 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 Lite bake limit. You can simulate and preview as long as you like for free. Only the bake to AE is capped at 3 seconds in Lite, 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.