MatterAE is a real-time 2D physics panel that lives inside After Effects. Tweak gravity, bounce and weight live, then bake the whole sim to native keyframes. Built for fast, run-and-gun motion design.
After Effects 2020+ · macOS & Windows · one-time price, no subscription · free Lite tier
the 30-second version
That is the whole loop. Everything else is just dialing it in.
the point
The big physics plugins are rockets. Beautiful, powerful, capable of things MatterAE will never do. But most days you do not need a rocket to cross town.
You need something already parked at your door that you can hop on and ride. Falling logos. Bouncing UI. Tumbling type. Scattering confetti. A ball rolling down a ramp for an explainer. The 90% of daily mograph that just needs to feel physical, done in the time it takes to make coffee. That is what this is for, and the price is set to match.
what you get
A dockable CEP panel that sits in your workspace, right next to everything else. No separate window, no round trips, no leaving After Effects.
Drag gravity, bounce, weight and wind while the sim is running. The result updates the instant you let go of the slider. No waiting on a render.
When it looks right, bake the sim to a new comp full of native AE keyframes. Edit them by hand after. No live dependency, nothing locked behind the plugin.
Dynamic, Static, Sleeping, Kinematic and Inactive. Mix them to build anything from a wall of dominoes to a clean hold-then-release reveal.
Groups 1 to 8: layers in the same group pass through each other but still collide with everything else. Sort out who hits what in two clicks.
Real shape geometry, not bounding boxes. Concave decomposition, corner rounding, padding, and auto-circle or auto-rect overrides per layer.
Drive a layer with your own keyframes, then let go: it releases into physics carrying the exact velocity it had. Hold-and-drop reveals in a single pass.
Optionally drop a timeline marker on every frame two bodies collide, so your sound design lines up to the frame without guessing.
layer modes
Every layer is one of five modes. The dot next to it tells you exactly how it behaves, here and in the app.
Full physics. Falls, collides, bounces, tumbles.
Immovable. The floors, walls and ramps everything else hits.
Rests in place until something touches it, then wakes up.
Follows your AE keyframes, then releases into physics.
Visible reference only. No collisions, no physics.
preview
The preview runs at your comp frame rate, not the browser's 60fps, so what you see is what bakes. Zoom and fit, watch bodies travel beyond the comp edges, and grab any shape to drag it to a new start position.
bake
Baking creates a fresh comp of plain AE keyframes. No live plugin dependency, nothing that breaks if you uninstall, nothing that slows your renders. Tweak the result by hand like any other animation.
the origin story
MatterAE got turned away from the dominant AE plugin marketplace because a physics plugin apparently already existed. Fair enough. So does gravity, and people still seem to want more of it.
So it is launching independently, here, on Gumroad. The rejection turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to the pitch. Read the whole story →
Free Lite tier to try it for real, or the full thing for $35, one time, no subscription.