Boost Your After Effects Workflow with Reach
If you're an After Effects user, you've probably encountered some repetitive, time-consuming tasks that slow down your workflow. Today, I’m excited to share one of my all-time favorite After Effects tools: Reach. This script has over 100 built-in utilities and expressions designed to save you time and streamline your workflow. After using Reach for the past two years, I can confidently say it’s one of those tools that, once you start using it, you’ll wonder how you ever worked without it.
In this blog post, I’ll walk you through some of my favorite features of Reach that have drastically improved my productivity.
1. Unprecompose
When working with Dynamic Link between Premiere and After Effects, layers often come in pre-composed, which can be frustrating when you want to make individual changes. With Reach, you can easily unprecompose these layers with just one click, saving you from manually copying and pasting layers from pre-comps.
2. Crop and Pre-compose
Pre-composing layers usually comes with the hassle of adjusting the comp size to match your layers. Reach’s Crop and Pre-compose feature automatically pre-composes your selected layers and crops the comp to their exact dimensions, removing the need for manual resizing.
3. Anchor Point Mover
Adjusting anchor points is something I find myself doing often, and while there are other scripts that do this, Reach has a built-in Anchor Point Mover. It’s a time-saver, allowing you to quickly set anchor points exactly where you need them—top-left, bottom-right, center, you name it.
4. Create Layer Grids
Manually setting up grids with the Align Tool can take forever. Reach’s Create Grid feature automates this process. You can arrange layers into grids of any shape—whether it’s squares, circles, or triangles—saving you from tedious manual adjustments.
5. Preset Graph Editor Curves
If you find yourself avoiding the Graph Editor, you’re not alone. Reach has preset curves that can be applied directly to your keyframes, giving you beautiful easing without the need to manually adjust the handles. Whether you need a quick start with a slow finish or vice versa, these presets make it super easy to achieve smooth animations.
6. Purge Memory and Disk Cache in One Click
Instead of going into the After Effects menu to purge memory and disk cache, Reach provides a quick-access icon that lets you clear it instantly with one click. This is especially helpful for those working on heavy projects where purging memory regularly is a must.
7. Ungroup Shape Layers
Animating shape layers can be frustrating when everything is grouped together. Reach’s Ungroup Shape Layers feature breaks up grouped shape layers into individual ones, making it easier to animate each piece individually. And if you need to re-group them later, there’s a Group Shape Layers option as well!
8. Bake Expressions for Faster Renders
Expressions are powerful, but they can slow down your render times. Reach allows you to bake expressions into keyframes, eliminating the need for After Effects to compute the expression on each frame. This is perfect for speeding up renders without losing the effect of your animations. You can also unbake them if you need to make changes later.
9. Organize Project Folders in a Click
If you’ve ever found your After Effects project files turning into an unorganized mess, Reach has a feature that automatically sorts your assets into neat folders—Compositions, Audio, Footage, Images, and more. This helps keep everything tidy, saving you the trouble of manually organizing.
10. Bookmarks for Quick Access
With over 100 features, you might have some go-to tools you use regularly. Reach has a Bookmarks feature that lets you save your most-used tools for quick access. This is a great way to speed up your workflow by keeping your favorite utilities just a click away.
11. Create Guides
If you need to precisely align elements in your compositions, Reach’s Create Guides feature is super handy. Select any layer, and with just one click, Reach will generate guides around it. This makes aligning other elements or building layouts around the layer much quicker and more accurate. It’s a simple but highly effective tool.
12. Cool Things with Shape Layers
Reach makes working with shape layers a breeze. For instance, you can quickly flip-flop the fill and stroke of any shape with a simple button. Need to convert a bunch of objects to a specific color? Just pick a color, and Reach will apply it to all selected objects instantly. You can also easily change all your shape layers' cap styles (round, bevel, or butt) in one click. These little tweaks save tons of time when working with shape layer-heavy projects.
13. Randomize Layer Position
Need a bit of chaos in your design? Reach’s Randomize Layer Position utility can add randomness to the position of multiple layers. You can select a bunch of layers, apply random positioning, and tweak it to your liking. This is perfect for creating organic-looking layouts without having to manually adjust each layer’s position.
Wrap-up: Why You Should Try Reach
Reach is packed with so many features, it’s impossible to cover them all in one post. If you're interested in making your After Effects workflow more efficient, I highly recommend checking it out. You can do a free trial of Reach, so check it out and let me know your favorite features by commenting below.
Brandon Dohner · Fix It in Post
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