vangel76andClaude Sonnet 5.5
51371939ad
Problem: the built-in animation preset library had no Backgrounds category (gap 7: 31 presets against After Effects' 621). Fix: 23 original Backgrounds presets in crates/engine/presets/backgrounds.json, built from our own generator, noise, colour and stylize effects: Soft Gradient Drift, Aurora Veil, Slow Fog, Cloud Bank, Dark Smoke, Ember Haze, Magma Flow, Ice Flow, Pastel Plasma, Cell Drift, Crystal Facets, Hex Mosaic, Mirrored Silk, Water Caustics, Blueprint Grid, Checker Scroll, Scrolling Stripes, Pulse Rings, Bokeh Drift, Spotlight Floor, Dawn Sky, Sweeping Light, Grainy Wash. The preset format gains `expr` (an expression per property, so backgrounds keep moving for the whole layer) and point parameters written as fractions of the layer size. Effects & Presets lists them under * Animation Presets > Backgrounds. Tests: catalogue uniqueness and categories, apply/undo/redo of every preset (engine), render of every preset with the expression engine: finite, non-flat, deterministic, moving (host), panel listing and apply (ui-egui). Sidecar, ATTRIBUTION.md, gaps.md row 7 and effects-parity.md updated. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Effects parity
Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-10 · Change: major (first effects parity checklist: presence, GPU, fidelity and presets against After Effects 2026 26.5) · Target: Adobe After Effects 2026
Effects are the deepest single area of After Effects. This page separates the four questions that a single "306 of 306" hides: does each effect exist, does it run fast, does it look like After Effects', and does the preset library exist. The per-effect catalogue is the generated effects.md; the overall numbers are in target-app-parity.md.
Summary
| Question | Value | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| Effects present | 306 registered, 3,014 parameters; all of After Effects' effects by name (298 at the M9.11 count) plus Obsolete and our own | Measured: registry, effects.md. After Effects 26.5's Plug-ins/Effects holds 306 .plugin bundles in 231 entries (one bundle can hold several effects, so this is a cross-check, not a match) |
| Parameter names, order, popups, units, defaults | aligned in M9.12 | Agent-checked against After Effects' documentation, not against a live dump |
| On the GPU | 280 (92%) | Measured: registry flags; GPU vs CPU agreement tested per effect |
| 32-bit float, no clamping | 306 | Measured: registry flags |
| Rendered output matches After Effects | unmeasured | No effect is compared with an After Effects render yet. effectcraft_effects::fidelity::compare_frames exists for the corpus (fidelity/README.md); simulation effects are pinned by golden hashes of our own output (M13.27) |
| Animation presets | 54 original presets (8 text-animator, 23 Transitions, 23 Backgrounds) against After Effects' 621 .ffx presets |
Measured: crates/engine/presets/text_animators.json, crates/engine/presets/transitions.json, crates/engine/presets/backgrounds.json; the After Effects Presets folder |
| 26.x additions | Curl Noise (26.3) present (#463 open); effect colour labels and the rebuilt Effect Controls (26.5) missing | Release notes |
Breadth ≈ 85% (presets weigh in; the effects themselves are ≈ 100%). Ready ≈ 40%: until a corpus compares renders, each effect is assumed to differ somewhere, and users keep confirming it.
By category (from effects.md)
| Category | Effects | On the GPU | Known differences or bugs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3D Channel | 8 | 8 | Cryptomatte selection can't be set in the UI and the GPU path is slow (#473); multi-layer EXRs decoded twice (#474) |
| Audio | 13 | 0 | CPU by design (applied in the mixdown) |
| Blur & Sharpen | 16 | 15 | Gaussian Blur interaction and output to be measured first (fidelity/ae-2026-acceptance.md) |
| Channel | 13 | 13 | — |
| Color Correction | 40 | 40 | Apply Color LUT (#514); 32-bpc blending differences affect looks (#494); ACES 2.0 / OCIO 2.5 (26.5) |
| Distort | 39 | 35 | Mesh Warp can't be dragged in the viewer (#303); CC Power Pin Unstretch (#534, community fix pending); Liquify has no viewer brush |
| Expression Controls | 9 | 9 | — |
| Generate | 26 | 25 | Fractal on the CPU (needs f64), Reset doesn't work (#526); Write-on drops marks when animated (#536, fix pending) |
| Immersive Video | 12 | 12 | — |
| Keying | 12 | 12 | Key Cleaner approximated; wire-removal Frame Offset (#533, fix pending) |
| Matte | 6 | 4 | Mocha shape reads our documented JSON, not Mocha's format |
| Noise & Grain | 13 | 12 | Curl Noise (#463); Match Grain on the CPU |
| Obsolete | 9 | 9 | — |
| Paint | 1 | 0 | Tablet pressure not read (hardware-parity.md) |
| Perspective | 10 | 9 | Chromatic Aberrations pan/tilt crash (#580) |
| Simulation | 18 | 18 | Particle Playground lacks Particle Exploder, text particles, ephemeral mapper; CC Particle World camera fixed (#397) |
| Stylize | 25 | 25 | Motion Tile output size (#369) |
| Text | 2 | 2 | — |
| Time | 8 | 8 | Pixel Motion Blur averages frames, ignores Vector Detail (#535, fix pending) |
| Transition | 17 | 17 | — |
| Utility | 9 | 7 | — |
Third-party bundles in After Effects (Cineware, Mocha AE) are out of scope; Keylight is implemented under a generic name ("Key Light").
Estimate
≈ 70–130 h: a fidelity corpus case per effect at default and one non-default setting, compared with After Effects renders, and the fixes they turn up (40–80 h, most of it parallel, but every reference render needs After Effects on the owner's Mac); an original preset library covering After Effects' preset categories (Behaviors, Shapes, Synthetics, Text, Image effects remain; Backgrounds and Transitions exist) 15–35 h; the open effect bugs 10–20 h. Moving Fractal and the analysis effects to the GPU is performance, not parity.
Revision history
| Date | Change | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-10 | major | First effects parity checklist |