The inspector
The right-hand dock. Since 1.0 it follows After Effects’ default column: the panels below are there on a fresh layout, and the rest are registered and open on demand.
| Panel | On a fresh layout | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Properties | Yes, cannot be closed | Everything about the selected layer, as one scrolling list of sections |
| Info | Yes | The pointer / composition readout |
| Audio | Yes, cannot be closed | The master meter, the selected layer’s level and pan, and the pointer / composition readout |
| Preview | Yes | Preview controls |
| Effects & Presets | Yes | The effect browser: search, folders, favourites, effect presets, plugin effects and their presets, shape operators, and the Cloner and Physics modifiers |
| Align | Yes | Align and distribute |
| Character · Paragraph | Yes | Text controls, as panels of their own |
| Animation Presets · Plugins · Assistant · Swatches · Scopes · Tracker · Content-Aware Fill · Rigging · Graph · History · Paint · Brushes · Export | On demand | Specialist panels |
An on-demand panel opens from Window ▸ Panels (or its own entry in the Window menu), or from the + at the foot of the rail, which lists that side’s closed panels. Rail tabs print each panel’s name under its icon. The workspaces open what their job needs — the Animation workspace opens Graph and Rigging, the Color workspace opens Scopes.
Properties
One panel, one scrolling accordion. It replaced the older Transform, Style and Settings tabs: there is no tab to guess, and one search box sees every section.
- The first row names the selection. Its ⋯ menu holds the layer switches as labelled checkboxes.
- A section that does not apply to the selection is not drawn. A camera has no Appearance; Pathfinder appears only once two shapes are selected.
- Sections about what the layer is and how it looks start open. The rest start collapsed.
- With several layers selected, every section edits all of them. A row whose
values disagree shows
—, and a section only some of the layers have is badged “2 of 3”. Align and distribute sit on a row above the sections. - With nothing selected, the panel shows a summary of the composition.
- The search matches section titles and intent keywords —
colorsurfaces Appearance,parentandremapsurface Blending and switches.
The sections, in the order they appear:
| Section | Appears for | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| Pinned | A layer with pinned or promoted properties | Your own shortlist |
| Transform | Every layer | Position, Scale, Rotation, Opacity, Anchor Point, size. Every row has a stopwatch and a scrubbable value field. The 3D switch is here; turning it on adds Z, X rotation and Y rotation |
| Camera settings · Light settings · Particle settings · Audio settings | That kind of layer | The controls that make the layer what it is |
| SVG layer · Media settings · Pre-composition · Null object · Primitive · Polystar | That kind of layer | Source, trim, speed, fit and crop for media; the parametric controls for a 3D primitive or a polygon / star |
| Appearance | Shapes and other drawn layers | Fill, stroke, gradients, corner radius. On a text layer it is titled Stroke, because the Text section owns the fill |
| Text · Text animators | Text layers | Character and paragraph controls, and the animator stack |
| Material | 3D layers | Shading model, reflectance, shadows, per-face overrides |
| Layer styles | Drawable layers | Drop Shadow, glows, Bevel, Stroke and the rest, with saved looks |
| Effects | Layers that take effects | The applied effect stack — the same body as Effect Controls |
| Pathfinder | Two or more shapes selected | Boolean path operations |
| Audio waveform | Shape layers | The shape audio-waveform generator |
| Blending and switches | Most layers | Blend mode, track matte, the parent picker and pick-whip, quality, motion blur and shutter, adjustment-layer switch, time stretch, reverse and freeze frame |
| Motion tools | Layers with animatable properties | The modifier stack and the audio driver |
| Morph targets · 3D IK | Models with blend shapes; 3D chains | — |
| Version history | A local project bundle | The bundle’s snapshots; save and restore named versions |
The applied effect stack appears in two places that render the same thing: the Effects section here, and the Effect Controls panel (F3, or Window ▸ Effect Controls), which docks on the left.
Effects & Presets
The effect browser, not the applied stack. Type to filter, open a folder, star a favourite; drag an effect onto a layer, or click one with a layer selected.
It also lists effect presets, the shape operators (Trim Paths, Repeater, Zig-Zag and the rest) and the Cloner and Physics modifiers (in the Simulation folder). Effects from native plugins are in the last folder, Plugins, with any presets a plugin ships listed under its effect. Once applied, their controls appear with the effect stack.
See The effect stack and Shape operators.
Animation Presets (on demand)
The animation-preset library. Search filters as you type; each card loops a live preview; drag a preset onto a layer or click it with a layer selected. A preset is applied at the playhead, not at time zero.
Save the selected layer’s animation as a named preset here, and delete saved ones. See Animation presets.
Plugins (on demand)
Window ▸ Panels ▸ Plugins, or Plugins ▸ Manage Plugins…. Every native plugin the engine found, each marked Loaded, Disabled, Failed, Quarantined, Revoked or Requires Premation Cloud, with the reason when it did not load; a switch to turn each on or off, Update and Uninstall where they apply, and Open plugins folder. Browsing the store, installing from a file and publishing are on Dashboard ▸ Plugins. See Plugins.
Audio
The master meter with clipping indicators, the selected layer’s level and pan faders, and the pointer / composition readout. Ctrl/⌘ + 4 opens it. See Audio.
Graph (on demand)
Window ▸ Panels ▸ Graph Panel. It hosts the same graph editor the timeline shows with Shift + F3 — one component, so easing means the same thing in both — and adds what a graph is not:
- Motion path and orientation — auto-orient, and smoothing or straightening the path.
- The Bounce generator.
- The expression editor for one chosen property, with autocomplete, inline plain-language errors and a live value that updates as you scrub. See Expressions.
The easing selector, rove toggle, ease Copy / Paste and the ease library are in the graph editor’s own toolbar, where they act on the keyframe selection.
Rigging (on demand)
Bones and puppet pins for the selected layer. It is a separate panel because rigging is a mode you enter with a tool, not a property of the selection.
Puppet controls — mesh density and expansion, which trigger a deterministic mesh rebuild, plus per-pin rotation and stiffness.
Bone controls — chain editing, IK targets, pose.
Every edit is a single undo step. See Rigging.
The other on-demand panels
| Panel | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Swatches | The project palette, also offered inside every colour picker |
| Scopes | Waveform, RGB parade, vectorscope and histogram of the current frame |
| Tracker | See Motion tracking |
| History | Visual history. See History & versions |
| Paint · Brushes | Paint settings and the brush list |
| Export | The export form, docked, so a render can be queued while the timeline is on screen |
The Source Monitor opens from Window ▸ Panels — see Cutting clips — and the Render Queue (F6) from the Window menu — see Render queue.
Panels that were removed or merged
Transform, Style and Settings were three tabs, each an accordion with its own search that could not see the other two. They are the single Properties panel now. If an older tutorial says “the Style tab”, look for the section of that name in Properties.
Motion Tools was a shortcut board for six properties other panels already owned — 3D toggle, time remap, trim paths, pre-compose, anchor point, label colour — and two of its writes were wrong: the label colour bypassed the setter so it never serialised, and time remap keyframed at composition time instead of converting to the layer axis, which lands on the wrong frame for a trimmed or stretched layer. Use the owning panels instead. (The Motion tools section in Properties is a different thing: the modifier stack and the audio driver.)