First Launch:

1. Download the latest Archive available. Extract it into your After Effects installation folder as such:

   '[Root]/Adobe After Effects 2020/Support Files/Plug-ins/PopcornFX'

   

2. The plugin is now installed! You can now run After Effects and create an empty project, or select an existing one.
3. Create a layer, you should be able to add an PopcornFX effect on it by selecting ‘Effect > PopcornFX > Emitter’
   1. The emitter position is by default at (720, 540, 0).
   2. Please note that PopcornFX have a different unit system (meters), than After Effects (pixels space).
      Right now, it is needed to manually scale down units (positions, distances, ..) so it matches PopcornFX’s
4. Create an After effect Camera, set its position to (720, 540, 10)
   be aware that default position of the camera is very far away for PopcornFX effects. This will likely change in the future for easier integration.

   

5. The layer is now correctly setup, to select the effect to display, select the ‘Browse’ button and choose a .pkfx file from a PopcornFX project.
6. When animating the timeline cursor, you should now see your effect on the composition !
   

Your first effect !

Plugin upgrade:

If you already installed a plugin:

• and it is from the same minor version and want to upgrade to a more recent patch (ie. v2.7.3 -> v2.7.4):

remove the previous plugin entirely, and paste the new one. Effects in your After Effects project will remain compatible

• but it is from a different minor version and want to upgrade to a more recent version (ie. v2.7.2 -> v2.8.1):

remove the previous plugin entirely, and paste the new one. Effects will need to be upgraded & re-imported.

Note: In the future, this could be automatically handled by the plugin