Altar is in early access — AI for After Effects
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What's new in Altar

Change log

Reads the comp first, builds the move second. Here's everything we've shipped, newest first.

0.2.0 - 2026-07-08

Added

  • Forge - a Layers group of one-click tools. A new built-in group for the fiddly layer chores: lock or unlock every layer (or just the shy ones, hiding them to match), parent your selection to the first layer you picked, to the layer above (hold Ctrl for the one below), or in a chain in selection order, and colour-code layer labels - by type, by stacking order (hold Shift), or by parenting so each rig reads as one family (hold Ctrl).
  • Forge - a Keyframes group of one-click tools. A new built-in group that moves and reshapes keys without losing their eases: align selected keys to the earliest or latest, move them to the playhead or a layer's in/out point, snap them to whole frames, reverse them in time, clone them (straight or time-mirrored), flatten motion-path overshoot, separate Position into X/Y/Z, add a slider-driven secondary value, and copy or paste key values between properties.
  • Forge - a Composition group of one-click tools. A new built-in group that fits a comp to its content: Auto Trim hugs the duration and work area to the timing of your layers (hold Ctrl to trim to just the selected ones), Auto Crop shrinks the canvas to the visible artwork while everything stays exactly where it sits, and Crop Precomp pre-composes your selection and crops that new comp in one move.
  • Forge - eight composition batch widgets. The parametric half of the Composition group, each with its own controls: Auto Crop+ (padding + per-edge + ignore filters), Batch Rename Comps (search/replace, prefix/suffix, or sequence), Batch Scale Comp (by percent or exact size), Batch Color Replacer (find/replace a colour within a tolerance), Pre-Compose (attribute, duration, auto-crop and open options), Export Comps as Projects (to standalone .aep files), Batch Comp Settings (frame rate, resolution, duration and motion blur across many comps), and Batch Resize Canvas (resize the frame from a 9-point anchor).
  • What's new, right in the panel. Settings now has a What's New page that shows what each Altar update brought - no more bouncing out to the website. When a new version is downloaded and waiting, it previews what's inside so you know why it's worth the restart.
  • A real download page. motionaltar.com/download now hosts the installer for macOS and Windows with the current version and step-by-step install instructions - the "Download Altar" button on your welcome page finally goes somewhere.
  • A warmer welcome. The waitlist and invite emails are rewritten to sound like a person (because they are - reply to any of them and it reaches Hugo). If your invite is sitting unopened, you'll get a gentle reminder before it expires, and a hand if you've signed up but haven't installed Altar yet.
  • Vault - upload any file as an asset. Save a raw file straight into your library - video, image, vector (SVG), or 3D (GLB), not just packaged comps - from the same Save page. Every card shows a small badge with the file type at a glance.
  • Forge - Pre-render a heavy comp to a soloed layer. Freeze a slow comp or precomp to a rendered file dropped in as a soloed layer inside it, so nested renders and previews stop recomputing it. Pick the target with the new comp selector, choose the output template for each of its two presets (point one at your own ProRes 4444 template for small, transparent files), then toggle between the pre-render and the live layers anytime - no re-render. Only the comp's work area is rendered, and it lands exactly where it plays. When the render finishes, Altar jumps you back to the comp instead of leaving you on the render queue, and removing a pre-render clears its file from disk by default (a setting you can turn off).

Changed

  • Forge - the built-in groups now carry a colour. Each native group wears a subtle background tint keyed to the colour of its After Effects icon - Selection blue, Layers gold, Keyframes red, Easing purple, Composition royal blue - so they read apart at a glance. You can recolour or clear any of them in Settings; your own groups are untouched.
  • Forge - Groups now flow like text. A Group is a real container: its Blocks fill each row left to right and wrap to the next, so a Group that's five buttons wide shows five per row - resize the Group and everything re-wraps to fit, with no holes and no manual tidying. Drag a Block inside a Group to reorder it (custom free-form placement stays a layout-canvas thing), and widgets ride along at their own size, wrapping like big bricks. The Button list in a Group's settings is that same order, so reordering there rearranges the Group on the layout too.
  • Panel - a cleaner, higher-contrast look. Blocks now sit flush with the background as recessed wells, with their outline carrying the contrast instead of a lighter fill - so the panel reads calmer and your comps behind it show through. Hovering any button lights its icon and outline pure white (over a soft accent tint) instead of turning purple, and the accent purple itself is a lighter, more legible violet.
  • Vault - one Library, browse everything together. Your Local library and every team you're in now live on a single Library tab. Tick the ones you want and their assets show up together in one grid, each card tagged with where it came from - so you can search across all of them at once instead of hopping between separate pages.
  • Vault - a roomy Save page with a "Save to" picker. Saving moved out of the cramped pop-up onto its own page. Pick where it goes - your Local library or a team - right there on the page.
  • Forge - a full-screen, searchable comp picker. Choosing a target composition no longer squeezes into a tiny dropdown that cut off long names. Tap the picker and it opens full-screen with a search box - just start typing to fuzzy-find the comp you want, with every title readable at full width.
  • Website - the copy now says what Altar actually is. motionaltar.com leads with the point: an agent inside After Effects that reads your project before it suggests or builds anything. Battle-tested tools, hand-built assets, receipts on every step - and no more made-up stats.

Fixed

  • Forge - a solid layout the moment it opens. Starting Forge no longer occasionally scrambled your Groups - Blocks spilling past their edges - or left edit-mode dragging dead on the first try (a drag that stopped a pixel in, with no red guide). The panel now measures its own width correctly as it loads, so your layout is right the first time and drags start cleanly.
  • Forge - dragging works on a full canvas. On a busier layout - once you had a Group or enough Blocks to fill the panel - edit-mode dragging would snap back after a single unit, with no placement guide to aim at. Dragging now holds and shows a clear indicator wherever the block lands, no matter how tall the canvas has grown.

0.1.0 - 2026-06-28

The first Altar beta. Altar is the bridge between AI and After Effects: describe the move, and Altar builds the keyframes - you keep the taste. It lives in After Effects as three panels.

Added

  • Chat - talk to an AI assistant that can actually drive After Effects. Ask it to read your comp, build comps, add and arrange layers, tweak properties, and queue renders, all from plain language. Bring your own API key.
  • Forge - a canvas of building blocks you arrange to fit how you work. Drop in widgets and one-press buttons, group them, and tune each one in a live settings panel.
  • Vault - your personal library of looks. Save effects and setups once and grab them straight back into After Effects whenever you need them.
  • Automatic updates - Altar checks for new versions and updates itself. On macOS that happens quietly on the next restart; on Windows it runs a quick installer. You can always check manually from Settings → Updates.
  • Invite-code access - the beta opens with single-use invite codes redeemed inside the panel.

Notes

  • Altar is in closed beta. Things will move quickly, and your feedback shapes what ships next - send it from the in-panel feedback link or at motionaltar.com.