effectcraft/docs/effects-parity.md

Effects parity

Last reviewed: 2026-10-12 · Last updated: 2026-10-12 · Change: minor (effect colour labels; earlier change: parameter count and closed issue references re-audited against upstream/main 470ea7a3 and the generated effects.md) · 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, 3,017 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 (26.5) present in Effect Controls only, not in the Timeline; 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; quoted names with commas fixed); multi-layer EXR decode shared (#474 open: f16 storage and cache sizing remain)
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	Tint has Swap Colors (#963); ACES 2.0 / OCIO 2.5 (26.5); Apply Color LUT (#514) and 32-bpc blending (#494) are closed
Distort	39	35	Liquify has no viewer brush; #303 (Mesh Warp drag) and #534 (CC Power Pin Unstretch) are closed
Expression Controls	9	9	—
Generate	26	25	Fractal on the CPU (needs f64); #526 (Reset) and #536 (Write-on marks) are closed
Immersive Video	12	12	—
Keying	12	12	Key Cleaner approximated; #533 (wire-removal Frame Offset) is closed
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	#535 (Pixel Motion Blur, Vector Detail) is closed
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
2026-10-12	minor	Parameters 3,014 to 3,017 (effects.md); #303, #514, #526, #533–#536 marked closed instead of pending
2026-10-12	minor	Effect colour labels (26.5) added in Effect Controls
2026-10-12	minor	Tint's Swap Colors button and agent-drivable command (#963); undo/redo, instance targeting, animated layer-time edits and invalid-input tests
2026-10-10	major	First effects parity checklist