01Why glass in After Effects needed an effect of its own
Glass is one of the things motion designers fake the most. In my own work the usual recipe was a displacement map, a blur and a painted highlight, built by hand for every shot. It reads as glass only until the shape moves or the footage underneath changes, and then it has to be faked again.
RIFT Glass started from the opposite end: compute the light instead of painting it. Thickness, bevel and index of refraction are worked out on the graphics card while you scrub the timeline, so the footage under the shape really does bend. Refraction only reads as glass in motion; on a still frame it always looks like a filter.
It is an effect for adjustment layers, and that is a rule of After Effects rather than a choice. An effect can only see the pixels of the layer it sits on, never the layers below it. Put RIFT Glass on an adjustment layer above your footage and it can bend everything underneath.
02June 2026: the first working version
The first working version was committed on 26 June 2026: a rounded glass panel on an adjustment layer that bent the footage beneath it, with a bevel, a soft frosted look, a bright rim and shadows. By the next day the panel could be any shape, which is why text, logos and vector shapes can become glass, and not only rectangles.
03September 2026: from prototype to RIFT Glass 1.0
On 2 September the prototype got its own name and a clean baseline, RIFT Glass 1.0. RIFT is meant as the name of a line of effects, with this one as the first.
The shape system grew from there. The finished effect takes up to eight layers as shapes: text, logos, vectors, shapes and pre-comps. Several shapes merge into one silhouette, so the bevel follows the outer contour of the whole group instead of each part. The Merge parameter grows a neck between shapes as they come together, the way drops of liquid do, and it only adds material in the gaps: corners stay sharp and thin lines stay thin.
In September I shipped a public beta: a build with a 30-day clock, so that people could try it without it lasting forever. Beta 1.1.0 ran until early October.
04What went wrong on the way
Every rule in the project's notes was learned by breaking it. These are the stories I would tell anybody who builds an effect for After Effects.
It looked perfect and rendered wrong
A bug in 16-bit footage looked flawless in the comp viewer and showed up only in rendered files. Since then every change is tested in 8, 16 and 32 bit, and rendered to a file, not only watched in the viewer.
A crash that depended on the machine
On After Effects 2023 the plugin crashed the moment it was applied, because the tools it was built with and the parts of Windows that After Effects loads did not agree. It was found, fixed, and tested on that version again.
Streaks that grew forever
Shapes that touched the edge of their layer grew flickering streaks. I fell into the same trap twice before it was fixed for good.
Resolution changes everything
Switching After Effects to a lower resolution put the panel in the wrong place. It was fixed in September.
A glitch along the middle of a shape
A visible glitch ran along the centre line of some shapes. It was fixed in version 1.1.2.
Making it small
At one point the plugin weighed 8.76 MB. It now ships at about 0.6 MB for Windows, licence included. Along the way I also fixed a 32-bit render error (517) and flickering edges while animating.
05October 2026: bringing it to macOS on Apple Silicon
From 3 October I worked on the Mac version on a MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro, which is also the machine it was tested on. It runs on Apple Silicon with macOS 14 or newer.
One honest limit: the Mac plugin is not notarized by Apple yet, so macOS blocks it after it has been downloaded. The install guide inside the download shows the one Terminal line that removes the block.
06Licence keys
Version 1.2.1, in the first week of October 2026, brought licence keys. One key covers two computers, and Windows and Mac count separately. Without a key the effect still works in full, with a visible watermark over the picture, and a key removes it.
07What RIFT Glass does today
- Optics, not a displacement map: Thickness, Bezel, index of refraction (IOR) and Dispersion. For orientation, glass is about 1.5, water 1.33 and diamond 2.4, and at 1.0 the glass disappears, because that is how light behaves.
- Any layer with an alpha becomes glass: text, logos, vectors, shapes and pre-comps, in up to eight shape slots, or a masked area.
- Merge, for shapes that flow into each other like liquid.
- Frosted glass that does not turn grey: strong blur pulls colours towards grey and Vibrancy brings them back.
- Surface controls: a specular rim with an angle and a width, inner and outer shadow, reflection, a fine edge stroke and grain.
- Four quality levels, from Draft for working to Max for the hero frame, and a Look iOS switch for a soft, Apple-style glass.
- 8, 16 and 32 bits per channel, and multi-frame rendering in After Effects, which switches on by itself.
08What it was tested on
These are the machines and versions it was actually run on. Other combinations may work, but I have not tried them and do not claim them.
- After Effects
- 2023 on Windows, 2026 on macOS
- Operating system
- Windows 11, macOS 26.7
- Graphics
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER on Windows, Apple M5 Pro on the Mac
- Requirement
- Any graphics card with OpenGL 3.3; Apple Silicon on the Mac
- Colour depth
- 8, 16 and 32 bit, including a 16-bit render to a file
- Not tested yet
- AMD and Intel graphics cards, Intel Macs
09Frequently asked questions
Does it work in Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve?
No. RIFT Glass is a plugin for After Effects only.
Why does it have to be on an adjustment layer?
Because an After Effects effect can only see the layer it is applied to. On an adjustment layer that layer is everything underneath, which is what the glass has to bend.
Does it work on a Mac?
Yes, on Apple Silicon with macOS 14 or newer. The plugin is not notarized by Apple yet, so it needs one Terminal line to unblock it after downloading, which the install guide shows.
Does it work without a licence key?
Yes, in full, with a watermark over the picture. A licence key removes the watermark.
How many computers does a key cover?
Two. Windows and Mac count as separate computers, and Deactivate on the old one frees its place for a new one.
10About CLOUD RIFT
CLOUD RIFT is a motion design and product animation studio run by Andrii Osypenko in Ukraine, built to keep motion and engineering in the same pair of hands. RIFT Glass came out of that: a tool written because shots needed it, then finished and released because other motion designers need it too.