Advanced Rectangle Tool for After Effects

Rectangles exist all around us, so it's natural that we have to make lots of them in After Effects. After making lots of rectangles myself, After Effects' native rectangle wasn't cutting it anymore, so I created this preset to take back control of those unwieldy rectangles.

This is not a plugin, so if you share your project files with clients or collaborators, they won't need to have anything installed to see and edit your beautiful rectangles.

Features

This preset generates a rectangle path and an effect with controls for adjusting:

• Width

• Height

• Left Offset, Right Offset, Top Offset, Bottom Offset

• Corner Rounding

There are two control modes:

Slider Mode

Similar to the native rectangle shape, this mode uses width and height (in pixels) for the basis of the shape.

From there, the rectangle's dimensions can be adjusted using the individual offsets.

Screenshot of the controller in slider mode

Note: I often set the height and/or width to zero and control the size only using the offsets so the anchor point is on one of the sides or corners rather than in the center.

Point Mode

Point mode draws a rectangle between two points. The user has the option to override the point controls by picking a "parent" for each corner. If a corner parent is selected, then that corner will track to that parent layer's anchor point.

The individual side offests still work so the shape can still be adjusted relative to the corner points.

Screenshot of the controller in point mode

Note: A user can only specify two corners, because it wouldn't be a rectangle otherwise! If control over more corners is needed, then I suggest using the Points to Nulls script UI panel that comes with After Effects.

Requirements

• Must be using After Effects CC 2019 or newer

• Expressions engine for your project must be set to Javascript