Mograph Effector 2.0 turns After Effects into a procedural animation engine. Clone a layer into hundreds of copies, then drop in an effector — the cloned layers simply react to that.
Animate just the effector, and the clones respond as it passes over them: moving, scaling, rotating, bouncing, changing color, and more. Hundreds of layers, all animated from one control, with zero keyframing by hand.
Works with After Effects CC 2022 and all later versions. Requires the JavaScript expression engine, which recent versions of After Effects use by default — so most projects need no changes.
Only relevant for older projects set to Legacy: Mograph Effector 2.0 runs on the JavaScript engine and won't evaluate correctly on Legacy ExtendScript. Switch in seconds via File → Project Settings → Expressions tab, set Expressions Engine to JavaScript, and click OK. It's a per-project setting.