25+ Amazing Free After Effects Templates for Editors
After Effects is powerful but also intimidating, which means templates and presets are amazing things to have. They can massively speed up a workflow, when there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. With so many great free templates out there that are customizable and fully animated, it was hard to narrow our list down to just 25! Check out these awesome free templates you can start using in your edits today.
1. Action Pack Lite
This pack of action effects from RocketStock contains 25 explosions, smoke, muzzle flashes, and more. It’s a free sample pack of larger paid packs, but it will get you started with action effects for free and maybe provide a much-needed effect to your action shot.
2. Split Text Intro
This stylish and clean title intro has a lot of dynamic motion. It lets you create bold text titles intermixed with imagery. Perfect for an advertisement, a dramatic trailer, or a social media story.
3. Cinematic 80’s Style
When you need to create a retro 80s video look, this cinematic After Effects template is perfect. It combines purple and blue lighting with a glitch effect. You can adjust the text and color if you want, but the default settings are perfect for this look!
4. Animated Font
This animated font After Effects template turns any of your titles into dynamic, animated titles. Each letter is individually animated in, which sets this template apart from other title animations out there. You can easily change colors and speed as well!
5. Messenger
This free messenger template is an easy way to create the signature text message look in your videos. It’s a simple and clean animation that can have customized profile images and text. There are also several bubble types so you can choose the exact look that fits your edit or the phones your subjects are using.
6. Urban Slideshow
There are a ton of amazing After Effects slideshow templates available, and this free urban slideshow template is a fantastic one. It features gritty animations and text, film grain, and a chain-link fence texture. It also adds on a layer of glitch effects just to finish it off. This is great start to a gritty slideshow with plenty of places to make changes.
7. Simple Instagram Story Text
Sometimes you just need some nice text for your Instagram story. This simple template uses an elegant font and animation and has a prompt for swiping up. It’s everything you need to make a stylish story – just change the font if you want a different look.
8. Parallax Opener
This free parallax opener uses a popular transition style to make a dynamic and action-packed intro. It features several transition animations along with 8 editable text layers and full color control. It’s clean and stylish, perfect for just about any kind of video.
9. Audio Visualizer Template
Whether it’s a song preview, a podcast, or something else, an audio visualizer is a useful tool to have in your back pocket to spice up your videos. This multi-colored template is great for getting started.
10. Spider-Man Inspired HUD
This sci-fi Spider-Man Inspired HUD has been popular online ever since it came out, because it’s really involved for a free template! This is one of those templates that you’ll rarely use, but it will really come in handy that one time you need it. You’ll have to use After Effects tracking tools in order to make it work, but luckily Motion Array has a detailed tutorial about how to set it up with your own footage. The main controversy, which you can see in the comments of the above video, is that due to a change that Adobe made, the template will only work with After Effects 2017. Some users have found a workaround by manually converting each of the included .mov files into a different codec.
11. Digital Distortion
https://vimeo.com/127523997
This digital distortion After Effects template is packed with 9 distortion effects, so you can bring some beautiful glitchy variety to your edits. Each effect is customizable with easy-to-understand controls.
12. Dynamic Colorful Slideshow
Show your bright and energetic side with this colorful slideshow template for After Effects! It features 23 media placeholders and 19 editable text layers, so there is plenty to work with here. It makes a great opener to a video with its eye-catching design.
13. Animated Titles, Text, Lower Thirds
Lower thirds and titles are important to so many different types of videos. This collection of minimalistic box-shaped titles with animations and spaces for text are ideal for most social media videos or YouTube videos.
14. Audio Spectrum Visualizer
Need an upgrade to the previously mentioned audio visualizer? This fully-editable visualizer template is perfect for artists that want to make an attractive and dynamic video for their new song, even if the song doesn’t have a music video. This is so much better than just a static image! Just drop in your music file and adjust the colors to your liking, then add in your album art and adjust the timer. This has everything you could need to make a fully-featured song visualizer.
15. Movie Trailer Graphics
If you want to make a movie trailer with realistic rating screens, critics screens, and credits screens then this After Effects template has what you need. They’re very useful templates and use the exact free fonts you need to make
16. Fade Slideshow
This slideshow template is full of great transitions for your still images. Each of the animations is fully created in After Effects, so it’s easy to edit everything to your heart’s content. You can simply drop in your image into the template or you can manually adjust each and every detail and animation.
17. 35 Prism Bokeh Effect Overlays
Bokeh effects are highly sought after. If you can’t get them naturally in-camera, this selection of free bokeh overlays for After Effects is a good replacement. With so many possibilities, this pack should have something for you. With blending modes and masking, you can get just about any effect you want.
18. Modern Angles 4K Slideshow
This slideshow template features fluid motion and lighting effects to bring your still images to life. The template uses placeholder images so that you can easily drop in your own photos to the template. Then just enjoy the various sliding and zooming animations that this template has to offer.
19. Comic Book Logo Intro
This After Effects template is modeled after the iconic Marvel movie intro. If you want to create a parody or fan movie, or if you just want to adopt this cool look, then you’ll want to pick up this free project. The template is easy to work with, and can even be easily made from scratch by following the tutorial video above!
20. Free Minimal Estate Promo
This clean real estate themed slideshow template is fully customizable and looks great! You can change the color to match your brand using the color controller, and of course change the style of the text and change the images. Perfect for promoting a house for sale, or anything else you can think of.
21. Poly Titles
Poly Titles is a cool abstract and geometric template with a lot of dynamic elements. It contains 9 motion graphics templates including lower thirds and titles. Each features continuous movement of the polygonal elements after they explode onto the screen, so these will always be action-packed titles for your videos.
22. Hiro: Free Anime-Inspired After Effects Template
https://vimeo.com/161654551
This anime-inspired opener features dramatic action lines. They’re sure to bring a lot of excitement to your logo reveal. The actual project has a lot of compositions and sub-compositions which can be customized, in terms of colors as well as the shapes. Either way, it works well out of the box, but is set up to be customized if needed.
23. 16 Free Wipe Transitions
https://vimeo.com/139360182
This pack of 16 free After Effects templates all feature colorful rectangles animating in a variety of styles. No matter which you choose, you have full control over the colors. By default, they’re fun, colorful, and vibrant. If you want to set them up with your brand colors, you can just render them individually with alpha channels for easy use without having to work in After Effects every time.
24. Fast Flip
Whether it’s a dramatic logo reveal or an intense montage, this fast flip template is going to be great for your projects. You can customize the colors and of course insert your own images. You also get a set of sound effects with this template, but you can insert your own to get the mood you desire.
25. 14 Animated Social Media Icons
Animated social media icons are nice to have for outro cards, to remind people to follow you on social media. The nice animations included in this free download are very useful for a lot of projects.
26. Video Wall Reveal
This cool video wall effect is ideal for corporate videos, showing off your portfolio, or showcasing your nature photography. The template contains 50 image or video placeholders so you can really customize this dynamic template to be whatever style you want.
