Quickly Jump To: Key Features • Hardware Requirements • Test Breakdown • Scoring • Update Log • Legacy & Beta Versions

Adobe After Effects is one of the leading applications for motion graphics and visual effects. From simple animations to advanced compositing and 3D rendering, After Effects is an industry-leading tool for both beginners and professional motion designers.

PugetBench for After Effects runs on top of your installed copy of Adobe After Effects, providing benchmark data directly from the application. Our benchmarks are designed in partnership with hardware and software industry leaders, as well as end users and influencers who use After Effects daily, to ensure that they are representative of real-world workflows.

Key Features

Test Breakdown

Our After Effects benchmark is broken down into three categories:

1. 2D – performance when working with traditional 2D-based layers and effects
2. 3D – performance when working with 3D-based layers and objects using the “Advanced 3D” renderer
3. Tracking – performance for tracking effects

Shown below is a breakdown of the tests for the above categories, including basic composition settings as well as a description of the contents and an explanation of how the test is performed. Each entry also includes a “Processing Type” entry that indicates what hardware is the primary contributor to performance (CPU or GPU). This was determined by comparing results between an Intel Core i5 and Core i9 CPU, as well as an NVIDIA RTX __60 and RTX __80 GPU.

2D Tests

The 2D tests include between five and nine compositions, depending on the benchmark preset selected. These projects span from relatively simple ones using the built-in animation presets, to more complex projects based on public tutorials, to projects provided by our friends at School of Motion and Corridor Digital.

Performance for the 2D tests is measured by exporting the composition to ProRes 422 at full resolution, and recorded as the FPS as calculated from the number of frames divided by the time taken to complete the render.

Test Name	Resolution	Bit Depth	Benchmark Preset	Processing Type	Description
Skater	1920×1080	16 bpc	Standard, Extended	CPU	Provided by School of Motion Slightly modified from a shot in their “Join the Movement” video to remove C4D layers.
Behaviors Animation Presets	1920×1080	16 bpc	Standard, Extended	CPU	Includes 21 different behavior animation presets applied to text and shape layers. These can be found under Effects & Presets -> Animation Presets -> Behaviors
Phone Composite	3840×2160	16 bpc	Standard, Extended	CPU	Compositing a video on top of a moving phone using a combination of the Keylight (1.2) effect, Mocha tracking, corner pin, and miscellaneous other effects.
Realistic Rain	1920×1080	16 bpc	Standard, Extended	CPU	Based on the Video Copilot tutorial: Realistic Rain Drop FX Uses Turbulent Displace, CC Particle World, CC Glass, and other effects to simulate raindrops on a window.
Glitch	1920×1080	16 bpc	Standard, Extended	CPU, GPU	Based on the Video Copilot tutorial: Colorful Glitch FX Uses displacement maps, set matte, textures, and lighting to create a glitch effect.
Wolverito	3840×2160	16 bpc	Extended	CPU	Provided by Corridor Digital Slightly modified from a shot in their “Wolverine, but it’s Danny DeVito” video in order to run without 3rd party plugins.
Shapes Animation Presets	1920×1080	16 bpc	Extended	CPU	Includes 21 shape layers with 8 different behavior animation presets. These can be found under Effects & Presets -> Animation Presets -> Shapes
Cloud Lightning	3840×2160	16 bpc	Extended	GPU	Based on the Video Copilot tutorial: Advanced Electric FX Uses the Advanced Lightning effect and cloud sprites to simulate lightning within clouds.
Pulse	1920×1080	8 bpc	Extended	CPU	A modified version of the benchmark project provided by Adobe when Multi-Frame Rendering was released. Changes were focused on replacing stock footage and changing to fonts that are natively included in Windows/MacOS.

3D Tests

While 2D-focused projects are the bread and butter of most After Effects users, 3D is becoming more and more common. Adobe has recently added a new “Advanced 3D” renderer in addition to the Classic 3D and Cinema 4D options. Unlike other aspects of After Effects, the Advanced 3D renderer is highly GPU accelerated and performance can vary massively depending on the brand and performance of the GPU in the system.

The 3D tests include between two and four compositions, depending on the benchmark preset selected. These projects have a range of complexity depending on the number of built-in 3D layers, external 3D objects, lighting and render quality settings.

Similar to the 2D tests, performance is measured by exporting the composition to ProRes 422 at full resolution and recorded as the FPS as calculated from the number of frames divided by the time taken to complete the render. Due to the extreme range in performance depending on the GPU brand/model, we started with full-length compositions, then did a time remap to reduce the number of frames rendered. This allows the test to still include a variety of frames, while not taking an extremely long time to process on some hardware.

Test Name	Resolution	Bit Depth	Benchmark Preset	Processing Type	Description
3D Simple Text	1920×1080	8 bpc	Standard, Extended	GPU	Simple 3D composition with 6 3D text layers (position/rotation keyframes), a camera, and single environment light. Render Quality: 30 Resolution: Full (16 MB) Smoothness: 5
3D Depth	1920×1080	8 bpc	Standard, Extended	GPU	Based on the School of Motion tutorial: Easy 2D to 3D in After Effects Includes 5 3D text layers, 8 .glb layers, 3 lights, and a few limited 2D-based layers. Render Quality: 10 Resolution: Full (16 MB) Smoothness: 5
3D Camera Explode	1920×1080	8 bpc	Extended	GPU	Focuses on a textured .glb with baked-in animation in addition to 4 lights and a small number of 2D-based layers Render Quality: 20 Resolution: Full (16 MB) Smoothness: 5
3D Solar System	1920×1920	8 bpc	Extended	GPU	Provided by Kyle Hamrick Includes 10 .glb layers in addition to 2 lights and a decent number of 2D-based layers. Render Quality: 10 Resolution: Full (16 MB) Smoothness: 5

Tracking Tests

The last category of tests looks at performance for Tracking effects. Due to high run-to-run variance, these tests are run three times, with the fastest result being logged and used for scoring.

As a base, we are using a lightweight 1920×1080 H.264 clip and applying the tracking effect in two ways. For the Roto Brush 3.0 test, we have a layer with the Roto Brush Matte already created on frame 1. The benchmark plays through the composition via RAM Preview, generating each frame on the fly. Performance is measured by how long it takes to generate all frames in terms of frames per second (FPS).

For Warp Stabilize and 3D Camera Tracker, the relevant effect is applied to a 100-frame 1920×1080 clip. Performance is measured by how long it takes the system to complete both the “Analyze” and application steps and recorded in terms of FPS.

Test Name	Benchmark Preset	Processing Type
Roto Brush 3.0	Standard, Extended	CPU, AI
Warp Stabilize	Standard, Extended	CPU
3D Camera Tracker	Extended	CPU

How does the Scoring Work?

All of the scores in our After Effects benchmark are calculated using geometric means rather than averages or performance relative to a reference result. This helps to normalize the scores so that larger or smaller results are not unfairly weighted. It also allows for the benchmark to be more flexible and better able to handle large performance shifts due to either application optimizations or the launch of more powerful hardware.

For the actual score calculations, we start by dividing the tests by type with a score generated for each group by taking the geometric mean of all the test results. This score is then used to calculate the Overall Score

Major Scores

The tests are divided by category (2D, 3D, Tracking) with a score calculated based on the geomean of each test within that group. Each score is multiplied by a different scoring coefficient to bring the scores across all our benchmarks roughly in line with each other.

2D Score = geomean (2D test1, 2D test2, ...) * 17
3D Score = geomean (3D test1, 3D test2, ...) * 21
Tracking Score = geomean (Tracking test1, Tracking test2, ...) * 10

Overall Score

These major scores are then combined into the Overall Score using a geometric mean and multiplied by 100 to differentiate the Overall Score from the Major Scores. Currently, we do not weigh any of the major scores more than any of the others, so each contributes equally to the Overall Score.

Overall Score = geomean (2D Score, 3D Score, Tracking Score) * 100

This method results in an Overall Score with a typical run-to-run variance of about 1-2% and Major Scores with a variance of about 5%, assuming there is no thermal or other performance throttling occurring on the system.

Benchmark Update Log

Version 0.98.0 Beta (Major Update)

• Major update – Results cannot be compared to previous benchmark versions.
• Integrated into the “PugetBench for Creators” benchmark application. The benchmark is no longer available as a stand-alone After Effects plugin.
• Minimum application support changed to After Effects 25.2 (currently in beta) due to features required by the 3D tests.
• Changed all scores to be based on the geometric mean of the individual results (or major scores in the case of the Overall Score). This method helps to normalize the scores so that larger or small results are not unfairly weighted.
• Increased scoring coefficient for the Overall Score to differentiate the score from previous benchmark versions.
• Added scoring coefficient modifiers to bring the Overall Score in-line with other 1.x PugetBench benchmarks.
• Dropping RAM Preview tests due to issues with run-to-run variation and the results largely being redundant with the Render tests.
• Set “3D.ForceSynchronousModelLoading” in the debug database to ensure that 3D models are loaded before starting a test.
• Added 3D-based tests. These tests are highly GPU-based and utilize the “Advanced 3D” renderer.
  • Standard Preset:
    • 3D Simple Text – Solely utilizes native 3D (text) layers
    • 3D Depth – Utilizes a mix of native 3D layers and .glb objects
  • Extended Preset:
    • 3D Camera Explode – Utilizes a .glb object with built-in animations along with a number of 2D and 3D layers
    • 3D Solar System – 3D project provided by Kyle Hamrick
• Adjusted 2D-based and previous tests
  • Removed:
    • Polygon
    • Motion Blur
    • Gaming Intro
    • GPU Stress
    • C4D Text
    • Expressions
  • Added:
    • Skater – Project provided by School of Motion
    • Shapes Animation Presets
    • Backgrounds Animation Presets
    • Wolverito – Project provided by Corridor Digital
• Adjusted Tracking tests
  • Added Roto Brush 3.0
• Tests have been split into “Standard” and “Extended” presets.
• Test grouping/scoring shifted from “RAM Preview/Render/Tracking” to “2D/3D/Tracking”

Version 0.96.0 BETA

• Added preliminary support for After Effects 24 (currently in beta)
• Switched all fonts used in test compositions to defaults found in Windows and MacOS. This should not measurably impact benchmark performance but keeps Creative Cloud from needing to download custom fonts to the user’s system

Version 0.95.7 BETA

• Updated CLI utility to support changes to plugin paths when installing via Creative Cloud

Version 0.95.6 BETA

• Added plugin and CLI support for After Effects 23.0
• Updated benchmark upload/view URLs to match web hosting changes

Version 0.95.2 BETA

• Added filter to remove “(C)”, “(R)”, and “(TM)” strings from the systems specifications
• Added additional granularity to the “Custom” preset. You can now select individual tests to run rather than only being limited to specific groups of tests.
• Added the ability to specify which tests to run with the “Custom” preset when using the CLI
  • Include the “/custom_tests” argument when launching the CLI along with a comma-separated list of test numbers.
  • The test number associated with each test can be seen if you launch the benchmark plugin manually. It will be shown before the name of each selectable test.
  • Example: /custom_tests “8,21”
• Added “/cooldown” CLI argument to specify how many seconds to wait at the end of the benchmark run to allow the system to cool down. By default, the CLI waits for 20 seconds
  • Example: /cooldown 60
• Added the ability to launch custom .bat files at various points during the benchmark run. This was requested multiple times in order to automate additional logging using utilities such as Windows Performance Recorder.
  • If running the benchmark manually, there is now a “Run custom commands” checkbox in the automation settings
  • If using the CLI, include the command line argument of “/custom_tests”
  • Four different .bat files are launched at the start/end of the benchmark, and at the start/end of each individual test.
  • More information on how to make the .bat files, where to save them, and a sample set of files is available in the user guide
  • Note that if the commands require admin privileges, you will need to launch the application or CLI as admin.
• Required application information for the CLI moved to an .ini file that resides alongside the CLI in the plugin folder. This information was previously baked into the CLI itself, but by having it in an editable file, end users can add support for things like beta and pre-release versions of Premiere Pro. The .ini requires the following entries:
  • Main section title: The major version of Premiere Pro. This is used by the CLI for the “/app_version” argument
  • prefLoc: Location of the application preferences folder
  • prefFile: In many cases, this is the same as prefLoc, but some benchmarks need a specific preferences file defined
  • appLoc: Path to the Premiere Pro application
  • appEXE: Name of the Premiere Pro .exe when it has been launched
• Fixed CLI issue where it wasn’t detecting existing preferences files, and always had to launch After Effects twice.

Version 0.95.1 BETA

• Minor bugfix to resolve issues when activating a license key

Version 0.95 BETA (Major Update)

• Due to the changes to the tests and scoring, the results in this version cannot be directly compared to previous benchmark versions
• Added CLI, RAM verification, and settings check support for After Effects version 22.x
• Settings requirement added for disabling “Cache frames when idle” when running Ae version 22.x
  • This is necessary because otherwise After Effects may start rendering frames before the benchmark runs which would throw off the results
• Tracking tests now run 3x each, with the best result being used for scoring
  • Adding loops because tracking can be more inconsistent between runs than preview or rendering
• Overall Score adjusted to be weighted 40% RAM Preview, 40% Render, and 20% Tracking rather than being an even division between the three types of tests
• Added new “Multi-Core Score” to show best-case performance for higher core count CPUs with MFR
  • Similar to how the “GPU Score” shows the largest difference you may see between GPUs in After Effects, the “Multi-Core Score” shows the largest difference you are likely to see with higher core count CPUs
• Significant changes made to the tests – mostly due to the large performance gains experienced with MFR
• Dropped tests:
  • All RAM Preview (Half Res) tests. With MFR, performance may be real-time on some systems, which isn’t desirable for showing the performance delta between hardware
  • C4D Track – Did not provide significantly unique data from the C4D Text composition
• Adjusted tests:
  • Polygon – Increased difficulty by creating 3 sets of polygon pre-comps
  • Glitch – Updated graphic to match new Puget Systems logo and removed tint effect (breaks randomly on some systems for an unknown reason)
  • Realistic Rain – Updated graphic to match new Puget Systems logo
• Added tests:
  • Pulse – Slightly simplified version of the “AE Pulse Benchmark” project provided by Adobe to test multi-frame rendering. Shorted to 100 frames and removed unused layers
  • Gaming Intro – slightly modified version of the “Gaming Intro” motion graphics template that is include in Premiere Pro

Version 0.93.2 BETA

• Added CLI and RAM verification support for After Effects 18.0

Version 0.93 BETA

• Fixed issue with After Effects 14.1.4 that prevented the RAM Preview tests from completing due to only 99 frames out of 100 being rendered.

Version 0.92 BETA

• Moved to using node-wmi to gather system specs on Windows systems. This should be significantly faster and more reliable than the previous command line method
• Added GPU driver and motherboard BIOS to the system specs for Windows systems
• Misc bug fixes

Version 0.91 BETA

• Improved system spec gathering reliability
• System specs on MacOS now gather properly even if the system drive’s name has been changed from the default “Macintosh HD”

Version 0.9 BETA (Major Update)

• Results are now uploaded to our online database. This is required for the free version, but opt-in if you have a commercial license.
• Removed the result screen at the end of the benchmark run now that the full results can be viewed on our benchmark listing page.
• Moved from a script to a full plug-in. This was required for the result uploading, but also allows us much more flexibility for configurable settings and increases consistency between our various Adobe benchmarks.
• License validation moved from the CLI utility to the plugin itself.
• Added the ability to do a “Custom” test which does the same tests as normal, only on whatever compositions are on the root-level of the currently opened project.
• Added ability to set the location for any disk-based tests (rendering).
• Added tooltips for the various settings that can now be configured.
• Status logs and configuration settings moved to “~Documents⧵PugetBench⧵After Effects⧵TIMESTAMP” since we cannot log directly to the plugin folder.
• Removed “Progress” text layer since this information is now reported in the plugin UI.
• Disk Cache is now cleared by directly deleting the cache files. This removed the need to click the “Are you sure you want to clear the cache?” window that used to come up
• General bug fixes and stability improvements.

Version 0.82 BETA

• The Adobe After Effects team helped us figure out most of the improvements in this update. Thank you to the dev team!
• Improved method for starting the RAM Preview tests. This fixes numerous issues with the previous method
• No longer need to manually set spacebar playback settings for “loop once”
• We can now detect when not all frames were played during RAM Preview (due to user intervention or lack of RAM) and can throw an error
• Now able to start the render queue without it looking like AE froze. Due to this, we no longer need to use AERender for the render tests and can use the built-in render queue
• Misc improvements for how we loop through the different tests
• Due to the change to using the render queue, the scores/results in this version may be slightly different than previous versions

Version 0.8 BETA

• Added support for After Effects 2020
• Renamed benchmark to “PugetBench for After Effects”
• Added motherboard and RAM speed (Windows only) to the results page
• Removed .csv log file support in the free edition (log files will be a feature in the commercial use version)
• More code to ensure consistency between benchmark runs
• Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements

Version 0.52 BETA

• Overall Score rounding error fix. Previous versions were rounding to the nearest 10. I.E. “950” instead of “948”

Version 0.51 BETA

• Added Windows buildnumber to the Benchmark Results page
• Making sure to set the renderer to “Classic 3D” on most comps, or “Cinema 4D” on the C4D comps (just incase it gets changed somehow)
• More robust reporting for render errors such as not enough frames rendering or the render failing completely.
• Clearing out export folder at the start of each run just so that aerender doesn’t have to overwrite files.
• Scoring fix for when a render completes in exactly a minute (the log reports different if it is less than a minute, over a minute, or exactly on a minute)

Version 0.5 BETA (Major Update)

• Switching from “year.mon.day” version format to a more typical versioning scheme so that we can more easily show when things like the scoring has changed enough to not be interchangeable with previous versions.
• Dropping color depth from 32 bpc to 16 bpc. At 32 bpc, you needed more than 20GB of RAM in order to RAM preview the UHD compositions and anything less simply stopped the test early resulting in artificially high scores for that test. Dropping to 16 bpc will allow people with 16GB of RAM to successfully run the benchmark.
• Added a RAM checker that throws an error if you have less than 12GB of RAM available for AE to use. Anything less results in the same issue mentioned in the previous bullet point with artificially high scores.
  • This checker is not very robust at the moment since it has to read some configuration files from /Adobe/dynamiclinkmanager/*version*. I can’t find a way to directly link the version of AE with the version of the DLM, so for now it is hard coded and allows you to keep running the benchmark if it breaks.
• Added a “Progress” text layer on each test comp that updates automatically so you can visually see how far along the benchmark is.
• Export (Final Render) test now uses aerender (background renderer) rather than the render queue built in to After Effects. This is nearly the same performance as using the render queue, but much easier to automate.
  • Added a “status” comp that shows you how far along it is since there is little to no visual feedback that After Effects isn’t just broken
  • This fixes most of the issues we’ve seen with this test failing on some systems
  • This removes the need to do any security setting changes in MacOS (yay!)
  • This also opens up the possibility of adding a render node test in the future that spawns multiple instances of aerender.
• Switching from Overall/Standard/C4D/Tracking scores to Overall/Render/Preview/Tracking to align better with what people are interested in. If someone only cares about C4D performance, they can look at the raw results for those compositions.
• There is now a “Benchmark Results” comp that comes up at the end of the benchmark that displays a bunch of useful information including:
  • Benchmark version
  • Overall & section scores
  • FPS results for each individual test
  • System information like CPU, RAM, OS, GPU, GPU acceleration mode, and After Effects version
• In addition to the log file with the results, the benchmark now also makes a PNG of the “Benchmark Results” comp
• Adjusting benchmark tests:
  • Adding three new compositions:
    • “Expressions” – almost exclusively uses expressions
    • “Motion Blur” – Simply comp with motion blur being the limiting factor
    • “GPU Stress” – our attempt to show the maximum difference you would see with a higher-end GPU
  • Removing old compositions that were either redundant or are tested better with the new comps:
    • “Glitch Project”
    • “Turbulant Noise Keyframe”
    • “Rotation Keyframe”
    • “C4D Text Draft Project”
    • “C4D Track Draft Project”
  • Replaced video media in the “Phone Composite Project”, “Tracking”, and “C4D Track Final Project” with lower bitrate H.264 media. It doesn’t significantly impact the performance, but results in a much smaller benchmark download size.
• Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements

Version 19.5.16 BETA

• Fixed issue where the benchmark could not verify the loop playback setting on minor revisions of AE.

Version 19.4.4 BETA

• Reordered the tests to Render->Half Res Preview->Full Res Preview in order to try to resolve issues with some systems improperly using the disc cache files for the render test which resulted in too high of scores.
• Added additional checks during the Render tests so that if the benchmark is not able to start the render automatically, it will prompt the user to click the “Render” button manually.

Version 18.12.18 BETA

• Minor bug fix

Version 18.12.17 BETA

• Added more robust detection for when the benchmark starts/stops RAM Preview and Render testing. This is to fix a bug on some systems where if the test doesn’t start within a few seconds, the benchmark thinks it already finished.

Version 18.12.10 BETA

• Added Ae version check to make sure Ae 2019 (ver 16.x) is being used.
• Initial benchmark errors (Disk Cache not disabled, Ae not using English, Ae version mismatch, etc) now allow for you to continue the benchmark anyways – although the benchmark will probably break so that isn’t recommended.

Version 18.12.0 BETA

• First release.

Legacy Benchmark Versions

Modern versions of our After Effects benchmark are available via the PugetBench for Creators application. However, older versions of the benchmark are available via ZXP plugins. Note that these versions may not have support for recent versions of After Effects.

• Ver 0.96.0 | ZXP Plugin
• Ver 0.95.6 | ZXP Plugin
• Ver 0.95.2 | ZXP Plugin
• Ver 0.95.1 | ZXP Plugin
• Ver. 0.93.2 | ZXP Plugin
• Ver. 0.93 | ZXP Plugin

Beta Benchmark Branch

In addition to the main benchmark versions, licensed users also have access to a beta branch. This is where we trial tests, often to take advantage of new features added to the base applications. Beta branches are also where we add preliminary support for beta versions of After Effects.

These benchmark builds may include different tests and can have differences in how the scoring is calculated, so we recommend reading the update notes carefully to see if they can be used alongside the release versions of the benchmark.

Current notes on the beta branch:

0.98.0-beta

• Major update – Results cannot be compared to previous benchmark versions.
• Integrated into the “PugetBench for Creators” benchmark application. The benchmark is no longer available as a stand-alone After Effects plugin.
• Minimum application support changed to After Effects 25.2 (currently in beta) due to features required by the 3D tests.
• Changed all scores to be based on the geometric mean of the individual results (or major scores in the case of the Overall Score). This method helps to normalize the scores so that larger or small results are not unfairly weighted.
• Increased scoring coefficient for the Overall Score to differentiate the score from previous benchmark versions.
• Added scoring coefficient modifiers to bring the Overall Score in-line with other 1.x PugetBench benchmarks.
• Dropping RAM Preview tests due to issues with run-to-run variation and the results largely being redundant with the Render tests.
• Set “3D.ForceSynchronousModelLoading” in the debug database to ensure that 3D models are loaded before starting a test.
• Added 3D-based tests. These tests are highly GPU-based and utilize the “Advanced 3D” renderer.
  • Standard Preset:
    • 3D Simple Text – Solely utilizes native 3D (text) layers
    • 3D Depth – Utilizes a mix of native 3D layers and .glb objects
  • Extended Preset:
    • 3D Camera Explode – Utilizes a .glb object with built-in animations along with a number of 2D and 3D layers
    • 3D Solar System – 3D project provided by Kyle Hamrick
• Adjusted 2D-based and previous tests
  • Removed:
    • Polygon
    • Motion Blur
    • Gaming Intro
    • GPU Stress
    • C4D Text
    • Expressions
  • Added:
    • Skater – Project provided by School of Motion
    • Shapes Animation Presets
    • Backgrounds Animation Presets
    • Wolverito – Project provided by Corridor Digital
• Adjusted Tracking tests
  • Added Roto Brush 3.0
• Tests have been split into “Standard” and “Extended” presets.
• Test grouping/scoring shifted from “RAM Preview/Render/Tracking” to “2D/3D/Tracking”