How to use

Open the panel via Window > Extensions > Fractal Noise Browser. The panel is resizable, dockable and scrollable.

To apply a preset to your layer just double-click the preset. Or single-click, then click the Apply button. This will add a Fractal Noise, Turbulent Noise or Curl Noise effect to your layer. The free trial version is limited to the first seven presets in each category.

Note: If you're not familiar with AE's procedural noise effects, read the full documentation at After Effects Help - Noise and Grain Effects

Presets for Fractal Noise, Turbulent Noise and Curl Noise

Blue badges indicate Fractal Noise presets, orange means Turbulent Noise, and pink means Curl Noise. The green badges are for presets that support both Fractal and Turbulent Noise. The default effect for these is Fractal Noise, but you can change that in the Application Settings at the bottom.

Note: Fractal Noise is loopable, and GPU-accelerated (since 2017), making it faster than Turbulent Noise despite what older tutorials claim.

Application settings

Under Application settings you'll find options to set your preferred noise effect for presets that support both Fractal Noise and Turbulent Noise.

You also have options that control what happens if you already have a Fractal Noise, Turbulent Noise or Curl Noise effect on your layer. In most cases, you won't need multiple noise effects on the same layer, in which case leave it set to "Replace existing noise effect" so you can quickly try out lots of presets from the panel without ending up with a stack of noise effects.

If you have multiple noise effects on your layer and you're in "Replace existing noise effect" mode, the last instance of the effect (bottom of the effect stack) will be replaced.

If you do want to add another noise effect to the same layer, you can switch to "Add new unless effect is selected". Now it will add a new instance of the effect to the layer, unless you specifically select the noise effect first that you want to replace.

Note: As of version 1.2, replaced effects keep their position in the effect stack. Previously, switching a layer to a different noise type (for example switching from a Fractal Noise to a Turbulent Noise) dropped the new effect to the bottom, below anything else on the layer - so for example, a Colorama coloring your noise would suddenly be in the wrong place. Now the replacement takes the slot the old effect occupied.

User Presets

The User Presets section is a place for you to save, browse and apply your own Fractal Noise, Turbulent Noise and Curl Noise presets with thumbnails and animated previews. It's designed to give you the same controls and flexibility as the built-in presets - it stores non-animated presets so that you can use Fractal Noise Browser's Evolution animation options, as well as the Randomize Seed and Application settings.

Making a User Preset

You might want to start with one of the built-in presets and play around with the parameters, or start from a default Fractal Noise, Turbulent Noise or Curl Noise effect. When you have settings you're happy with, select the effect either in the Effects Control Window or the Timeline panel, or select just one of its parameters.

Click on Fractal Noise Browser's + Save Preset button. This will open the Save Animation Preset dialog, typically in After Effects' default User Presets folder, which is:

MAC OS
/Users/[Username]/Documents/Adobe/After Effects [Version]/User Presets

WINDOWS
C:\Users\[Username]\Documents\Adobe\After Effects [Version]\User Presets

Note: If the dialog opens in a different folder - perhaps because you've been saving presets elsewhere during this session - navigate to the folder indicated by the Mac or Windows file paths shown above. Alternatively, save your project and restart After Effects. Save Animation Preset will then return to the default location.

The first time you click + Save Preset, Fractal Noise Browser automatically creates the Fractal Noise Browser subfolder inside your User Presets folder. This is where all your user presets need to live so the panel can find them. Navigate into this folder in the Save dialog before naming and saving your preset. The preset will be saved in .ffx format - After Effects' standard preset format.

You can also organise presets further using subfolders. For example:

Fractal Noise Browser/Water

Fractal Noise Browser displays each subfolder as a collapsible subcategory. Up to two levels of nesting are supported - for example, this works:

Fractal Noise Browser/Water/Calm/

but anything nested deeper will be ignored.

Reloading User Presets

Whenever you add new presets to the folder, click the ↺ Reload button in the User Presets section and Fractal Noise Browser will re-scan the folder and display any newly added presets.

FN, TN and CN badges on User Presets

Fractal Noise Browser reads the effect type from the .ffx file itself and displays the FN, TN and CN badges automatically, so there's nothing you need to do and no particular way you need to name your files. Earlier versions asked you to append _FN or _TN to the filename to get a badge. That's no longer necessary. Presets named that way continue to work exactly as before - the suffix is now only a fallback, used if the preset file can't be read.

Thumbnails and video previews for User Presets

Thumbnails are recommended for your User Presets, but not required - they make presets much easier to browse. Video previews (which play on hover) are also supported, just like the built-in presets.

Thumbnails and videos must share the identical base name as the .ffx file and be saved in the same folder or subfolder. For example, these three files would go in User Presets/Fractal Noise Browser or in a subfolder of User Presets/Fractal Noise Browser:

mypreset.ffx
mypreset.png
mypreset.mp4

User Preset thumbnail and video creation is not an automatic feature - it's up to you to create them manually - but it's very easy to do:

1. Make a new comp with a solid layer
2. Apply your preset to the solid
3. Save the first frame as a PNG or JPG in the same folder as the FFX, with a matching base name
4. If you also want a video preview, add animation to the Evolution parameter
5. Render as MP4 or MOV to the same folder, with a matching base name

Note: WebM is not natively available as an output format in After Effects.

Note: Curl Noise sizes its pattern relative to the layer it is applied to. This is different from Fractal Noise and Turbulent Noise, where Scale is measured in pixels and is unaffected by the layer's dimensions. Curl Noise fits the same number of cells across the width of a layer as it does across the height, whatever the layer's proportions. On a 16:9 layer each cell is therefore stretched horizontally compared with the same settings on a square layer. Only the proportions matter, not the pixel dimensions - a 3840x2160 solid and a 1920x1080 solid give identical results, because both are 16:9.

So for a Curl Noise preset, build your thumbnail and video preview on a layer with the aspect ratio you are most likely to apply the preset to - for most people that's 16:9. If you mostly work square or vertical, use that shape instead. A preview made on a square layer won't represent what the preset looks like on a 16:9 layer, and the reverse is equally true.

This is why the solid described above is 16:9 - the built-in Curl Noise presets were created and previewed on that shape.

User Presets known limitations

• Curl Noise requires After Effects 26.3 or later.
• FFX files are version-specific. FFX files created in a newer version of After Effects will not work in older versions. If you upgrade After Effects, copy your Fractal Noise Browser folder of user presets into the new version's User Presets folder - they should continue to work normally.
• If there are FFX files in the User Presets/Fractal Noise Browser folder that don't contain a Fractal Noise, Turbulent Noise or Curl Noise effect, they will be hidden from the User Presets section, since there would be nothing for Fractal Noise Browser to apply. A note at the top of the section tells you how many were hidden. They remain in your folder and can still be applied with Animation > Apply Animation Preset.
• Keyframes, expressions and other effects in FFX files in the User Presets/Fractal Noise Browser folder will be ignored by Fractal Noise Browser. To apply the full saved FFX including any additional effects, use Animation > Apply Animation Preset instead.
• If there are FFX files in the User Presets/Fractal Noise Browser folder that contain multiple Fractal Noise and/or Turbulent Noise effects, only the last effect in the stack will be loaded. Again, you can use Animation > Apply Animation Preset if you need to apply them all.