Newton frequently asked questions
How to upgrade from Newton v1 to Newton v3?
For site licenses
How to get an Education license/discount on Newton 3
I cannot find Newton in the “Effect” menu of After Effects!
When I export the simulation, I sometimes notice a little gap between touching bodies.
Sometimes I notice tunneling effect with fast or complex moving bodies.
I find it hard to select open shapes in the preview.
When my scene contains multiple complex shapes, I observe a very slow simulation.
When I use mask Blending Mode or Inverted option, Newton doesn’t interpret correctly the shape.
I get an error when trying to run the trial version
OS compatibility
How to upgrade from Newton v1 to Newton v3?
For the release of Newton 3, Motion Boutique has partnered with aescripts + aeplugins.
To upgrade (at a discount of course) you will need to create a new account on aescripts.com if you don't already have one. If you already have an aescripts + aeplugins account then you will see a special notice the next time you login with instructions on how to upgrade.
Once logged in, go to the Order Import tab in your user account. Enter the email address that you used to order Newton 1 from Motion Boutique (can be different than your current aescripts account email). You have to accept the transfer and we’ll send you a link to complete the transfer of your order data. Once you do this you will be able to order your upgrade! If you require assistance please contact support and we will be happy to help.
For site licenses:
In order to best address our customers of all sizes we have stopped offering site licenses and switched to volume discount pricing. This means you will need to upgrade a defined number of licenses for v3. Since you are a v1 site license owner you are allowed to upgrade an unlimited number of licenses for the special upgrade price but you will only be able to do this once. If you require extra licenses after this upgrade offer you will need to purchase new licenses (volume discounts will apply). If you have any questions about this please contact us and we will be happy to help.
How to get an Education license/discount on Newton 3
To receive the educational discount on Newton 3 please open a support ticket and provide a valid student or faculty id. The ID must have a photo and expiration date. If the ID does not have an expiration date, please also provide another document that has your name and expiration date along with your photo ID to prove you are an enrolled student or current faculty. You will also need to create an account on our site (if you don't have one already) for us to apply the discount. Educational licenses are not valid for commercial work.
I cannot find Newton in the “Effect” menu of After Effects!
Newton is not standard plugin, you’ll find it in the “composition” menu.
When I export the simulation, I sometimes notice a little gap between touching bodies.
Newton doesn’t have pixel perfect collision. A 1-pixel gap is often observed between two touching bodies. You can use the Collision Tolerance setting in the Global properties panel to reduce the gap but may introduce overlap or instability when collision occurs.
Sometimes I notice tunneling effect with fast or complex moving bodies.
Try increasing the “Steps per frame” value. Increasing this parameter often yields better simulation at the expense of extra computation time.
I find it hard to select open shapes in the preview.
You can change the width of open shapes using the keyboard command Alt +/-.
When my scene contains multiple complex shapes, I observe a very slow simulation.
Make sure each shape has the minimum acceptable value for the “Mesh Precision” parameter. Reducing this value as much as possible always improves performance, and rarely reduces quality of the simulation. You can also use the “Convex Hull” setting (in the “Advanced” panel) to simplify your shape. Note that statistics about the scene (such as the number of polygons) are available in the “info” panel.
When I use mask Blending Mode or Inverted option, Newton doesn’t interpret correctly the shape.
Newton does not support Blending Mode nor Inverted mask. Newton only considers vertices defined by the Path property to construct body’s geometry.
I get an error when trying to run the trial version
If you are getting this error: "Couldn't find main entry point of Newton_trial.plugin (48:72)" it is most likely because you need to install the plugin file at the root level of the Plug-ins folder. This means that you should not put the plugin in any subfolder inside the Plug-ins folder. Once you move the plugin out of the subfolder you should restart After Effects
OS compatibility
You need at least macOS 10.3 to run Newton 3.