What It Does
Foldspace lets you create, shape, and animate 3D curved surfaces directly inside After Effects. Native AE has no tools for generating true curved geometry in 3D space, so anything involving bent planes, warped surfaces, or folded shapes typically requires a round-trip to Cinema 4D or another 3D application. Foldspace handles that geometry natively, keeping everything inside your AE composition.
Each surface is defined by 16 control points that you can position freely in 3D space. Multiple surfaces coexist in the same 3D space within a single effect instance, and they can overlap and intersect. There’s no limit on how many surfaces you create.
Key Features
Control point animation. Every control point on a surface can be attached to an After Effects layer. When attached, it inherits all transformations from that layer, including animation. This makes it possible to build custom animation rigs where each point moves independently, driven by native AE tools.
Material system. Each surface has separate material slots for its front, back, and side planes. Materials include physical properties: diffuse, specular, shininess, and opacity. Any layer in your composition can serve as a texture source, so you can map video, images, or generated content onto the surfaces.
Roll Modifier. A dedicated set of roll parameters (Angle, Tilt, Radius) lets you quickly create rolling animations that wrap a surface into tube or spiral shapes without manually animating individual control points.
Custom on-screen UI. When the effect is selected, Foldspace shows an interactive viewport UI with position, rotation, and scale gizmos. You can work in either local or global space, and transformations are mouse-driven directly in the comp panel.
GPU-accelerated rendering. On Windows, Foldspace uses Vulkan. On macOS, it uses Metal. Minimum GPU requirements are modest (Vulkan 1.1 or Metal 2), and the plugin supports After Effects’ multi-frame rendering. Color depth goes up to 32-bit per channel.
After Effects camera and light integration. Surfaces respond to native AE cameras and lights, with an option to use custom camera and light settings controlled from within the effect itself.
Who It’s For
Foldspace is aimed at motion designers who need organic or architectural 3D surface shapes without leaving After Effects. Practical uses include animating folded paper or fabric-like surfaces, building title sequences around bent geometry, constructing cube or box rigs from individual Foldspace planes, and creating rolling or spiraling surface animations with the Roll Modifier. If your work involves packaging mockups, abstract 3D motion graphics, or product-style animations, this fills a genuine gap in AE’s native toolset.
Pricing
Foldspace is a one-time purchase at $149.99 (a discounted launch price of $112.50 is available until March 21, 2026). A free trial is available to test GPU compatibility before buying. Licensing covers a single user installation plus one archival backup copy.