What It Does
MB Liquid Glass is a native After Effects effect plug-in that simulates glass-style refraction directly inside a composition. Apply it to shape layers, text, matte sources, or its built-in rounded rectangle to get soft lens distortion, background blur, spectral color separation, Fresnel highlights, tint, and shadow, all without leaving After Effects.
It’s particularly useful for UI mockups, title cards, and motion graphics that call for the frosted or glossy glass aesthetic that has become common in app design and broadcast work.
Key Features
Four glass silhouette modes. You can drive the glass shape from a built-in rounded rectangle (fastest setup), a separate matte layer, the current layer itself (Self Layer, currently in beta), or a Shape List that binds multiple editable shape layers and merges them as a single glass form.
Glass optics controls. Refraction thickness and index of refraction let you dial in how strongly the glass bends the background. Spectral split adds chromatic aberration-style color separation at the edges.
Surface effects. Fresnel highlights simulate the bright rim that appears on real glass at glancing angles. Glare adds a specular hotspot. Pre-blur and post-blur soften the background behind and in front of the glass independently.
Tint and shadow. A tint control colors the glass body, and a shadow option casts a soft drop shadow beneath the shape for depth.
GPU acceleration. The effect is optimized for GPU rendering, which keeps preview and render times reasonable even on complex compositions.
Mac and Windows builds. The macOS build is a Universal Binary supporting both Apple Silicon and Intel. The Windows build is a standard 64-bit .aex plug-in.
Who It’s For
Motion designers working on UI animations, app promos, or broadcast graphics will find this most applicable. It removes the need to fake glass refraction with displacement maps or external 3D renders. The Shape List mode is handy when you need a blob-style merged glass shape across several elements.
Pricing
MB Liquid Glass is a one-time purchase at $39.00, available on aescripts.com. A free trial build is available for both macOS and Windows before buying. No subscription is required.