Paint into a New Comp
Click Paint. Painted creates a comp named Painted · your image name inside a Painted folder in the Project panel. If the name is taken, Painted adds a number.
The new comp:
- Is twice the size of the painting’s working resolution, so the long side is 2000 px.
- Uses the active comp’s frame rate if one is open, or 30 fps.
- Runs at least two seconds past the end of the reveal, or as long as the active comp if that is longer.
- Opens in the viewer and parks on the finished frame when the build is done.
Paint into the Active Comp
Shift-click Paint to build straight into the comp you have open. The painting scales to cover the comp and starts at the beginning of its work area. The canvas layer is named Painted · your image name so you can tell paintings apart, and it is selected when the build finishes.
If no comp is active, Shift-click builds a new comp as usual.
What Gets Built
| Layer | What it is |
|---|---|
| Canvas | A shape layer with a single Primer rectangle in warm off-white. Every brush layer is parented to it. |
| Brush layers | One shape layer per brush, named like P1 Underpaint or P5 Accents. Each starts just before its brush’s first stroke. |
Each stroke is its own shape group with a path, a Trim Paths whose End animates from 0% to 100%, and a round-capped stroke with a tapered end. Strokes listed higher in a layer render on top.
Editing the Result
Everything is ordinary shape layer content, so the usual After Effects tools apply:
- Scale or move the painting by transforming the Canvas layer. The strokes follow.
- Retime a brush by sliding its layer, or time-stretching it.
- Recolor with Fill and Tint effects, or by editing stroke colors directly.
- Reveal part of the painting by masking the Canvas or using track mattes.
- Hide the primer by turning off the Primer group on the Canvas layer, so the painting builds over your own background.
Build Time
Build time depends on stroke count. On our test machine, a painting of about 9,400 strokes took around 15 seconds, and 18,000 strokes took about 35 seconds. The Paint button tooltip shows the stroke count before you build. Fewer brushes or lower Detail means fewer strokes.
While building, the panel shows a Painting in After Effects overlay with the stroke and brush count, and the Paint button fills up with progress.
The viewer switches to an empty Painted · Painting… comp during the build, so After Effects doesn’t redraw the painting after every batch. Your comp comes back when the build finishes, and the empty comp is removed.
Stop a Build
Click the button again while it builds. Painted stops after the current batch and keeps everything built so far. A message tells you which comp holds the partial painting.