ShotLink — Closed beta · Live Unreal Engine inside After Effects

The problem

Kill the render–import–repeat loop

Traditional Unreal-to-AE workflows force you to render blind, check the comp, change, and render again. ShotLink moves that into a live feedback loop.

Without ShotLink Slow

Every change means another round trip through disk.

Render in Unreal→ Import to AE→ Check comp→ Change scene ↺ …and render everything again

With ShotLink Live

Unreal renders straight into your comp while you work.

Unreal renders live→ Composite in AE→ Adjust instantly ✓ Final render only when you're ready

What it does

Stop rendering blind. Start compositing live.

ShotLink adds Unreal as a live source you pull from — no need to rebuild your pipeline around Unreal.

Tap for fullscreen

Real ShotLink session — After Effects and Unreal Engine running side by side.

Drive Unreal from AE

Animate your After Effects camera and the Unreal shot follows live — direct the 3D scene with the keyframes you already know.

Tweak live

Adjust a light, material, or color in Unreal and the viewport updates directly inside your AE comp — a live realtime stream, not pre-rendered image sequences.

Click-to-3D nulls

Click a point in the Unreal scene to create a matching 3D null in After Effects.

Any render pass

Pull any pass you can build as an Unreal post-process material — Beauty, Depth, and Normal ship as ready presets.

Bake camera to Unreal

Send your AE camera animation back to Unreal for the final MRQ render of the same shot.

Sequence sync

Link a ShotLink camera to an Unreal sequence and keep the AE timeline frame-matched.

Requirements

What you need

OS Windows After Effects 2025.2 or newer Unreal Engine 5.6 or newer

Roadmap

Where it's heading

ShotLink is a practical production tool that keeps evolving. On the radar:

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Render & replace — final Unreal renders automatically swap in for live ShotLink layers.

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Drive the AE camera from Unreal — and pull Unreal camera moves back into AE.

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More passes — extended render-pass support and better Depth / Motion Vector handling for AE compositing plugins.

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AE to Unreal objects — send AE nulls and solids into Unreal as actors or planes.

FAQ

Questions, answered

Do I need to know Unreal Engine?

To get going, barely. Drop any Unreal scene in, add a ShotLink camera, and drive it from After Effects. Render passes come as ready presets, and you only go deeper — into MRQ — when you want maximum quality.

Is the live feed final-quality, or just a preview?

Often it's final-quality on its own — many shots ship straight from the realtime feed. For the most demanding shots, you can use it as a live preview: set up the shot in realtime, then make the final render with Unreal's Movie Render Queue (MRQ).

Where do I get Unreal scenes?

Anywhere — Fab, Quixel, marketplaces, or your own. The only requirement is adding a ShotLink camera actor to the scene.

Do I animate the camera in AE or in Unreal?

You animate your After Effects camera and the ShotLink camera in Unreal follows live. When you're ready for a final MRQ render, bake the AE camera back to Unreal. Full two-way camera sync is on the roadmap.

What render passes can I pull?

Any render pass you can build as an Unreal post-process material, applied per ShotLink camera — common ones like Beauty, Depth and Normal ship as presets. The feed carries alpha, in 8/16/32-bit. (Color-profile / OCIO support isn't in yet — we know it matters.)

What do I need, and will my machine handle it?

AE and Unreal run on the same Windows machine — ShotLink connects them through a direct shared-memory bridge, with no disk round-trip or third-party Spout/NDI layer. It's a live, interactive feed, and the framerate scales with resolution — so it's a dial you control: while you're placing the camera, work at a lower comp resolution for a smooth, responsive feed; when you need to judge the look, push the resolution back up. No workstation required — our test machine is just an RTX 4060 laptop (i7, 32 GB RAM).

How is it installed?

Two plugins — one for Unreal, one for After Effects. Windows only; macOS isn't supported yet.

Does it work with Sequencer and packaged builds?

Yes. Link a ShotLink camera to a sequence and ShotLink builds a frame-matched After Effects layer of the same length, so swapping in a final render later is painless. It also works with a packaged Unreal build — you still get the live scene in After Effects, just without the Sequencer and Movie Render Queue features (those live only in the Unreal editor).

Live Unreal Engine renders, inside After Effects

Two apps. One window. Live.