Install the plugins and get Unreal Engine rendering live inside After Effects.
ShotLink is two plugins: one for After Effects, one for Unreal Engine. How you install them depends on where you got the build.
Pick how you installed — the steps update to match.
ShotLink is not yet published on aescripts. Until it is, use Manual install — the steps below are how it will work once the listing goes live.
Already done — the manager installed it for you.
This one the manager can't place for you. When the installation finishes, click Show UE Plugins — it opens the folder holding the Unreal builds, one per engine version:
Close the Unreal Editor first. Then copy the ShotLink folder that matches your engine version into your project's Plugins folder — the one next to your .uproject file. If there's no Plugins folder yet, create it.
Not sure which version you're on? Check Help › About Unreal Engine, or the version label in the Epic Games Launcher.
Unpack the release archive. The Unreal plugin lives inside UnrealEngine, one folder per engine version:
Close the Unreal Editor first. Then copy the ShotLink folder from UnrealEngine/UE<version> into your project's Plugins folder — the one next to your .uproject file. If there's no Plugins folder yet, create it.
Not sure which version you're on? Check Help › About Unreal Engine, or the version label in the Epic Games Launcher.
Quit After Effects, then copy ShotLink.aex into the plug-ins folder:
Launch After Effects — the plugin shows up as Effect › ShotLink Labs › Shot Link.
Plugins in place? This is the shortest path to seeing your Unreal scene inside After Effects.
Pick a starting point — the steps update to match.
The ShotLink Examples is a ready Unreal project with a matching After Effects project, built for Unreal Engine 5.7.
Download the ShotLink ExamplesOpen Examples.uproject in Unreal and Examples.aep in After Effects. The comp is already built — on the ShotLink effect, open the Source dropdown and pick the ShotLink Camera.
That's it — the Unreal scene appears in your comp. Move the After Effects camera to verify the connection: the Unreal view should update and follow it.
Open your .uproject, go to Edit › Plugins, search for ShotLink and tick Enabled. Restart Unreal if prompted.
Drop a ShotLink Camera into your scene from the Place Actors panel — it's the Unreal render source After Effects will control.
If your scene uses Eye Adaptation / Auto Exposure, enable these options on the camera so the captured image keeps updating and matches the viewport:
Alpha Output. ShotLink composites Unreal with transparency, so Unreal has to output an alpha channel. If it's off, the image arriving in After Effects can come through completely black — turn it on:
Background throttling. Unreal slows down when it isn't the focused window — exactly what happens while you work in After Effects. Turn it off so the preview stays full-speed:
Open your After Effects project. At minimum the comp needs an AE camera and a layer with the ShotLink effect applied. On that effect, open the Source dropdown and pick your ShotLink Camera.
That's it — the Unreal scene appears in your comp. Move the After Effects camera to verify the connection: the Unreal view should update and follow it.
Tune this any time after you're connected — Unreal and After Effects share one machine, so it helps to stop AE claiming every resource.
Reserve RAM for other apps so Unreal keeps enough memory to render:
Turn off idle caching. With ShotLink the image already updates live, so RAM Preview buys little — and while AE caches frames ahead it can nudge the Unreal camera to a later keyframe. Switch it off:
Switch Source to None and back — that forces the list to refresh.