What Is LIQUID for After Effects?

Summary

In After Effects, LIQUID is a set of liquid effect video overlays you drop into a comp above your footage and blend with the timeline's Mode column set to Screen or Add. Those modes discard the overlay's black background, so no keying is needed. You then isolate your subject with Roto Brush, pen masks, a track matte or the Set Matte effect. It's $30.00, reduced from $47.00.

What Is LIQUID?

LIQUID is a pack of drag-and-drop liquid effect overlays supplied as video clips. It's footage, not a plugin, a preset or a LUT — nothing installs into your Effects & Presets panel, and nothing needs a license.

The pack's own line is that it's hard to make liquid effects without After Effects, but these overlays make it easy. In After Effects specifically that reads a little differently: you already have the tool that could build this from scratch. What you don't have is the hours. A fluid sim, a lighting pass and a render queue is a day's work; an overlay is a drag and a blend mode. Having AE just means you get better control over the same clip than editors in other apps do.

The pack is $30.00, down from $47.00, and the clips are formatted for compatibility across editing software — After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve.

How LIQUID Works in After Effects

  1. Import — File > Import > File (Cmd/Ctrl+I) and bring the clips into the Project panel. Drag one into your comp.
  2. Stack it — place the overlay layer above your footage layer in the timeline. Layer order is the composite order in AE.
  3. Reveal the Mode column — press F4 (or click the Toggle Switches / Modes button at the bottom of the timeline) to swap the switches column for the modes column.
  4. Set the blend mode — choose Screen from the overlay layer's Mode dropdown. Add gives you a brighter, hotter version of the same composite.
  5. Scale and place — press S for Scale, P for Position, R for Rotation. Rotating 180° reverses the flow direction of a pour.
  6. Retime — Layer > Time > Time Stretch for a flat speed change, or Layer > Time > Enable Time Remapping when you need the liquid to ramp into a specific frame.
  7. Isolate the subject — duplicate your footage layer, move the copy above the overlay, and cut the subject out of it with Roto Brush (select the layer, open it in the Layer panel, paint the subject, then Freeze). The extracted subject now sits in front of the liquid.
  8. Or mask instead — draw a mask with the Pen tool (G) directly on the overlay layer, set the mask to Subtract, add Mask Feather (F), and keyframe Mask Path across the shot.
  9. Refine the intensity — apply Effect > Color Correction > Levels or Curves to the overlay and lift the black point. Under Screen, crushing the overlay's blacks removes any residual haze from the background.

Why Screen and Add Discard the Black

Screen inverts both layers, multiplies them together and inverts the result. Feed it black — a value of zero — and it returns the layer beneath unchanged. Add simply sums the two values, and adding zero changes nothing. Either way, an overlay's black background contributes literally nothing to the frame and only the bright liquid survives.

This is why overlay footage doesn't need an alpha channel or a key. It also tells you how to control it: anything you do to the overlay's brightness directly controls how much of it composites. Levels on the overlay is your intensity dial, and it's more precise than Opacity because it lets you keep the bright cores while killing the dim edges.

Track Mattes, Set Matte and Precomps

  • Track mattes — in the timeline's TrkMat column, point the overlay at a matte layer and choose Alpha Matte or Luma Matte. Use this when the shape you want to cut with already exists as a graphic or a high-contrast plate.
  • Set Matte — Effect > Channel > Set Matte borrows another layer's alpha or luminance without touching layer order, so one roto'd layer can drive several overlays at once. Handy when your matte layer needs to stay somewhere else in the stack.
  • Precompose — Layer > Pre-compose to bundle several overlays and treat them as one. Important detail: blend modes inside a precomp don't interact with layers outside it unless you enable Collapse Transformations on the precomp layer. Turn it on, or the Screen mode you set inside will appear to stop working.
  • Adjustment layers — Layer > New > Adjustment Layer above everything for the final grade, so footage and overlay get treated together.

Making the Composite Believable

  • Match light direction — flip the overlay horizontally (Scale to -100 on X) so its brightest edge agrees with your key light.
  • Tint it into the scene — a Hue/Saturation or Tint effect on the overlay, pulled toward your grade, sells the composite faster than a cleaner matte does.
  • Add a touch of blur — a small Gaussian Blur on the overlay makes it read as being in the scene's depth of field rather than pin-sharp on the glass.
  • Feather everything — Roto Brush's Refine Edge and mask feather both exist for a reason. Hard edges are the tell.
  • Bloom afterward — treat the overlay's highlights the way you treat the rest of the frame, so glow and halation land on both.

Conclusion

After Effects gives you the most control of any of the supported apps: the Mode column for the composite, Roto Brush and pen masks for the subject, Set Matte and precomps for anything complicated, and Levels for fine intensity control. But the workflow is still the simple one — stack, blend, mask.

LIQUID is $30.00, reduced from $47.00, and includes video clips formatted for compatibility across editing software including After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve. The rest of the finishing stack lives in the MoonBear catalogue.

FAQ

Q: Where is the blend mode column in After Effects?
A: Press F4 in the timeline to toggle between the switches and modes columns, then use the Mode dropdown on the overlay layer. Screen and Add are the two that drop black.

Q: My blend mode stopped working after I precomposed. Why?
A: Blend modes inside a precomp don't affect layers outside it by default. Enable Collapse Transformations on the precomp layer in the timeline.

Q: Roto Brush or masks for isolating the subject?
A: Roto Brush for organic, moving subjects like people. Pen masks for hard-edged objects, or when the subject barely moves and a few keyframes will do.

Q: Is this a plugin or a preset?
A: Neither. It's video footage. Nothing installs into the Effects & Presets panel.

Q: Can I use these overlays outside After Effects?
A: Yes. The clips are formatted for compatibility across editing software and work in Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve with the equivalent blend mode.

Q: How do I make the liquid less intense without losing its bright core?
A: Apply Levels to the overlay and raise the input black point rather than dropping Opacity. That kills the dim edges while keeping the highlights.