CLOUD RIFTStore

One shape, movingA single shape drifting slowly across detailed footage. Refraction only reads as glass in motion; on a still it always looks like a filter.

Sales paused 1.2.1, After Effects plugin

RIFT Glass

Real-time refracting glass for After Effects.

  • After Effects
  • Windows
  • macOSApple Silicon

Put it on an adjustment layer, give it a shape, and the footage underneath bends through it. Not a blur with a highlight painted on top: thickness, bevel and index of refraction, solved on the GPU while you scrub.

After Effects 2023+ | 8 / 16 / 32-bit | Multi-frame rendering

What it does

  • Optics, not a displacement map

    Thickness, bevel, index of refraction and dispersion. Real glass is about 1.5, water 1.33, diamond 2.4, and at 1.0 the glass disappears, because that is what light actually does.

  • Anything with an alpha is glass

    Text, a logo, a vector, a shape layer, a pre-comp. Eight slots, merged into one silhouette before anything optical is computed, so the bevel runs around the outside of the whole group rather than around each part.

  • Shapes that flow into each other

    Merge grows a neck between shapes as they approach, the way drops of liquid do. It only ever adds material in the gaps: corners stay sharp, thin strokes stay thin, the silhouette you drew survives exactly.

  • Frosted, and still coloured

    Heavy blur drags every colour toward grey. Vibrancy pushes it back out, which is the whole difference between frosted glass that glows with what is behind it and frosted glass that looks dirty.

Every control

Panel

A rounded rectangle described by numbers rather than drawn, on by default, so the effect does something the moment it lands.

  • Position
  • Width
  • Height
  • Radius

Shape group

Eight layer slots, and the smooth union between them.

  • Shape 1-8
  • Merge

Refraction

The physics. These five decide the result more than anything below them.

  • Thickness
  • Bezel
  • IOR
  • Dispersion
  • Edge softness

Surface

Frosting and colour.

  • Blur
  • Tint
  • Glass colour

Optics

What separates real glass from a displacement map.

  • Vibrancy
  • Reflection
  • Edge stroke
  • Stroke width
  • Grain

Specular

A directional highlight along the rim, as if a light sat off to one side.

  • Specular
  • Light angle
  • Light width
  • Specular colour

Shadows

Inner and outer. The outer one lifts the glass off the background.

  • Inner colour
  • Opacity
  • Radius
  • Angle
  • Outer colour
  • Opacity
  • Spread

Quality

How finely the glass is computed. Draft while you work, Max for a hero frame, and multi-frame rendering throughout, with nothing to switch on.

  • Draft 1×
  • Normal 2×
  • High 3×
  • Max 4×

The controls, in motion

  • The IOR ladder

    The same panel walked through IOR 1.1 to 2.2. Teaches the slider everyone reaches for first faster than any paragraph.

  • The Bezel ladder

    Bezel from a sharp machined lip through to a full dome, at one thickness.

Where to start

  • Frosted UI card

    The look behind app panels and lower thirds.

    • Blur 12, Tint 15, glass colour white
    • Thickness 30, Bezel 40
    • Vibrancy 150, Edge stroke 35

  • Heavy optical glass

    A thick paperweight sitting on the footage.

    • Thickness 120, Bezel 90, IOR 1.8
    • Dispersion 0.6, Blur 0
    • Outer spread 60

  • Liquid blobs

    Several shapes flowing into one another.

    • Two or more circles in the shape slots, animated toward each other
    • Merge 150
    • Look iOS on, Reflection 90
The three recipesAll three on the same footage, so the difference reads as settings rather than as a change of material.

What it needs

After Effects
Windows tested on 2023, Mac on 2026
Windows
Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
macOS
macOS 14 or newer
Mac hardware
Apple Silicon. Intel should work, not tested yet
Graphics
Any GPU with OpenGL 3.3
Colour depth
8, 16 and 32 bits per channel

The licence, in plain words

  • One payment, every 1.x update

    No subscription. Every release of version 1 is yours at no extra cost, announced to the address you bought with.

  • Works without a key, and says so

    Until a key is entered the effect runs in full with a watermark over the picture. Enter the key and it goes. One key works on two computers, and moving to a new one is a button.

  • On a Mac, one line in Terminal

    The Mac plug-in is not notarized by Apple yet, so macOS blocks it once it has been downloaded. One Terminal line removes the block from that single file; the install guide inside the download and the user guide both show it.

  • Bugs come straight to me

    One address, no tracker to sign up for. The After Effects version, the comp size and what you were doing when it happened get it fixed fastest.

What you get

  • RIFT Glass for Windows (.aex)
  • RIFT Glass for macOS, Apple Silicon (.plugin)
  • A licence key for up to two computers
  • Install guide (PDF) and the full online user guide
  • Free updates for every 1.x release

$19.99 USD

One payment. No subscription.

Get notified

Sales are paused for now. Write to us and we will tell you the day they reopen.

If it does not work as described, the 14-day refund policy covers it. Questions: hello@cloudrift.team