Hi, I'm Sander. I make motion graphics at Able & Baker, and like most people in mograph I kept hitting the same wall. When something needed to feel physical I had two choices: hand-animate every bounce and tumble, which eats a whole morning, or buy a rocket-grade physics plugin for rocket-grade money to do a job that was, honestly, pretty small.
So I built the thing in between. MatterAE started as a tool just for me: a physics panel that lives inside After Effects, lets me drag gravity and bounce and weight while it runs, and bakes the result to plain keyframes I can edit by hand. No jumping between apps, no second window, nothing locked to the plugin afterward. Just drop, watch, bake, move on.
The bicycle, not the rocket
I want to be clear about scope, because it is the whole philosophy. The big physics plugins are brilliant. They are rockets, made by people who clearly love this stuff, and they do things MatterAE never will. If you need deep rigging, fluids and complex joints, go buy one. They are worth every cent.
But most days you do not need a rocket to cross town. You need a bicycle that is already at your door. MatterAE is the bicycle. It covers the 90% of everyday mograph physics that just needs to feel right, fast, and the price is set to match.
About that rejection
I submitted MatterAE to the big AE plugin marketplace. It got turned away for "duplicate functionality" because a physics plugin already existed there. I sat with that for a day, felt a bit sorry for myself, and then realised it was the best framing the project could have asked for.
A market with several physics tools in it is not a market that is full. It is a market with demand. So instead of fighting that, MatterAE leans in: launching on its own on Gumroad, priced like the practical tool it is, free to try, and happily owning the "duplicate" label right there in the headline.
Where it is now
MatterAE is out, and it keeps growing. There is a real changelog behind it, and it is shaped heavily by the people using it and posting feedback. If you have an idea or you hit a bug, that genuinely changes what gets built next.
Want to follow along, or break something?
The changelog shows what is new, the feedback page is where bugs and requests go, and you can try the whole plugin free on real work, no risk.