OpenGL is a set of standards for high-performance processing of 2D and 3D graphics for a wide variety of applications. For After Effects users, OpenGL provides fast, high-quality rendering for previews and final output by moving rendering from the CPU to the OpenGL hardware (GPU).

To use OpenGL in After Effects, you’ll need an OpenGL card that supports OpenGL 2.0 and has Shader support and support for NPOT (Non Power of Two) textures.

Feature support in After Effects is dependent on the OpenGL hardware; contact the hardware manufacturer for details. When you first start After Effects, it attempts to determine if your OpenGL card meets the requirements, and then enables or disables OpenGL as appropriate.

For information regarding specific OpenGL hardware, visit the After Effects section of the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/learn_ae_openglsupport.

OpenGL in After Effects supports the following features:

• Shadows, except point light shadows (Colored shadows appear gray.)

• Lights (eight maximum)

• Masks

• Alpha channels

• Track mattes

• Intersecting layers

• Transformations for 2D and 3D layers

• GPU-accelerated effects, including Alpha Levels, Bevel Alpha, Box Blur, Brightness & Contrast, Channel Blur, Color Balance, Color Balance (HLS), Curves, Directional Blur, Drop Shadow, Fast Blur, Find Edges, Gaussian Blur, Hue/Saturation, Invert, Noise, Radial Blur, Ramp, Sharpen, and Tint.

• All blending modes except Dissolve and Dancing Dissolve

• Metal property settings for 3D layers

• Cone feather settings for light layers

• 2D motion blur

• Adjustment layers

• Anti-aliasing

When OpenGL does not support a feature, it simply renders without using that feature. For example, if your layers contain shadows and your OpenGL hardware does not support shadows, the output will not contain shadows.