Form
The Effects Chain shows the current effect’s building blocks. Eight groups correspond to the building block groups in the Blocks pane. The Particle, Disperse and Twist, and Spherical Field groups can contain more than one block, while the others (Base Form, Shading, Fractal Field, Kaleidospace, and Transform) can only have one block at a time.
To create your Effects Chain, simply apply a preset, a block, or select a block in the Effects Chain and adjust its properties in the Blocks controls area. Note that thumbnails for Particle Blocks that contain Curve graphs visually change to reflect the changes made to them.
Selecting the Opacity block in the Effects Chain opens access to manipulating the Opacity Over curve. Changes to the curve register in the effect preview.
Roundtripping
You can build your effect in the Form Designer or in the main Form plug-in in After Effects’ ECP. Changes made in the plugin will carry over (or “roundtrip”) to and from the Designer.
After roundtripping settings from the Designer back to After Effects.
Special Handling
In a few instances, settings cannot be previewed in the Designer. In some cases, the blocks causing the issue(s) will have small warning icons beside their names in the Effects Chain.
The Designer will attempt to preview what it can, making preview substitutes in some instances. Below is a list of the special handling the Designer will use to modify your settings preview. Note that your settings remain unchanged and will roundtrip to and from the Designer, even if the preview has been altered.