XR Depth Map AI Video
Mac only, no Windows version. Download with a free account - created in 30 seconds.
Temporally stable depth maps, right inside After Effects. The effect replaces the image with its depth map: a grey gradient where near is bright and far is dark, the raw material for depth-of-field blur, fog, parallax or a hologram. A model that computes each frame on its own is unaware of the frames before and after: from one frame to the next the map trembles, and a filter can soften that flicker, not remove it. This plugin uses a video model, Video Depth Anything, which looks at 32 frames at once: flicker is fixed at the source, with no filter, hence no ghosting.
Stable at the source
Measured on two real shots, the plugin flickers two to three times less than a frame-by-frame model, even with its de-flicker enabled. The map is slightly softer in return.
Invisible seams
The layer is split into batches of 32 frames that overlap by 10 frames, cross-fading from one to the next: no jump at the seam. Each batch is computed on its own, so After Effects can render frames in any order and the result is the same.
Sharp edges
In High quality, the map's edges are snapped to the image's: hair, fingers, silhouettes. Pre-blur for noisy footage, map blur, invert and levels to separate the planes. Computed maps are kept on disk: reopening a project or re-rendering is instant.
Requirements
- Recent macOS
- Apple Silicon recommended - universal plugin, only tested on Apple Silicon
- After Effects (SmartFX API, since CC 2015)
- About 60 MB of disk space (embedded model)
- No internet connection, no license
License
Personal plugin, distributed as is, without warranty. It embeds the Video Depth Anything Small model, released under the Apache 2.0 license; the license text ships inside the plugin.
Found a bug, got an idea?
Private message, sent directly to Xavier Reyé with the plugin name. Nothing is published. Leave an email address to get a reply.
