People are sometimes surprised to discover Easter eggs in After Effects — apparent oddities in the interface. Some of these have been around for a very long time, maybe even since the inception of After Effects. MographWiki collected a list of these a few years ago, but not all of them.
Take part in a hunt for a newer Easter egg, which might seem like a snark hunt of a mythical beast. First clue: “plabt“, a typo for plant, the “factory” where pulsating brains assemble AE bits according to Dan Wilk. Second clue, another hint for the plabt egg(s?) is a feature introduced in CS4, with the last step of typing the word plabt.
MographWiki described 5 After Effects Easter eggs, so there there’s no need replicate their work. Here’s a short list of 7, with additional factoids. There are more, but they’re not widely known.
1. Secret Preferences is an old obscure memory setting (use explained by Mark Christiansen; related to sheep sound).
2. Starting in AE 5, Mask Embiggen replaces Mask Expansion, if you click with the appropriate keys pressed (use Twirly to unhide). Note that “Mask Embiggen” is a perfectly cromulent phrase: the silver-tongued Jebediah Springfield coined The Simpsons town motto, “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.”
Third clue: Wikipedia has a nice version history on After Effects. It’s the second feature mentioned.
3. Sheep sound when you shift-click text at the top of the Effect Controls Panel.
A sheep icon appeared in early AE versions of the Time-Comp, Layers, and Properties palettes. A failed render would make AE bleat a goatish “maa,” which you can still hear by shift-clicking on the layer name area of Effect Controls. Its obscure origin is mentioned near minute 40 of SFMOGRAPH history night. And as noted later in a comment below, additional details have emerged.
The way is hiding in plain sight, so be careful of misdirection. Did you try the wing menus? Did you try all the key combinations?
4. An AE Team credits project opens when holding the OPT/ALT key and choosing “About After Effects” (these change every version but the shortcuts are the same). You can save over this project file if you’re not careful. The 3D TV only came with CS6 20th anniversary team project.
Note that the original hint above did not tell you to “enter” text.
5. CallAdobe (untested here) is a preset in the Tone effect that creates a DTMF touch-tone.
In a similar way, typing “p” reveals the position property.
6. SAMURAI or HAIRBRUSH Rotobrush appeared more recently.
Some have noticed that extra sounds shipped with CS5, samurai_bg.wav and samurai_fg.wav. These files are supposed to sound like a sword being swung back and forth while cutting mattes with the Rotobrush tool. The only way within the UI to make those sounds happen is to rename the Rotobrush effect to the acronym of the original project name (in caps), which stands for “segmentation matting university research Adobe integration” (for more on Rotobrush genesis, see SIGGRAPH videos on the Roto Brush). Note that you’ll need to rename, quit and restart After Effects to go back to the normal quiet Roto Brush mode. It’s hard to say if hairbrush refers to the attachment in the samurai Easter egg, or if it refers to Refine Matte, or both.
Easter eggs are hard to find, and the original Company of Science & Art logo has an Easter Egg of sorts: the “parrot head” is really the intertwined letters C, o, S, and A. Also, the team credits project (dated 04/03/13, AE Windows) had an odd XMP description: “it’s pinot butter jelly time.”
