Introduction

Welcome to the Penpal User Guide. If you can't find the information you're looking for or have questions for us, join us on Discord or just send us an email.

You can always access this guide from within Penpal itself by clicking the Hamburger icon and then the Help… button.

This guide is continually updated alongside new releases of Penpal. The current version is 2.0.1. If you have an older version of Penpal, you can download the current version here.

This User Guide contains embeds of some, but not all, of the videos from the official training series on YouTube. Check this playlist if you're seeking a video on a specific function.

Penpal is a vector path editor for Adobe After Effects with more powerful and precise control over shape layer and mask paths. Over 40 bezier-editing functions missing from After Effects make Penpal the only way to perform many common tasks without having to leave the application.

Click and drag elements to move them around. Alt-click and drag to make tangents smooth or to break them. Hold Shift to constrain your cursor movement to axes. Points and tangent handles constrain and snap predictably, not just to horizontal and vertical axes but also to other points and tangents, and their axes.

Penpal works on shape layer Path properties, and Mask Path properties, and nothing else. It never changes any other property in your layers.

Points and tangents

Points are sometimes called vertices, and tangents are sometimes called direction handles or direction lines. We call them points and tangents.

Installation

Download and install the free ZXP Installer from aescripts.com. If you already have ZXP Installer we suggest you run it's Check for Update… before installing.

Close After Effects. Open ZXP Installer, go to File > Open, then navigate to the Penpal.zxp file contained in your download, and install it.

Open After Effects and go to the Window > Extensions menu, then click Penpal. If nothing happens, you may need to follow these steps.

Licensing and trial mode

You can enter a license code for Penpal by going to the hamburger menu > About & License…

Penpal has a free trial mode which will only load paths with 10 points or less, and functions for 10 days.

System Requirements

Penpal is compatible with After Effects CC2018 and later and is localised for English, Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Credits

Penpal is made by renderTom and Steve Kirby for Animatable.