Sphere Utilities is a package containing four plug-ins. These plug-ins are essentially tools to be used to create, edit and animate spherical maps. A common example of a spherical map is a rectangular earth map used in computer graphics to texture a sphere to produce a terrestrial globe. Need to animate a line going from Seattle to Uppsala or animate an airplane flying from Melbourne to LA crossing the date line? Sphere Utilities is the answer. Crossing the date line is a task that currently involves a lot of manual work, duplication of the layer and hand-matching the motion. These animations can then be used directly in After Effects with CC Sphere, or any other plug-in that supports spherical mapping, or in your favorite 3D application. Spherical maps are also used as environment maps and for panoramic viewers, which are other sources where this kind of capability is important. Sphere Utilities supports 32 bpc color (float) and are 64-bit native for After Effects. Multi Frame Rendering (MFR) support was added in version 1.3. MFR is a feature in After Effects that take advantage of multi-core CPUs for improved rendering performance.

This plug-in is used to place or animate any user-selected layer on spherical maps. Mappit is as easy to use as MapLine. Simply select the layer to use, pick start and end points, set size and animate the Travel property and the rest is done by Mappit. Animations created using Mappit can then be used directly in After Effects with CC Sphere, or any other plug-in that supports spherical mapping, or in your favorite 3D application. You have the option to stretch, tile or solo the selected layer between the start and end points as well as controlling opacity. There is also an option to apply advanced pre-filtering to achieve constant map resolution close to the poles.


This plug-in is used to draw or animate lines on spherical maps. Simply pick the Start and End Points, set thickness, color and opacity and MapLine takes care of the rest. To animate, use the Start % and End% controls to “draw” lines between the Start and End points. You can select line cap types and to use dashes. Dashes can be animated using the Phase control.


This plug-in provides a unique ability to realign the coordinate system of spherical maps, similar to rotating a sphere. This makes it possible to adjust the position of the equator and poles on a map. Remap also provides an option to apply advanced pre-filtering to achieve constant map resolution close to the poles. There are two ways to realign the spherical map, either by using the point and angle controls or by using an active AE 3D camera. When using a camera, the realignment will match the orientation in 3D. This can also be used with 3D effects, such as CC Sphere, to match the orientation of an orbiting 3D cameraThe spherical coordinate transformation can also be used to produce unusual looking distortions of regular footage.


This plug-in generates a pattern of evenly distributed dots on a spherical map.

Check out the sample movies, download the unlockable demo version and start exploring the powers of Sphere Utilities yourself. Sample Projects are also available for download. Discover the power of Sphere Utilities today!