Compositors and motion designers reach for it when a shot needs depth-of-field blur but the camera didn't record it. Depth Scanner works inside After Effects, pulling a depth map from any frame—video or still—without manual rotoscoping.
- Tracks the parts of a frame closest to camera
- Works on single photos and full video clips
- Feeds the depth map straight into lens blur effects
- Runs the analysis automatically; no hand-painted mattes
- Lives on your adjustment layer or source clip, ready for a busy comp
Apply it to the clip, link the map to a blur, and the shot gains believable focus falloff in seconds. The plugin does one job and stays out of the way.
Open the preferences once and set the output range to match your working color space. The default 8‑bit map looks fine for soft blur, but heavy‑duty compositing—think displacement maps feeding a 3D camera—needs 16‑bit. The switch sits in the effect controls, not a buried menu.
While you're there, tick Use Linear Working Space if your comp runs in 32‑bit float. It prevents harsh edges when the depth map meets a fast lens blur.
Drop Depth Scanner on a short five‑second clip first. Let it chew for a minute. It's a heavy lift on the CPU; the first render clears up where the analysis catches and where it guesses. Wide shots with foreground architecture give it clean edges. Shots with thin hair or blowing leaves need a little help.
After the first pass, keep the generated map as a pre‑comp. You can blur it slightly with a box blur, choke the edges, and feed the cleaned version into a compound blur—the result holds up even when the raw map looks rough.
Third day tip: stack a second instance on an adjustment layer, set to a different focal point, and crossfade the two maps with a soft mask. It turns a basic pull‑focus into something that tracks a moving subject.
Ten-second CPU pass
Most people download Depth Scanner looking for a one‑click depth pass. They ask whether it needs a GPU powerhouse. It doesn't. The analysis runs on the CPU, and a modern multi‑core machine returns a full‑HD frame in under ten seconds. Background renders will slow your session, so freeze other comps before hitting the button.
Another question: does it replace a LIDAR scan. No. It reads pixels, not point clouds. The map it builds is a grayscale matte, perfect for lens effects and parallax moves, but it won't give you millimeter‑precise geometry for a full 3D rebuild.
People also ask if it handles log footage. It does, as long as you apply it before the color transform. The AI expects gamma‑encoded contrast; flat log images confuse the distance estimation. Place the plugin above a LUT adjustment layer, not below it.
If you've been searching for a depth scanner free download to test the workflow, the plugin installs the same way as any standard After Effects .plugin file. Drop it in, restart AE, and it appears under the Blace Plugins menu. No external dependencies, no separate engine to launch.
Once it's in your effects library, the plugin shows up on every comp without needing to be re‑installed. That means the tool becomes invisible the way good utilities do—you reach for it when the shot calls for depth, not before.
