Re: Useful and just damn cool plug-ins for AE

Free Form Pro, Shape Shifter AE and Zaxwerks Invigorator Pro (the new upcoming version especially) are great for 3D work in AE.
Plexus and Newton are quite interesting as well.
Trapcode and all other Red Giant plugins of course.
I've been using Knoll Lens Flare Pro from the beginning, but Optical Flares are good as well.
AE comes with a bunch of great plugins - I recommend browsing and using Brainstorm.
There's quite a few scripts and expressions as well that can make life interesting- aescripts.com is a great resource.

Tudor "Ted" Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist