GEOlayers 3 v1.18.0 for After Effects WIN/MAC Free Download

GEOlayers 3 v1.18.0 Script for After Effects WIN/MAC Free Download Windows & Macintosh Full Version

GEOlayers 3 is a professional map creation and animation extension for Adobe After Effects. It lets you build, style and animate geographic maps directly inside After Effects using real-world geospatial data, rather than manually creating maps in Illustrator or another GIS application.

GEOlayers 3 on aescripts

GEOlayers 3 is particularly powerful for travel videos, documentaries, news graphics, explainer videos, broadcast graphics and data-driven motion design where geographical accuracy matters.

What is GEOlayers 3?

At its core, GEOlayers 3 connects real geographic data with After Effects animation.

You can search for cities, countries, roads, buildings, rivers, lakes, landmarks and other geographical features, then bring them into After Effects as editable elements. Features can be converted into shape layers, labelled, animated or used as the basis for more complex graphics.

That means you can create something like:

World map → Japan → Kansai → Kyoto → Specific street → Animated route

without manually drawing the entire map.

Create Maps Directly in After Effects

GEOlayers 3 renders custom maps from online geospatial data sources and gives you direct access to geographical features around the world.

You can work with:

Countries

Cities

Roads

Buildings

Rivers

Lakes

Regions

Points of interest

The resulting data can be integrated into After Effects compositions and used as editable assets.

This is the fundamental reason GEOlayers is so useful. You’re not importing a static map image. You’re bringing geographic information into your motion-design workflow.

Animate Maps in 3D

GEOlayers 3 supports 3D map animation, including zooming, panning, pitching and rotation. You can keyframe these movements directly in After Effects.

This allows you to create everything from a simple animated route to cinematic camera movements across a large geographic area.

For example, you could start above Asia, zoom into Japan, tilt the map into perspective and then follow a route through several cities.

The map itself remains tied to geographic coordinates while you animate the camera.

Automatic Labels

GEOlayers includes an automatic labelling system for geographical features.

You can label locations with a single click and customise the supplied label templates or create your own. Even an existing After Effects composition can be used as a label template.

This makes it much easier to create professional map graphics without manually creating hundreds of text layers.

For example:

Tokyo

Kyoto

Osaka

Hiroshima

can all be generated as geographic labels and positioned according to the underlying map data.

Search Geographic Features

The integrated search system allows you to find geographical features online.

You can search for places, buildings, landmarks and other geographic information and then bring those results into the project.

This is considerably more convenient than searching Google Maps, taking screenshots and trying to recreate the relevant geometry manually.

Draw Geographic Features as Shape Layers

One of GEOlayers’ strongest features is the ability to turn geographical data into After Effects shape layers.

Countries, roads, rivers and other features can therefore become native AE elements that can be styled and animated.

This is particularly valuable for motion designers because shape layers can then be used with:

Trim Paths

Strokes

Fills

Masks

Expressions

Effects

3D transformations

You essentially get geographic accuracy combined with normal After Effects flexibility.

Map Styling

GEOlayers 3 includes an extensive map-styling system.

You can change colours, line widths, fonts and feature visibility directly inside After Effects. You can also add hillshading and control which geographic feature groups are displayed.

This means you aren’t stuck with the appearance of Google Maps or another pre-rendered map service.

You can create a visual style appropriate for the project.

For example:

Dark cinematic map

Minimal white map

Satellite-inspired map

Bright travel infographic

Technical cartographic style

MapTiler Cloud Integration

For more advanced map styling and data, GEOlayers integrates with MapTiler Cloud.

The integration provides access to OpenStreetMap-based data and additional datasets, while allowing maps to be styled directly inside After Effects.

A MapTiler Cloud subscription is optional. The GEOlayers licence itself can still be used without continuing to pay for MapTiler Cloud.

This distinction is important because GEOlayers itself isn’t simply a subscription to map imagery.

Imagery

GEOlayers can retrieve imagery from common image-based tile servers, allowing you to incorporate satellite imagery and other raster map sources into your compositions.

It also supports local tile directories and georeferenced imagery workflows, which makes it more useful for specialised mapping projects.

This means you aren’t limited to vector maps.

You can combine geographic data with actual imagery.

Data Visualization

GEOlayers 3 can import CSV and TSV datasets and use the data to drive styling of shape layers.

This makes it useful for geographic data visualization.

For example, you could have a dataset containing:

Country → Population

and use the values to control colour or other visual properties on the map.

That turns GEOlayers from simply a map-animation tool into a geographic data visualization system.

Animated Routes

Routes can be created and animated for different types of transportation.

GEOlayers supports routes involving cars, bicycles and pedestrians, with route data integrated into the map system.

This is particularly useful for travel content.

A route can be animated between cities or along roads while the map camera follows the journey.

For a travel video, this can produce the familiar:

Origin → Route → Destination

animation without manually drawing the path.

3D Buildings

GEOlayers can draw 3D buildings from geographic data when used with compatible 3D tools.

The current product page specifically mentions integration with:

Helium

Mettle FreeForm Pro

Rowbyte Plexus

Trapcode Mir

These integrations can be used to create 3D landscapes and terrain setups from real elevation data.

This takes GEOlayers well beyond flat 2D maps.

3D Landscapes

The newer GEOlayers workflow supports creating 3D landscapes from real elevation data when paired with supported plugins.

This can be used to create cinematic terrain flyovers and topographical animations.

For example, instead of a flat map of the Himalayas, you can generate a 3D terrain representation and animate the camera across it.

Custom Map Styles

GEOlayers comes with numerous default map styles, but you aren’t limited to them.

One particularly useful feature is the ability to generate a map style from the colours of an existing After Effects composition, image or Adobe Swatch file.

That is useful for maintaining visual consistency.

If your video uses a particular colour palette, GEOlayers can use that palette as the basis for the map rather than forcing you to manually recolour every map element.

Scripting API

GEOlayers 3 also provides a scripting API.

This is important for advanced users and studios because geographical data and map operations can be incorporated into automated After Effects workflows.

The version history documents APIs for operations such as adding features to the browser, importing GeoJSON and drawing browser selections.

That makes GEOlayers more than a visual plugin. It can become part of a procedural map-production pipeline.

GeoJSON Support

GEOlayers supports geographic feature workflows involving GeoJSON, allowing geographical geometry to move between GEOlayers and external GIS/data workflows.

This is useful when you’re working with custom geographic datasets rather than relying entirely on GEOlayers’ built-in or online data sources.

Map Animation for Travel Videos

This is probably one of the most obvious real-world applications.

For a travel video, you can create an animation showing:

India → Japan

then:

Tokyo → Kyoto → Osaka

and then zoom further into individual locations.

Because the underlying data is geographic, the roads, borders and locations maintain their real-world relationships.

That makes GEOlayers particularly useful for the kind of detailed travel content where geographical context is important.

GEOlayers for Documentaries

Documentary filmmakers can use GEOlayers for location-based storytelling.

You can show:

Migration routes

Historical borders

Military movements

Trade routes

Natural disasters

Geographical changes

Transportation networks

The ability to search and import real geographical features significantly reduces the amount of manual map construction required.

GEOlayers vs Google Maps Screenshots

A screenshot of Google Maps is obviously much easier if all you need is a quick reference.

But it becomes problematic when you want to:

Animate the map

Change colours

Remove roads

Highlight one country

Animate borders

Create custom labels

Change perspective

Use 3D terrain

A screenshot doesn’t provide editable geographic geometry.

GEOlayers does.

That’s the fundamental difference.

GEOlayers vs Illustrator

Illustrator can certainly create excellent maps, particularly if you’re working with imported vector data.

But GEOlayers has the advantage of keeping the geographic intelligence connected to the After Effects workflow.

You can search for a feature, import it and immediately animate it.

You don’t have to manually export Illustrator assets back and forth whenever you want to change the map.

GEOlayers vs Dedicated GIS Software

Dedicated GIS applications such as QGIS or ArcGIS are far more sophisticated for actual geographic analysis.

GEOlayers isn’t trying to compete with them.

Its purpose is visual storytelling.

It takes useful geospatial data and makes it accessible to a motion designer working in After Effects.

So the comparison is essentially:

GIS software: analyse geography.

GEOlayers: animate geography.

Version 1.18.0

You specifically listed GEOlayers 3 v1.18.0, but there is an important version discrepancy in the public AEScripts page.

The official version history currently shows v1.16.0 dated March 30, 2026 as the latest publicly documented release. It contains an improvement to authentication-error handling.

The page does not currently expose a v1.18.0 changelog, so I would not invent features for that particular build.

For your catalogue, I’d keep the supplied version as 1.18.0, but the article’s feature descriptions should be understood as the documented GEOlayers 3 feature set rather than claiming that every feature was introduced in 1.18.0.

Compatibility

The current official listing supports After Effects CC 2017 through After Effects 2026.

GEOlayers 3 is a major rewrite and does not support legacy GEOlayers 1 or 2 projects directly, although some older resources such as server profiles, shape-layer styles and label templates can be imported.

The current listed price is $329.99, with upgrade pricing available for existing GEOlayers users.

Final Thoughts

GEOlayers 3 is one of the most capable map-animation tools available for After Effects.

Its real strength is that it doesn’t treat a map as a picture. It treats it as geographic data that can be turned into motion-design assets.

You can search for real-world features, create editable shape layers, animate routes, automatically label locations, style maps, import datasets, work with imagery, create 3D landscapes and connect the workflow to external GIS data.

For basic map graphics, it is probably overkill.

For professional travel videos, documentaries, news graphics, geographical explainers and data-driven motion design, however, it can save an enormous amount of manual work.

The ability to animate a geographically accurate map directly inside After Effects is the real killer feature.

Bottom line: GEOlayers 3 turns After Effects into a surprisingly capable geospatial motion-design environment, and if maps are a regular part of your work, it is one of those tools that can fundamentally change your workflow.

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