Anytime you are putting together an explanation or a tutorial, you eventually want one of those little lines that points at something with a label. Same for map animations, where a dotted line hops from state to state. Building those by hand in After Effects is kind of a pain, and the worst part is keeping the line stuck to something that is moving.
CallOuts is a Filmit plugin for After Effects that drops an animated callout in with one click and tracks it for you. This guide follows the demo video above: open the panel, generate a callout between two targets, reshape the path, retime it, restyle it, and scale up to a hundred connected points.
This video may reference an older version of CallOuts. Features and UI may have changed since recording.
What is CallOuts?
CallOuts builds animated callout lines inside After Effects. Think of the pointer in a tutorial that says look right here, the labeled line in a product explainer, or the dotted route that travels across a map. Instead of drawing a path, animating it, and rigging it to stay on your subject, you set targets in a panel, pick a style, and click Generate.
Everything it makes is native After Effects: a real keyframe driving the draw on, control nulls you can drag, and styling you can change later. And the reason the plugin exists at all is tracking. Tie a callout to something that moves and the line stays attached, which is exactly the part that is miserable to build by hand.
Install CallOuts and open the panel
CallOuts installs through Filmit Studio, the desktop app that manages every Filmit plugin, so it lands alongside all the other tools that are included. Once it is in, go to Window, then Extensions, then CallOuts, and the panel opens right inside After Effects.
In the demo I am testing with two little GIFs playing in the comp, a fun pair of subjects: two points on screen that need a line between them.
A quick tour of the panel
The panel reads in roughly the order you build. Targets sets what the line connects. Animation controls how each target comes on, tucked behind a little triangle you can drop down per target. Path Styling covers rounded corners, caps, and joints. Line Style switches between solid and dashed, which is where the dotted map look lives. Endpoints adds markers at either end of the line, Path Followers can make an object follow the path automatically, Taper is there when you want it, and Generate builds the whole thing.
That sounds like a lot of controls, and it is, but you only need to touch a few of them to get a great first result.
Generate your first callout
Here is the demo build. I want the two points connected in a zig zag, so I add two targets and click to set the start target. Each target has that little triangle for its animation settings, and for this one I leave them exactly as they are.
Then a quick style pass. Rounded corners, yes. Caps and joints, round. Line style, solid, because I do not want dashes today. I skip Endpoints because the layout already has its endpoints, and I leave Path Followers off since it is more of an advanced option. Then I click Generate.
CallOuts builds the callout and creates the two extra points as control nulls, Point 1 and Point 2. With nothing specific to grab, it simply plops the nulls onto the screen, and that is fine, you drag them wherever the line should travel. Hit play and the callout draws itself across the comp, just like that.
Shape the path with the point controls
Open the Control tab and you can see everything about the callout you just made. The extra points live there as Point 1 and Point 2, and dragging them reshapes the line in real time. Push them apart for a hard zig zag, pull them toward each other for a smoother sweep, and move the start point to change where the line comes in and goes out.
This is the moment a callout stops feeling generated and starts feeling designed. A few seconds of dragging turns a plain connector into a curve that leads the eye.
Pro Tip: If a callout lands in the wrong spot, do not delete it and start over. The point nulls are the rig. Drag them where the path should go and the callout follows.
Retime the animation like an animator
Do not like the timing? All CallOuts did was generate a keyframe for you. Select the callout, press U on your keyboard to reveal the callout path keyframes, and stretch them to make the draw on as long as you want.
And because it is a normal animation, you can grab those keyframes, open the graph editor, and play with the easing to your heart's content. I am an animator at heart, so I always take this pass to make sure the move is built the way I like. CallOuts gives you the head start, then gets out of the way.
Pro Tip: Treat the generated keyframes like your own. A longer draw on with a strong ease reads as intentional and polished, and it takes about ten seconds in the graph editor.
Restyle any callout from the Control tab
CallOuts remembers each callout you make, even when you have several going, and the Control tab is where you change your mind. Width, color, caps, joints, line style, the path itself, and rounded corners all sit there as live controls.
In the demo I jack the rounded corners up a good bit and it changes the line quite a lot, from a sharp technical zig zag into a soft flowing curve. Swap the line style and you are suddenly drawing that classic dotted route instead. None of it requires regenerating a thing.
Connect as many targets as you want
Two targets make a pointer, but the create flow takes as many as you want. Add a hundred if you really want to and CallOuts connects them all into one continuous animated path, which is what makes it work for map routes and multi step diagrams.
When you are ready to go further, Path Followers is waiting. It is the advanced option that makes an object follow the path automatically, so something can ride the line while it draws.
Pro Tip: For map style routes, add a target for every stop before you hit Generate. One callout that connects the whole chain is far easier to manage than a stack of separate two point lines.
Key takeaways
CallOuts turns the most annoying part of explainer work in After Effects into one click and a few drags.
Set your targets, pick a style, click Generate, and the animated line is built for you.
The hard part of hand built callouts, staying stuck to a moving subject, is handled.
Press U, stretch the timing, and ease the draw on in the graph editor like any animation.
Width, color, caps, joints, line style, and rounded corners stay live in the Control tab.
Connect as many targets as you want, even 100, in one continuous callout.
Why I built CallOuts
Every tutorial, every explainer, every map animation seemed to need the same little pointer line, and every time I built one by hand it fought back. Drawing the path was never the problem. Keeping it pinned to something that moved was the part that ate the afternoon. A callout should be a detail you add in seconds, not a rig you babysit.
CallOuts is also a plugin I plan to keep growing. More features are coming, including better ways to manage more callouts at once, and the team is excited about where it is headed. If you have an idea or you get stuck, the Settings button in the panel points to Filmit.io for feature requests and support, and our Discord is where you can talk to me directly. Mention Max and I will jump in.
Get started with Filmit
CallOuts installs through Filmit Studio, the free app that manages every Filmit plugin for After Effects and Premiere Pro. One install puts CallOuts in your editor, the same app keeps it updated, and the rest of the plugins are all included.
If explainers and tutorials are your world, pair CallOuts with TextPilot, the text manager that bulk edits, translates, and spell checks every text layer in your project. Point at the visual with CallOuts, nail the copy with TextPilot, and ship the video.
