After Effects Class Hierarchy

This section lists the class hierarchies for relevant AE API elements. For a primer on what this means, see Javascript Classes

When using this guide, any objects that exist as part of a class hierarchy will note whether they exist as a subclass or base class (or both) of another object.

As it can be useful to see all available class hierarchies in one place, we’ve created this list below.

Note that some classes exist only as base classes, and demonstrate unexpected behaviour when type checking via instanceof, as noted in the table below. Classes with no symbol behave as expected.

Symbol Legend

instanceof is always false

Class is undefined; instanceof will throw an error


Properties, Property Groups, and Layers


Project Items


Footage Item Sources


Collections