Install Adobe After Effects with Red Giant on Deadline Cloud Windows workers

The aftereffects_redgiant host configuration script installs Adobe After Effects 2025 with Red Giant and Universe plugins on Windows GPU service-managed fleet workers. The script fetches installers from Amazon S3 and runs each one in silent mode on each worker launch.

Important

This script can add about 15-20 minutes to worker launch time because of the software installation. The duration decreases as you vertically scale your instance size up. For example, a g6.xlarge with 4 vCPUs and 16 GiB of memory adds about 20 minutes, while a g6.4xlarge with 16 vCPUs and 64 GiB of memory adds about 15 minutes. To reduce the impact, keep a warm worker alive during peak usage hours, or use one fleet for After Effects renders through conda and a separate fleet for After Effects with Red Giant through this host configuration script.

The aftereffects_redgiant_persistent variant supports persistent EBS volumes. The first worker installs the software once to the persistent volume; subsequent worker boots restore it through NTFS directory junctions in seconds instead of reinstalling. Use the persistent variant for fleets that scale up and down frequently. For details on configuring persistent volumes, see Persistent storage for service-managed fleets.

To use this script, you need:

• An enterprise Adobe account with Admin access to download the After Effects 2025 installer package from the Adobe Admin Console.

• A Maxon account to download the Red Giant and Universe installers.

• An Amazon S3 bucket where you upload the installers, and IAM permissions for the fleet to read them.

• A Windows GPU service-managed fleet with the latest GPU driver.

For an After Effects job bundle that uses this fleet configuration, see Render Adobe After Effects projects on Deadline Cloud.