The LiDAR effect turns a normal video into a moving cloud of points. The subject looks like it was captured by a 3D scanner: thousands of glowing dots floating at their real depth, wired together by a thin vector mesh, with a scan plane sweeping through. You have seen it in music videos, game trailers, sci-fi interfaces and the wave of point cloud clips going around TikTok and Instagram.
This guide explains what the look actually is, how people build it in the usual editing and 3D apps, and the fastest way to get it on your own footage without installing anything.
Three things stacked together:
After Effects has no built-in LiDAR or point cloud generator. The common route is a paid particle plugin such as Trapcode Form or Particular, driven by a depth pass. You either render a depth map from 3D software or generate one with a depth plugin, feed it in as a displacement and emitter source, then tune particle size, colour and camera moves by hand. It works, but it means plugins, a depth workflow, and long previews before you see the result. That is why most results for lidar effect after effects and point cloud effect after effects are multi-step plugin tutorials.
Premiere Pro has no native point cloud effect. In practice people cut in Premiere and send the shot to After Effects for the scan, then bring it back. If you only have Premiere, the honest options are stock overlays or a template, which give you scan lines laid over the footage rather than a true 3D cloud.
Resolve can do it inside Fusion. You build a depth map, or use the Depth Map node on the Studio version, feed it into a particle system or a 3D point setup, and light it. The pieces exist, but Fusion node graphs are a steep climb if you are not already comfortable in them, and the depth quality varies from shot to shot.
CapCut is where most of the trend searches land, and it is the app least able to do the real thing. There is no depth-based point cloud in CapCut. What you find are scan effects and templates that lay animated lines or a grid over your clip. They can look close in a fast edit, but the footage stays flat, so it falls apart when the camera or the subject moves.
These are where genuine point clouds live. Blender can convert a depth pass into geometry with geometry nodes, and TouchDesigner is built for real-time point clouds and depth cameras. Both give you full control and both assume you already work in 3D. For a single shot in a music video or a Reel, it is a lot of setup for one look.
The Lidar Scan tool builds the whole effect for you. You upload a clip, it works out the depth automatically, and it rebuilds the footage as a point cloud with the mesh and scan sweep already running. No plugins, no depth pass to prepare, no 3D scene. You pick a palette, move a few sliders, and export an MP4. It runs on its own GPU renderer, so the cloud stays smooth even when it is dense.
You can open Lidar Scan here and drop in a clip to see it on your own footage.
If you want a finished look in one click, start from a preset and adjust from there:
Whether you were searching for the LiDAR effect in After Effects, Premiere, Resolve or CapCut, the look itself is the same three ingredients: depth, points and a scan. The only real question is how much setup you want between you and the export.
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