Well this is interesting, it seems that someone has posted (a few months ago) a quick demonstration of Mettle’s 3DNAE showing an expanded platform for a unified 3D space in After Effects.
I briefly chatted with the folks at Mettle who did not wish to comment at the moment on the video specifically – but it appears to be a unified 3D space for After Effects where effects and 3D layers live together with impressive speed. I would also anticipate that there would be some sort of SDK so other 3rd party developers can tap into the unified space and have their plugins work in an environment where layer, plugin and effect types wouldn’t matter any more.
Hopefully there will be more information forthcoming in the weeks ahead!