-
AE competitor
Obviously in this forum, Motion would be the answer. But other than Motion, are there any other viable competitors to After Effects? I don’t mean node-based applications like Fusion. Rather, I mean track and timeline approaches that can work a lot like AE works. Ideas?
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
49 Replies
-
-
Viability is certainly in the eye of the beholder, but in addition to Bob’s HitFilm suggestion, I’d add Boris FX RED and maybe Corel MotionStudio 3D to the list.
One could make an argument for Blender, too, though it’s clearly in a different category.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “Viability is certainly in the eye of the beholder,”
You’re pushing AE as hard as anyone I know right now, Walter, so as a practical matter of doing what YOU need it to do, how do you see the landscape?
-
I am leaning towards Hit Film for a couple of reasons. First, the price is reasonable. Second, the Pro 4 version includes Hit Film Ignite, a nice set of plug ins for all supported host applications. I hope to see a forum for Hit Film though I don’t know of anyone who uses it at the moment.
-
Why not Motion? Perhaps if you explained why you feel that Motion isn’t a viable competitor to AE, it would give people more insight into recommending an alternative that was… although, other than the already mentioned Hit Film and Boris RED, there’s not much out there to recommend.
I’ve used AE in the past and now I only use Motion so I’m curious as to why the obvious choice is not even an option.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com -
[John Rofrano] “Why not Motion”
I never said Motion wouldn’t be an option, just looking for other suggsetions. In my opinion, Motion has 2 big deficiencies compared with AE. First, it doesn’t have good multiclip timeline management in order to work with a sequence of clips. Second, it doesn’t really have viable solutions to send a whole timeline of clips into it. Maybe something like Automatic Duck for Motion could be an answer to that.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
would boris cc give adobe cs6 or reslove capable motion graphics capabilities close to ae?
Ricardo
-
[Ricardo Marty] “would boris cc give adobe cs6 or reslove capable motion graphics capabilities close to ae?”
I assume you mean Boris RED and Boris RED can actually run most After Effects plug-ins so it’s not only very similar in function but you can use most of the same plug-ins for both. I don’t know if AE ever got real 3D Text but Boris RED has 3D text as well. RED is basically Boris FX + Boris Graffiti + some extras plug-ins all in one. I would download a trial if you want to try it out.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com -
thanks for the response. I ment boris continum comlete.
I have never been able to get into the boris interface but this version uses the nle interface.
https://www.borisfx.com/products/continuum-complete/
Ricardo
-
[Tim Wilson] “as a practical matter of doing what YOU need it to do, how do you see the landscape?”
It’s easy to forget that After Effects is where it is in the market because it’s a damn good application, and that it covers a huge number of disparate use cases across design, animation, compositing and visual effects.
There’s a lot I really, really like about Ae for our work. Some editors may be inclined to view Ae as a host for effects plugins. For me, it’s more: After Effects is a visual development environment, a platform that lets me be an artist and a nerd at the same time, that lets me use both sides of my brain to get my work done.
I think Ae is unmatched in terms of design tools applicable to motion: the text and shape tools plus the layered timeline model offer a lot of immediacy and flexibility. Ae is highly extensible and has a huge ecosystem of developers and a large pool of talented freelancers. Its scripting and expression engines expose lots of power to users who are technically inclined, but not full-time developers. It accommodates really complex projects with thousands of comps easily, and has supported really large rasters for a long time.
And what a testament to the original CoSA engineers that Ae has followed a straight line from where it began to where it is today! The application is both fundamentally the same as it has always been, and massively more capable than ever before, without having ever really rattled users with a big change. This is a tool that has continuously grown with its users, for more than 20 years running.
All that said, Ae is not without problems. Its legacy, which enabled both the big ecosystem and smooth trajectory, also defines its limitations. Performance is poor (though I hope the re-architecture in Ae CC 2015 will solve this problem in time). Ae thinks fundamentally with RGBA and in screen space, which makes using arbitrary image data or real 3D a challenge. The layer model which makes animation so easy makes hard compositing harder.
I’m very optimistic about Ae’s future, but I’m keeping an eye on my other options, too. If I’m fluent in Ae, I’m conversant in NUKE, Smoke/Flame and Motion (where I’ve lost fluency through disuse), and I can ask where the bathroom is in Fusion. I can talk at some length about how I see their relative positioning to Ae in the landscape if you’re really interested.
Overall, I see Ae as the best choice, by far, for most of our work today, and I don’t see much in Ae’s competitors that would entice me to switch away.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn]
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up