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Comment by Uehreka | Hacker News Reader

Whenever people say this I ask about After Effects. I have yet to find a FOSS or cheaper substitute. Many people have suggestions for Premiere Pro replacements, but not After Effects.

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Hands down, Blender. See Ian Hubert’s channel[0] for samples of what can be achieved with Blender by a tiny team.

His examples tend to be specific to VFX, but Blender is quite general-purpose as far as motion design goes with an NLE, support for the familiar “expressions” paradigm, and so on.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxD6H3ri8RI

Blender seconded.

I mean, can you code procedural FX with Python in After Effects? You can in Blender. And it's free.

2.90 is shockingly good.

Blender's video tools have been overlooked recently. Video work is limited.

I use Blender and Ian Hubert’s recent work is what got me into it. It’s an excellent tool when it comes to the kind of motion-tracked work he does (and which I hope to get into) but for quickly cutting together motion graphics I have not found it to be as handy.

Blackmagic Design Fusion (now part of Davinci resolve).

For really simple things you can also use Hitfilm Pro

There is also https://natrongithub.github.io/ but I haven't personally tried it

I really like Apple Motion, but that's also a commercial substitute. The $50 once-off price is very good, though

If you want to do 2D motion graphics, there is no real rival for After Effects (AE). A new motion and animation app called Cavalry recently launched but it's far too early to see if it can rival AE. It also uses an online subscription model (https://cavalry.scenegroup.co/).

Have you tried DaVinci Resolve? It's not FOSS, but it is a pro-level After Effects replacement with much more reasonable terms.

DaVinci Resolve feels more like a Nuke clone; it's production film compositing, not the compositing-and-animation mix that After Effects is.

You can do most things AE will do with a combination of Natron and Blender.

You can't replace the huge template and plugin ecosystem of AE. That's what really drives the adoption.

For simple 2d ui animations I use Flow instead of AE + bodymovin. I highly recommend it for simple stuff. https://createwithflow.com/

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