If been, looking my self from time to time to find an alternative to after effects, recently got rid of my adobe subscription - but still could not replace that specific piece of software. Maybe someone has some good experience?
See natron
Thanks, that looks good - not sure how I missed this one. Maybe I confused it with nuke - which is an overkill for my purposes. Will give it a try.
Natron is essentially the FOSS version of Nuke. And Nuke may seem overkill, but using it for simple tasks at first is a great way to familiarize yourself with the tool before using it for more complex ones.
I used to use Nuke just to do some colour grading, or composite two animations together, back when I was in school for 3D animation. “Simple” stuff that Blender could’ve handled, but I liked how Nuke was designed specifically for composition and VFX. The focus helps, I find. Which made me happy that Natron is a thing (although I recall it having some stability issues with me).
I’ve seen people use Blender for 2d animation, it’s become kind of a “multi tool”, that should let you integrate it with any of the other features.
For raw 2d animation, Krita has some support, there is also Synfig and OpenToonz. For simple stuff, Gimp works in a pinch.
Blender is nice but last time I checked it was not well optimised for 2d animation, motion graphics. But maybe it’s time to give it another go - I think it’s one of the best open source projects ever. The other one you mentioned lack in the motion design department. Gimp still gives me nightmares.
Blender is constantly evolving, so it’s worth checking on it at least periodically (maybe every 1 or 2 years). Over the years there have been a lot of changes to the interface, and there is a general roadmap towards making it work in a non-destructive node-based way for all workflows. Which is an immense undertaking, but the development is happening somewhat in parallel, meaning that at any moment you may find any part turn from not being well optimized, to becoming a killer feature.
