Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Free After Effects Replacment

[Alexander Prokudin]

07.04.2016 20:55, Fabio Pesari пишет:
> On 04/07/2016 05:05 PM, mray wrote:
> > I'm very interested to hear a word from them, too - but I doubt that
> > they exist.
> They do exist:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_%28software%29#Use_in_the_media_industry
>
> > I think this is backwards. We currently have a quite depressing
> > situation concerning motion graphics. There is just *no* replacement for
> > AE (not even one that *tries* to imitate it). Blender and Synfig come
> > closest to it but really fall into different categories of software.
> > Having this gap in Free Software tools is the real limitation.
> In my opinion the only reason a lot of people (we're talking
> "Youtubers", right?) use After Effects is because they want to be "like
> the pros", not because free software isn't good enough (at least in
> terms of video editing and post-production; haven't tried Natron for
> compositing).
>
> I really would like the opinion of people who are really knowledgeable
> about the field, so I'm putting the founder of libregraphicsworld.org in CC.

Hello,

Sorry for the late reply.

People use AE mainly for the following reasons:

- tons of educational material (books, tutorials)
- having AE skills looks good in CV
- the studio they were or would be hired by has been using AE for ages 
and has its production pipeline built around AE, with plugins, 
customizations etc.

In particular, the latter is the major roadblock to switch from AE to 
some free software for studios that already use Blender: they just don't 
have the time or money to redo everything with only free software and 
test the new pipeline. That's what I heard from pretty much every studio 
I spoke to back when I did the annual 'Best commercials produced with 
Blender' series. The only exceptions were the studios that were 
_started_ by Blender users.

You can't fix it by switching people to Synfig which, like AE, has 
layer-based FX engine. You can't fix it by swithing them to either 
Blender or Natron (node-based engine). There is just no free/libre 
drop-in replacement for AE and -- let's be realistic -- there never will 
be one. Noone's going to write a whole new layer-based VFX package with 
AE's API, noone will be able to get every 3rd party developer out there 
to rebuild, test _and_ support their stuff for this copycat.

You will always have studios that use whatever suits them best, and in 
many case it won't be free software. But you will also have studios 
started by people who learned their skills with free software. Which is 
why the only way to change the suituation somewhat is to educate people, 
and I don't mean lecturing them about free/libre and GNU -- I mean 
teaching them actual Blender/Natron/GIMP/Krita/etc. skills that will put 
food on their tables.

Not sure if that's the kind of reply you expected from me, but here it is :)

Alex