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Hello forum and dear Affinity Team  ;)

 

Congratulations to your great software, I realy love it and it's the first time I didn't touched Photoshop and Illustrator since 1 month.

And...I'm looking forward to never touch it again  :P

 

So here's my question: Is there any chance that I can leave After Effects untouched in the near future?

Your software is very great, fast and reliable. Would be so great to put all this experience in a replacement for After Effects written by Serif.

 

Thank you

Pete

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  • 4 months later...
  • 1 year later...

I second that. After 2 days of researching After Effects alternatives in a strong desire to use something different for my 2D vector animations, I ended up falling back to AE simply because there is no real alternative that's able to do even basic shape morphing (tweening) properly outside the Adobe ecosystem.

 

Serif, please consider buying vpaint.org and transforming it into a real motion graphics product! (Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with VPaint whatsoever, but it consistently showed up in my research in the last couple of days as something I'd want to use; it's way too simplistic now as a product, but its shape interpolation technology is state-of-the-art research as of 2015 so it solves the single biggest challenge in vector animation software IMO).

 

So forget about video effects and compositing – I'm talking simple, effective vector animation à la Tumult Hype, but with advanced shape morphing as in VPaint.

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Licensecart, onysseus, et al:

 

Have you tried Anime Studio Pro (or Debut) for vector based animation? The interface is terrible (in my opinion) but it has all the tools needed for this. I have version 9 for Macs. For my modest vector animation needs it gets the job done. The only thing I wish it had (besides a better UI) is the ability to export frames to svg so I could use AD to tweak objects I created in AD & imported into ASP.

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On 12/10/2015 at 1:58 PM, Edo75 said:

There is indeed a real consumer demand for an alternative to After Effects especially for Motion Graphics type of job (for editing and compositing there are a lot of options). A lot of pros tired of AE.  

Who? Where? 

Andrew
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1 hour ago, douglasrthomson said:

Well, there's me for a start. 

Right and most likely the others who are asking for this are also here on this forum. 

I never heard any AE artists saying they want an After Effects alternative, and I've been in this industry for 20 years. Mind you, I'm not saying people never complain, but wishing an Affinity After Effects nope, really, never happened. 

A few facts. Anyone in this industry working professionally knows After Effects is not just a 2d animation program, it's way more than that. So, it would actually make sense to either ask for a 2d animation software or (better) look for it (and there are options), but an AE alternative? Do you guys realize what a huge demand is that? Let's just pretend it didn't happen.. 

After Effects animators market's demand would never make an AE artist think  "I have spent all this time learning and finessing my skills, growth a good network, finally paying my bills, feeding my family and get a decent living, let's screw it and start over with a software which will be buggy, will under perform, unknown and that only a few will use. At least il will cost me only 50 bucks"

What an AE artist thinks from time to time is "I should probably learn Nuke or get better with Cinema 4D".

So, either these frequent requests come from people who is getting excited about Affinity (without knowing the limits of the product yet), or doesn't work professionally, hence asking for an AE alternative it's like asking for a scooter with a Ferrari in mind.

On top of that, one thing is clear: you people don't realize what Serif can or can't do. People requesting publisher, a dam, editing, animation.. In the meantime AP and AD updates languish, and this can only get worse. Oh, and let's not forget that a new AE today is not like AE 20 years ago when Mac was dominating the graphic design market: nowadays it has to be released for Windows as one of the major platform and considered how much Serif is struggling with their current products for Windows in terms of stability and performance, your dreams are really going nowhere.

P. S. Before someone will start typing in response to my last sentence, because I know there are people here very sensitive about certain things, remember: you might be fine with your AP/AD for the job you do. I know for a fact that the same isn't true for my type of work.

Andrew
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8 minutes ago, verysame said:

On top of that, one thing is clear: you people don't realize what Serif can or can't do.

Regarding that, consider how much larger a company Adobe is than Serif. Adobe can assign dozens of programmers to developing a single app, or just to working on implementing or refining one or a few related features. Different group might work on the Windows & Mac versions, & a third group might handle cross-platform compatibility. They also don't have to concern themselves much with optimizing anything for highly efficient memory use because they know most of their users will cram their computers with as much memory as they can because everybody knows that is the key to getting better performance out of Adobe apps. They certainly don't have to consider designing everything around a 'universal' native file format that any of their apps can open without conversions or resorting to special export methods.

More to the point, also consider that this means their development costs are much higher than Serif's, & that those costs & all the administrative & other costs of running such a huge company are past on to their customers. Add to that the costs in both time & money users may incur because they need top grade hardware to use their products as efficiently as possible, & to contend with inter-application issues.

So the bottom line is there is no way Serif could expand its product range to compete with all the Adobe ones, or the various specialized ones from other companies, & still keep everything most of us like most about the existing ones. That includes not just the low, one time purchase price but also all the rest of it.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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Quote

I never heard any AE artists saying they want an After Effects alternative, and I've been in this industry for 20 years. 

I work in motion graphics and I've heard people say this. I think part of the problem comes down to the subscription model as much as anything. We all love After Effects. It's the only game in town. But your argument that there's no demand for an alternative doesn't make sense.

People do change their requirements or re-asses their needs when software vendors change their business models. There ware rumours a couple of years ago that Maxon were looking at the subscription model and there was quite a lot of uproar. They have implemented this - but you can still buy C4D outright.

I don't agree with your proposition that motion designers won't look at or want alternatives. My motion graphics workflow currently involves, After Effects, Motion, C4D, 3D coat, FCPX, Photoshop, Illustrator, Affinity Designer and Photoscan, When something else comes along I'll look at that too.

There are After Effects artists out there who are specialists in their field. Sure, they're not going to look at alternatives. 

But there are also motion graphics artists out there using a variety of applications to create their work. They will look at alternatives because it's not the tool that's important, it's the final, delivered piece of work that matters.

There are quite a few posts on this forum requesting an After Effects alternative. There's your demand.

Cheers

Dougie

 

 

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, douglasrthomson said:

I think part of the problem comes down to the subscription model as much as anything.

OK, but how many of the forum requests for a non-subscription Affinity alternative assume it would be priced similarly to Photo & Designer rather than closer to what Adobe's retail price was back before they went to the subscription model? I don't know what the last non-subscription version sold for but according to this, version 2's retail price was about $2000 US.

So, even assuming the Affinity app was just 1/10 of that, how many people requesting it actually would buy it, particularly if version 1 lacked some of the features of AE, which seems likely?

It isn't very realistic to consider demand as if it was not closely related to purchase price, or the purchase price not closely related to a company's expected return on investment.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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7 hours ago, douglasrthomson said:

I work in motion graphics and I've heard people say this. I think part of the problem comes down to the subscription model as much as anything. We all love After Effects. It's the only game in town. But your argument that there's no demand for an alternative doesn't make sense.

[...] 

Cheers

Dougie

You didn't answer my points and you only focused on the wrong assumption. I said AE artists they'd rather go with Nuke, that's the real alternative. In fact, why picking an under powered solution Vs improving by going with Nuke which would also open the door to more work? Now, that doesn't make sense.
Sorry, but you sound as if you're not thinking in terms of work but in terms of tinkering or only having fun with a new software. Which I understand, but no one in this business with a family to feed and his mind would take in consideration.

You didn't respond to my points about the quality this new software would suffer for the logical reasons I explained above (and if you re-read my post there are many).

Also, you say you work in this industry and yet you seem not worried about the consequences of a big shift like this would be. You mention the vendors but not the client, strange from a professional stand point. You never had to deliver the AE projects? Well, it happens and more often than you might think. Good luck with delivering an Affinity prj when the rest of the world speaks AE.

Andrew
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You didn't answer my points and you only focused on the wrong assumption. I said AE artists they'd rather go with Nuke, that's the real alternative. In fact, why picking an under powered solution Vs improving by going with Nuke which would also open the door to more work? Now, that doesn't make sense.
Sorry, but you sound as if you're not thinking in terms of work but in terms of tinkering or only having fun with a new software. Which I understand, but no one in this business with a family to feed and his mind would take in consideration.

All good points. I don't think for one minute that people who are purely After Effects artists, who work as part of a larger team and whose livelihood is based on AE, will change. But these aren't the only people who are using AE.
 

I work directly with clients rather then agencies. Agencies aren't my clients. I'm collaborating with writers, camera people, sound engineers and so on. My final deliverable is the ProRes file or the MP4 (or whatever the client asks for). How I get there is up to me. There are a lot of us out there doing this and making a living.

 

Quote

You didn't respond to my points about the quality this new software would suffer for the logical reasons I explained above (and if you re-read my post there are many).

 You come across as having a poor opinion of Affinity software - but you keep posting on their forum.

 

Quote

Also, you say you work in this industry and yet you seem not worried about the consequences of a big shift like this would be

Been there. Done that. It was fine.

Quark to Indesign
Final Cut pro 7 to FCPX. 
Freehand to Illustrator and now (sometimes) Affinity Designer

Quote

You mention the vendors but not the client, strange from a professional stand point. 

Unprofessional statement. This is a public forum. 

 

Quote

You never had to deliver the AE projects? Well, it happens and more often than you might think. Good luck with delivering an Affinity prj when the rest of the world speaks AE.

 If I have to deliver an AE project to a client, I will. 

I'm done here.

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Affinity aren't a big enough company and with any spare resources to make this happen, they already have a busy timeline with the Affinity software already in development and I doubt they could make any significant improvements to software features and workflow that could justify creating an alternative to the market leaders. 

You have to be realistic in your wants and look at where the company is, Serif employ approximately 80 people, Adobe have 15,000

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20 hours ago, douglasrthomson said:

I work directly with clients rather then agencies. Agencies aren't my clients. I'm collaborating with writers, camera people, sound engineers and so on. My final deliverable is the ProRes file or the MP4 (or whatever the client asks for). How I get there is up to me. There are a lot of us out there doing this and making a living.

1

Fair enough, although I never mentioned agencies. Here where I live is full of post-production companies where all this discussion could never take place. But I agree, there are freelancers who deal directly with the client. Now, how many of these freelancers could potentially have an impact on the future of an Affinity Effects in terms of seats, is yet to be seen.

Besides, something to keep in mind, even freelancers team up and it's getting more and more common nowadays.

Quote

You come across as having a poor opinion of Affinity software - but you keep posting on their forum.

I don't understand what is that supposed to mean. First off, how do you come to the conclusion that I have a poor opinion of Affinity products is not clear to me. If you refer to my most recent posts, that only means that you didn't look at my earlier posts, so your conclusion is partial and incorrect. On top of that, what I post is related to issues and features and as a customer, I have all the rights to do so. I also have the rights to not be happy with the way things are moving. Also, those are not opinions but it's my experience. That said, I don't expect Serif or anybody else to agree with my posts or do anything about it. Funny enough, it's exactly because of my experience that I would never expect anything like After Effects coming from Serif. Better, I hope it doesn't. But if you read this as a poor opinion, you know little about my consideration of the product, therefore your statement in that regard is and can only be wrong.

Quote

Unprofessional statement. This is a public forum.

You misunderstood. I didn't ask you the name of your clients or the communications you have with them. I only wanted you to notice that your arguments were leaning only toward one side of the coin, the vendor, without taking into consideration the other side. That's it.

Quote

If I have to deliver an AE project to a client, I will.

Thanks, you just proved my point.

Regardless of my personal take on Affinity, one thing emerged from this thread where other, happier customers, added their contribution, which is resources, resources, resources. Serif just doesn't have the resources to afford such a burden. That said if you want to keep requesting the After Effects alternative it's up to you, it's your time.

 

Best,
Andrew

Andrew
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If you refer to my most recent posts, that only means that you didn't look at my earlier posts, so your conclusion is partial and incorrect. On top of that, what I post is related to issues and features and as a customer, I have all the rights to do so. I also have the rights to not be happy with the way things are moving. Also, those are not opinions but it's my experience. That said, I don't expect Serif or anybody else to agree with my posts or do anything about it.

You're right. I've jumped to (incorrect) conclusions. I apologise about that.

Cheers

Dougie

 

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