It's turning into a great week for anyone looking for Adobe alternatives. We've seen a flurry of software updates ahead of the NAB trade show in Las Vegas next week, and several of them are after your Creative Cloud subscription.
We've already had the game-changing addition of photo editing in DaVinci Resolve, turning the video software into a potential Lightroom alternative. Today, it's the turn of motion design with the announcement of not one but two free After Effects alternatives.
Maxon's free Autograph
First up is Autograph. Maxon bought this from Left Angle last year. It absorbed the company's team, but the software went dark. Now it's being revived as part of the Maxon One suite of apps, with the crucial distinction that this one's free (you'll need to create a Maxon account).
Autograph is a layer-based motion graphics and visual effects application billed as a next-gen alternative to After Effects for motion designers, 2D/3D artists, content creators and compositors. Maxon reckons its suited to everything from branded social media videos to feature film and broadcast-ready assets.
Key features include native GPU-optimised effects, rotoscoping and tracking and a native Cloner system for iterative animations. Designers building complex motion graphics can drive parameters, text, images and more using external data such as spreadsheets with no expressions or code required.
You can animate text, turn it to 3D, create shape animations or import and animate SVG files from programs like Illustrator and Figma as well as PSD files from Affinity and Photoshop.
Responsive design compositions simplify consistent design across formats. You can position elements relative to frame dimensions and render multiple aspect ratios without duplicating layouts for consistent design across formats. A native 3D space enables extruded vector shapes and text, using compositions as textures, and compositing with multi-pass renders.
The application supports a range of industry standards, including USD, OpenEXR, ACES, OpenColorIO, and OpenFX, and integrates with Universe and select Red Giant tools. It also supports third-party OpenFX plugins, beginning with RE:Vision Effects, BorisFX, and Digital Anarchy.
Cavalry's now free too
As if that weren't exciting enough, we also have the launch of another free After Effects alternative: Cavalry, which was bought by Canva earlier this year.
The 2D animation software previously had a free tier, but the more advanced tools required a subscription. It's now completely free, including high-resolution rendering, advanced features and filters, the Forge Dynamics physics engine for complex dynamic simulations of particles and collisions, and the ability to import data directly from Google Sheets. Again, you'll need an account.
As with Canva's launch of free Affinity, many will be wondering where the catch is. What's in it for the companies giving away all this software for free? The move seems to be intended to expand user bases, gaining more visibility and the chance that at least some users will become paying customers for the companies' other software in the future.
Adobe itself does this to an extent with free versions of its mobile and browser-based apps, and its digital art app Fresco, which is entirely free. The rise of gen AI features also play s a role. It may be that core foundational software is becoming a loss leader subsidised by those customers who then choose to pay for AI features or generative credits.
Some creatives are understandably nervous about committing to free tools when there'e no guarantee that they will remain free. However, for now, together with photo editing in DaVinci Resolve and the recent Krita updates, these updates mean more options, particularly for beginners who may have felt priced out by subscription packages, and just when it had looked like competition was suffering. Let me know what you think about it in the comments.
In other updates, Maxon has confirmed what we already knew: Cinema 4D for iPad is on the way. This was teased a month ago with the news of a deal to add Tencent's 3D AI engine.
Maxon's saying the iPad version will complement the desktop software rather than serve as an alternative, but it will allow artists to explore ideas and work on projects on the go rather than at their desk. You'll need at least an M2 iPad.
ZBrush for iPad has been very popular among 3D artists, so hopefully Cinema 4D will be just as useful. The software was already relatively beginner-friendly as far as 3D goes (see our guide to the best 3D modelling software)
You can see what's new in Cinema 4D in the videos below.
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