Adobe After Effects CC vs Blender

Ae is the de facto standard for motion graphic design.

Because of the popularity of Ae, there are a plethora of tutorials, presets, plug-ins, etc that can be used.

After Effects has extensive plug-in support. A broad range of third party plug-ins are available including solutions for particle systems, 3D environments and grading.

After Effects CC includes a Lite version of MAXON CINEMA 4D, a 3D modeling, animation and rendering application.

After grasping what panels do what, the workspace feels safe and comfortable. And the timeline moves and shows things how you would expect it to.

This program is made to interact very well with the other Adobe production apps like Premiere Pro, Soundbooth, Photoshop and others. You can dynamically link with a set list of Adobe software so when you update something in Ae it will update in other software accordingly.

Ensures you always have the latest version of the software. Allows saving preferences in the cloud, so you can load them on a different machine. You can even sync setting from a different user.

You constantly have the latest software that is updated regularly.

Blender is licensed under the GPL. Some Blender modules such as the Cycles rendering engine are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.

Support lots of modern 3D formats including DAE and FBX - ideal for game developers.

Blender runs the Cycles path tracing engine under the hood. Cycles is a very powerful rendering engine capable of full path tracing (light fall off, caustics, volumetrics). It is mostly compatible with OpenCL and CUDA rendering, and is implementing mycropolygon displacement features. The upcoming release has a viewport engine called EEVEE whereby you can see and interact with your work in render mode in real time!

Blender embeds Python 3, which can be used to write add-ons, tools, extend the interface, rig characters and automate tasks.

Blender provides a full rigging system, and automates animation by interpolating between keyframe positions.

Releases are made every ~3 months.

Although Blender's 3d painting and sculpting tools (mostly painting) are not at par with specialized software like Substance Painter, ZBrush, or Mari, it is more than capable of getting most jobs done if the user takes the time to learn and understand it.

Blender's node-based compositor has comprehensive video sequencing and post-processing features.

Good keyboard shortcuts for everything. Keep your left hand on the keyboard and your right hand on the mouse.

It offers a round solution (it covers many areas and professional fields) for a freelancer, for free, constantly updated, very polished, and allowing high quality results that clients do require. After some learning, it becomes very useful for professional work.

There's a huge community to help you get started immediately.

The trick with Blender is to get used to its usage philosophy, as it keeps consistent through all the application. Once you get it, every feature or addition is learnt naturally, almost effortlessly.

You don't have to switch between software when you want to do different things. Because modeling, sculpting, composting, video editing etc can all be done in blender.