I Tested EffectCraft on Real After Effects Projects

EffectCraft is a free After Effects clone from ArtCraft, so I tried it on some real After Effects projects to see if Adobe should be worried.

I've been using After Effects for over 25 years, so I threw everything I could at it: 3D renderers, extruded text, text animators, keyframes and easing, adjustment layers, time remapping, camera tracking, 3D models, render times and plugins.

EffectCraft was built largely by one developer, Brandon Thomas, with a lot of help from AI, and it's free. It opens After Effects projects, it handles like After Effects and, yes, it even crashes like After Effects. Some stuff worked better than I expected (camera tracking, motion blur, easy ease). Some stuff didn't work at all (echo, posterize time on an adjustment layer). And in a side by side render test After Effects was quicker: 1:13 vs 2:14 for a simple text animation, 28s vs 40s for a tracked one.

I also look at plugin support in an unofficial fork which adds OFX (tested with Sapphire), the really boring stuff like disk caches, and whether this could ever replace After Effects for agencies, freelancers or junior motion designers. Plus there's a certain irony in Adobe spending years telling us AI is the future of creative software, only for AI to help build a free clone of After Effects.

So, is EffectCraft a real After Effects alternative or just a clone? I suspect you've got an opinion. The comments are open.

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*FREE RESOURCES:*

► Download the FREE project files from this video and test them in Effect Craft yourself: https://gumroad.com/thevideoshop

► Effect Craft fork with OFX plugin support (unofficial): https://github.com/glumbis/effectcraft


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*CHAPTERS:*

00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:57 - Development of Effect Craft
00:02:00 - Importing After Effects Projects & 3D Renderers
00:02:56 - Extruded 3D Text & Shapes
00:04:48 - Echo & Time Effects
00:05:36 - Keyframes, Easing & Motion Blur
00:06:36 - Text Animators
00:08:13 - Adjustment Layers & Posterize Time
00:08:43 - Time Remapping
00:09:11 - Project Window: Where Assets Are Used
00:10:03 - Camera Tracking
00:12:26 - Importing 3D Models
00:13:23 - 2.5D Camera Project
00:14:02 - Render Times & Disk Cache: Effect Craft vs After Effects
00:15:21 - Plugins & OFX Support
00:16:09 - Final Thoughts

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