Why I didn't invest in the AE ecosystem today

Question

Hi!
So today I noticed that Video Copilot has 25% off from their products during a 5 day period. I have been drooling for the Element 3D plugin and I was pretty much sold. I actually put the product in the shopping cart and came very close to finalizing the deal.
Then I started thinking.
While Element 3D allows for amazing things, it's still limited by the lack of advanced 3D-features in AE. One of the biggest problem for me is the lack of a proper physics engine for AE (I don't think Newton works with 3D) and the limited 3D-compositing workflow (no nodes for example). There's no mesh editing, shape keys, rigging, uv-mapping, real simulations... Why would I actually want to take stuff from a real 3D program like Blender and bring it to AE only to have all these limitations? I admit for a moment I still felt tempted to do so and that's because I feel so comfortable in the AE interface. But if I use any program long enough, I will feel comfortable eventually.
So the question eventually became this: Which one will be a better use of my time, learning to use Element 3D with AE and trying to overcome all these limitations or learning more and more Blender? And when the question became that, also the answer was obvious: Blender is an amazing, rock solid program that gets loads of new features almost every 3 months. AE is a "mature" Adobe program, which Adobe has stated wont be seeing as much development efforts as totally new programs. This is also evident based on how little major new features AE has gotten during the past 3-4 years. I would say Blender develops in one year more than AE has in 3-4 years.
AE is dying in the hands of the current Adobe management (I do not refer to Todd Kopriva, but the higher management). The competition is just way ahead now. And with the cloud extortion scheme people everywhere are looking for other programs.
I do not want to place a bet in favor of Adobe's future. That means also AE is going to be in trouble with the competition. That's why I decided not to buy Element 3D. The decision made me kind of sad since the price of the plugin was not bad and I really love Andrew Kramer. I wanted to buy it and support Video Copilot. I just couldn't do it because of the direction Adobe is heading. I really hope Andrew will take his amazing skills and start looking for alternative ecosystems so that I can support them in the future.

Answer 1

I wouldn't write off AE so quickly, but as an AE and Blender user I do feel that people sometimes don't give Blender a chance because it's "free", and people have difficulty believing that something free can be powerful or valuable.
AE is in a very good position as the industry standard; I'm aware there are some high-end options out there as well but AE does a good job for what it is. Add to that the fact the most advertising agencies are built around an Adobe-based workflow ie. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign etc, and integration with AE is pretty good. I don't see it disappearing anytime soon.
Cloud subscription - yes it's expensive. I calculated over 3 years it's the same as paying outright for master collection. And then paying for it again the next 3 years, and so on. Ouch. I think maybe too expensive; I think Adobe will have to reconsider pricing as people are faced with realities of what is affordable. If I was comfortable that I could do everything that I needed to in Blender - I wouldn't hesitate cancelling my cloud subscription. I need to learn Blender quicker!
But the Element 3D question, it's a handy looking plugin (I have not used it), but yes ultimately you can do anything you want in 3D if you learn a 3D app, whereas using Element is a stylised workaround that has great initial results but limited flexibility.
I would personally say that Blender is at the point that it can fit well into most professional workflows