Adobe After Effects vs. Cinema 4D

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe After Effects
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Adobe After Effects allows users to create cinematic movie titles, intros, and transitions, remove an object from a clip, start a fire or make it rain, or animate a logo or character. The vendor states that with After Effects, users can apply motion-graphics and animation to any digital object.
$20.99
Per User Per Month
Cinema 4D
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Maxon, headquartered in Germany, offers Cinema 4D, an animaton suite for 3D artists, which the vendor states is suitable for beginners and seasoned professionals alike, who can take advantage of Cinema 4D’s wide range of tools and features to achieve stunning results for demanding, fast-paced 3D production.N/A
Pricing
Adobe After EffectsCinema 4D
Editions & Modules
Annual Plan (Paid Monthly)
$20.99
Per User Per Month
Monthly Plan
$31.49
Per User Per Month
Annual Plan (Prepaid)
$239.88
Per User Per Year
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe After EffectsCinema 4D
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe After EffectsCinema 4D
Considered Both Products
Adobe After Effects
Chose Adobe After Effects
After Effects is the halfway point between simple editing software like Premiere Pro and complex 3D suites like Cinema 4D. It offers a balance of speed and functionality for mid-level production.

I also prefer it over Apple Motion and Black Magic Fusion, mostly due to being in …
Chose Adobe After Effects
Adobe After Effects stands out for its comprehensive set of tools for creating motion graphics, visual effects, and animations. Its seamless integration with other Adobe software, vast community, and extensive tutorials make it user-friendly. It offers a wide range of 2D and 3D …
Chose Adobe After Effects
After Effects is more versatile for animations than Premiere for sure. And now, with the .mogrt templates, it can be great for keeping consistent animations and branding guides when sharing work with other animators
and editors. I also like their 3d plugins and advanced …
Chose Adobe After Effects
After Effects is on par with most of these other non-Adobe software. It is able to edit, create, render, illustrate, stabilize video content; and so much more.
Chose Adobe After Effects
We have taken After Effects because Adobe Animate is completely focused on animation rather than other things which After Effects can handle very easily, like we needed a program which can handle the professional animation, speed up our workflow, and can do various things like …
Chose Adobe After Effects
Obviously I use Premiere to edit and After Effects to post-produce. In the past I used 4D Cinema to create objects to insert in the videos, but now with a few external plugins all the objects you want are inserted.
Cinema 4D
Chose Cinema 4D
Great integration with After Effects made editing seamless and quick. It was a steep learning curve but not as tough as others in the market. Coupled with the AE integration, it was the tool that made the most sense.

As a side note, I used Cinema a lot for artwork (non-work) …
Chose Cinema 4D
C4D is more responsive with an interface that works better for me. It is just as widely supported by render farms and plugins, so it edges out primarily on usability and speed. New users will not find 3DS Max intuitive, although I'm sure seasoned users find it very natural.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Adobe After EffectsCinema 4D
Small Businesses
Autodesk Maya
Autodesk Maya
Score 7.9 out of 10
Autodesk Maya
Autodesk Maya
Score 7.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Blender
Blender
Score 9.2 out of 10
Onshape
Onshape
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Adobe Animate
Adobe Animate
Score 8.1 out of 10
Rhino
Rhino
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe After EffectsCinema 4D
Likelihood to Recommend
7.4
(34 ratings)
9.6
(5 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(3 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.9
(7 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe After EffectsCinema 4D
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
Adobe After Effects is well suited for creating short video projects that require intricate animation, like 5 minute or 1-minute countdowns, credit roll-ins, outros, and video bumpers. It is also useful for creating animated elements that can be incorporated into video projects, like animated key titles. For longer videos, I would recommend using Adobe Premiere Pro instead.
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Maxon
Photorealistic Rendering (it takes a LONG time to render for print, but it's insanely realistic). Commercial Production Graphical Integration into print materials (and digital) We did a lot with brochures and billboards. Hi Res rendering takes hours, but the output set us FAR apart from the run-of-the-mill competition we had.
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Pros
Adobe
  • After Effects is great for creating motion content once and easily exporting it to various formats such as web, broadcast, GIF, etc.
  • After Effects is the industry standard for motion graphics. While I’m an Apple user and have used Motion in the past it is not as feature rich and most clients will expect you to use After Effects.
  • After Effects is great for complex UI animation. Tools like principle and Flinto are great but are quite cumbersome for complex UI animations.
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Maxon
  • Seemingly endless selection of tools
  • clear and powerful manipulation tools
  • effect use of hotkeys for navigating the 3D space
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Cons
Adobe
  • I would like the Re-Link file structure to mimic Premiere.
  • I would like to see native .obj importing and manipulation.
  • I would like to see better audio editing available within Adobe After Effects. if it could be given a separate layer/panel.
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Maxon
  • Weak UV mapping interface.
  • Redshift integration is not 100% seamless yet.
  • Weight-mapping is a nightmare.
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Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
I will renew my use of After Effects since it's affordable and always has been reliable. They also always continue to update new features and add new things to compete with other software out there. I also like all the 3rd party plugins out there that keep my interest for the future and new toolsets and creative solutions.
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Maxon
No answers on this topic
Usability
Adobe
If you have a good computer setup then the program gives you no issues whatsoever. Only if you decide to run multiple tasks on a lower end unit will you then get bottlenecking which really isn't Adobe's fault to begin with. I used to have problems in the past but with newer technology, it has since been a smooth ride.
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Maxon
For reasons mentioned before: an intuitive interface and speed of the viewport, speed of loading, and ease of plugin integration. The MoGraph module encourages experimentation and the creation of highly modifiable scenes. Crashes are extremely rare and the support team and community are hyper-responsive to requests for help. For real... Maxon's staff hangs out in Slack and Discord communities, regularly assisting users with issues. No support ticket required.
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Support Rating
Adobe
Adobe customer support is wonderful. They genuinely care about their product and the end user experience. The products they create have always been innovative and continue to improve. They have a huge chunk of the user market in their field and still strive to improve. This is such a big deal for me and other small business/organizations that need their products and don't have a large voice on our own.
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Maxon
Maxon's staff regularly hangs out in Slack and Discord communities, ready to assist. This goes beyond the support ticket system, which is also extremely robust. Hundreds of optimizations and bugs are fixed in every patch, even when the user experience is already 99.9% smooth. This is a proactive, not reactive, support and engineering team at Maxon.
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Alternatives Considered
Adobe
I find Adobe After Effects to be superior to iMovie and Final Cut Pro in that I am able to do much more with the software. It isn't as limiting as the other two. I also like that it isn't an Apple product. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Apple. There is a bigger learning curve with After Effects, but once you get the hang of it, there's really no comparison.
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Maxon
Well, I go for cinema 4D if I want to create dynamic animation instead of Autodesk 3ds Max as I can easily create that animation compared to Autodesk 3ds Max.
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Return on Investment
Adobe
  • Adobe After Effects has a great impact on business as maximum work can be done in one software
  • To run this software you need to have good configuration system
  • Motion Graphics, 2d Animation and video editing can be done in one software
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Maxon
  • Producing quality training content reduces mistakes and improves ebitda for our restaurants
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ScreenShots