Affinity Designer vs. Blender

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Affinity Designer
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Affinity Designer is a vector graphics software developed by Serif (Europe) Ltd, replacing the former Serif DrawPlus. It is designed for professional illustrators, web designers, game developers, and other creatives.N/A
Blender
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite available in under the GNU General Public License. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and 2D animation pipeline. Blender Cloud is a related service accessible via subscription, and is a training and content platform providing access to expertise from the Blender Institute for advancing one's use of Blender.
$11.50
per month
Pricing
Affinity DesignerBlender
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Blender Cloud Membership
$11.50
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Affinity DesignerBlender
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Affinity DesignerBlender
Best Alternatives
Affinity DesignerBlender
Small Businesses
Venngage
Venngage
Score 10.0 out of 10
Onshape
Onshape
Score 6.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
GIMP
GIMP
Score 8.0 out of 10
Onshape
Onshape
Score 6.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator
Score 9.3 out of 10
Rhino
Rhino
Score 8.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Affinity DesignerBlender
Likelihood to Recommend
9.3
(8 ratings)
9.9
(25 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(7 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Affinity DesignerBlender
Likelihood to Recommend
Serif Europe
Best suited: Creating on the go. The app is the same on desktop as it is on mobile. All the tools and shortcuts exist on both platforms, no need to learn more than one workflow to get my work done
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Open Source
Blender is an excellent tool for everything from simple to complex 3D animations, the creation of 3D images, etc. It performs excellently in all of these areas. In the realm of 3D modelling, animation and rendering, there is very little that Blender is not suited for.
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Pros
Serif Europe
  • its is helpful in creating vector designs
  • it offers wide variety of brushes making it perfect for illustrations.
  • it provides us varies options for exports like eps, svg, png and jpeg and many more making it versatile.
  • we use to export our design with press ready pdf for print production where all the internal design and export done with Affinity Designer.
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Open Source
  • Creating complex polygonal geometries is very easy in Blender.
  • Edit Mode and Sculpt Mode helps in creating non uniform surfaces for objects like rocks, surfaces, terrains etc.
  • Blender can use various external plugins to make it work in more smoother way. For example to import any 3d object one can use sketchfab plugin and easily import the free assets from web after logging in.
  • Blender has a better rendering engine known as Cycles, it is far more better than any other stock rendering engine which can generate realistic lightning, shadows and reflections.
  • The animations can easily be generated with blender animation toolbar and also it incorporate any other animations made in any other software.
  • The bone generation and its behavior of animations can be achieved easily in blender.
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Cons
Serif Europe
  • the new Affinity Designer suite lacks the original compatibility.
  • the brushes and spray tools needs improvement
  • Sometimes when we are dealing with big files say more than 10mbs it crashes often or slow down.
  • One of the major weak point is export time it takes quite longer time if compared to illustrator but for big files only.
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Open Source
  • It's really a hard question, but it could be: a game engine. Older versions used to have it; I would use it to simulate machines game-like.
  • I'm struggling to find another one; maybe the fact that it is so powerful and has so many features that learning it can be daunting; better documentation WITH examples and/or a map of Blender capabilities would help to know where you are in terms of knowledge and the planning the roadmap to where you want to go.
  • Precision modeling. Coming from CAD and using Blender as part of my design workflow, I'd love to be able to model inside Blender as I model with CAD tools. At this moment, it's simply impossible.
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Usability
Serif Europe
Because the software is great. I have forced myself to learn it. I highly recommend to others. This is a game changer. Adobe is evil for going all subscription and not giving anyone the option to purchase lifetime versions of Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign it is CRIMINAL
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Open Source
Because while it's a pretty good piece of software, the default built-in commands, the interface layout, and certain functions aren't as logical in their way of being arranged and executed. This, of course, doesn't diminish its use or effectiveness in your field of work, but it is quite awkward at first. A big advantage is that Blender lets you customize the interface however you want as well as keyboard shortcuts and several general program parameters.
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Support Rating
Serif Europe
I have not had much opportunity to go directly to support, but the training modules that are employed by the company are fantastic. I also find that if I need to understand something, there is always another user ready and willing to share their secrets. As this tool becomes more accepted local communities will also start to organize
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Serif Europe
First, Affinity has a much more attractive licensing model for users: Buy it once, use it forever. That's great and means one less recurring cost for a company. But I can go further, and as I've mentioned in other questions, Affinity has a very refined and polished interface, as well as superior performance, especially compared to Adobe's tools. On our team, we use Figma as the main tool focused on Product Design, and where it falls short, we complement it with Affinity. Price and product quality are the factors that make this choice happen.
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Open Source
We've only used the consumer (non-pro) version of SketchUp, which we love, but is very limited in features and output capabilities compared to Blender. While Blender's learning curve is MUCH steeper than SketchUp, it feels like truly complete, professional design software.
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Return on Investment
Serif Europe
  • Perfect for professionals. The price is insane for a professional tool.
  • I am able to fit the price of Affinity Designer into our business budget.
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Open Source
  • As it is a beginner-friendly software with increasing demand in the animation sector again, it positively impacts the business.
  • Except in some specific cases, no one will use Blender on their own at a professional level.
  • When I was a beginner, it took me a lot of time to learn, consequently designing the creation. But if we want to learn to master Blender, we can do it. As long as we have time and a lot of willpower, since, we repeat, it is not a simple program and hides thousands of tools and possibilities.
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ScreenShots