Each month I write a software review for Microfilmmaker Magazine: an online guide for indie, low and no-budget filmmakers. I’ll post my reviews on this blog every month, but please visit Microfilmmaker. It is super-handy.

Breakdown

Ease-of-Use 6/10
Depth of Options 9/10
Performance 5/10
Value vs. Cost 8/10
Overall Score 7/10

Like many Motion Graphics artists, I am a big fan of the “3D look” in a 2D environment. At some point, I feel like I played a bit too much Paper Mario so nothing gets my blood rushing like some non-extruded use of After Effects 3D camera space. So when a new plugin shows up to bring new depth to the already plentiful 3D world of After Effects, I am very eager to check it out.

In its newest version, Freeform AE has been rewritten from the ground up and promises to add depth and 3D mesh properties to your flat, 2D layers.

Freeform AE has many options even for being pretty simple to use. Some of the best options are from the Depth Matte features. (highlighted)

Ease of Use

On first view, Freeform AE is pretty straight-forward. You have a view of a grid; you can manipulate the grid; you can add more blocks to the grid and manipulate them even more. The interface is very simplistic. Keyframe at a point in time, move your cursor forward and manipulate. Freeform AE will animate based on a few parameters, such as XYZ (in any combo) manipulation. It's almost shockingly simple. However getting the vision from your head to the screen may prove a bit more complicated. That's where Freeform AE’s somewhat steep learning curve shows up: in getting more polished and complicated animations. At this point, more advanced skill and practice will be required.

Basic Animation is simple. Pick how detailed you want the grid to be and start manipulating in 3D space.

Depth of Options

While you can use the grid to specifically mold objects to your desire, this will get tiresome after a short amount of time. The Freeform AE manual really totes this feature, but I found it pretty daunting and useless. In fact I was pretty disappointed until I found the Displacement Matte feature. With a Displacement Matte, Freeform AE really starts to shine. You can pick any motion background (including ones you make yourself) and begin to use those elements to literally mold your 2D elements in 3D space. The results, while pretty cool, can be wildly unpredictable, although you can immediately see the benefits of such an offering. I especially saw how useful this can be in creating really cool text elements.

Edit,keyframe,repeat. The animation controls are the definition of straight-forward.

Performance

In its most basic form, Freeform AE works smoothly. There are generous amounts of render/preview options that the designer can toggle between before rendering. This is good because you will definitely need the toggle options, as to do anything worthwhile within Freeform AE can be trying to any system.

Smoothing animations by filtering adds further stress to your system. At default Freeform AE will not filter using antialiasing, which, in the worst case scenario, can leave your layers with jagged edges. To fix this, there are three levels of antialiasing (Low, Medium, High). Fortunately these filters work wonders on your animations, but, unfortunately the higher you go, the longer the render time.

Performance also dwindles when you add more squares to your mesh. Luckily, you don't need to add many to create a believable animation.

Value

Freeform AE is $299 and I spent a long time debating if its worth the money for the typical low-budget filmmaker.

On one hand, you have a plugin that creates an effect that will add a specialized depth that cannot be easily duplicated by using other effects. It has an individualistic look that will add beautiful detail and believabilty to your 3D world. Outside of using a 3D program, you are not going to be able to manipulate meshes like this.

On the other hand, if you are really looking to get into 3D, why not just use that money to check out a 3D program? Perhaps that may not be in the budget, or you really don't feel like learning an entirely new program. Unfortunately, Freeform AE has a decent learning curve to do the more specialized animations you may desire. Because of the cost and the specialized nature, for the low-budget filmmaker, I would say that Freeform AE might be a plugin you may want to skip. But for the bigger budget commercial and title houses, however, it's a must-have.

If DigiEffects wants to make this plugin more appealing to the low-budget filmmaking audience, I would recommend that they bring the price-point to the $99 mark they use for their popular Damage and Simulate line of plugins. At this point, I think it would be much more attractive to the low-budget filmmaker.

You can use different elements of your displacement matte to effect the depth in your 3D layer. The Luma function works great with Fractal Noise.

Final Comments

Freeform AE is a complete 3D mesh editing suite and comes full loaded with lots of options and simplistic user interface. While advanced results have a fairly steep learning curve to control and design, Freeform AE is still a decent tool that will add nuance and individualistic design to your 3D elements within After Effects.