Nuke and Flame are the alternatives to After Effects.
Many people especially on this forum are using After Effects, in combination with some libraries of effects, such as action essentials, etc. Nuke and Flame are more aimed at high-end compositing, and not so much integration with those libraries. So it really matters what you will be doing with it. You can do some serious VFX with all 3 packages, but personally I prefer a node based compositing app over the layer based After Effects.
I use Nuke for pretty much everything I do, it has a very clean interface, works very quick, and is very customizable, not only in UI layout but also in your composite itself, thanks to the node-based system. You can get a 15 day trail over at
The Foundry's website.
What you should realize however is that if you are serious about doing visual effects, the compositing package is only the end of the entire 3D pipeline. Even the most simple effects require some kind of 3D work if you want to do them right, the reflection of a muzzle flash projected on various surfaces can benefit alot from 3D, realistic blood and gore even more, and the list goes on.
In my opinion, you should not try to do VFX without learning a 3D application.
If you are just using 2D tricks and libraries, You are limiting your options incredibly. You will have to force yourself into weird corners to avoid doing 3D work. And sure, 3D takes alot more time, money and knowledge of various different software packages: But it will give you total creative freedom to make what you want to make, do what you want to do, and not be restrained by what you can shoot or pull from some pre-recorded package.
Blender seems like a nice option because it is nice, free, open-source, has alot of plugins/modules whatever they are called and can pretty much do the entire pipeline in one, single application. However, if you are using it for 3D it is very different than your regular 3D packages, like Maya, Max, Lightwave, Cinema4D and Softimage. Because everything is so different than what I (as a Maya & Softimage user) am used to, I never really got in to Blender, but the results some people are making with it, are pretty great. All in all, here as much as anywhere else goes that skill is more important than gear/software.
Then you have your sculpting apps (Zbrush/Mudbox) and your texturing apps (Photoshop/Mari) and your tracking apps (Boujou/PfTrack), and then, there at the very end is your compositing application (Nuke/Flame/AE).
So... Don't spend your money on the last thing you need. Figure out what your needs are, can you do everything in 2D without a single side application (probably not, but maybe..)? Then buy any of the three compositing applications, they are all good (though I really prefer Nuke
)!
If you can't do everything in 2D, Figure out if you really want to spend alot of time and money learning the entire VFX pipeline, or just want to outsource it to someone on mandy.com
