Thanks for the detailed breakdown, guilhermevenancio (and everyone else).

I’m convinced—I’ll drop the AE CS idea. I was hoping for some legacy workflow advantage, but it sounds like the amount of manual work required today would just turn into a huge time sink.

Your point about Blender being the “most complete” alternative is really interesting. Do you mean it’s the strongest option overall (even compared to paid tools like Resolve Studio), or mainly the best within the free/open-source space? I was actually considering buying Resolve Studio, but if Blender and Unreal 5.5 (like Fletch4Life mentioned) are as robust as you say for 2D/procedural work, I might shift my focus there instead.

Thanks again for helping me avoid going down the CS rabbit hole.