Character Animator and After Effects running slowly, do I need a better computer???

[Ryan5FA7]

Hello my Adobe Bros! (A-Bro-bees?),

I'm new to After Effects. I've been working on a 2D animation project using Adobe Illustrator and Character Animator. I've been following tutorials from Okay Samurai, who mostly posts about Character Animator. I'm following his tutorial (titled "Complete Cartoon Workflow") and I'm at the step where I bring everything I've created and captured in Character Animator and put it all together in After Effects. But it is nearly impossible to work in After Effects. Everything I do takes forever to render and I always get the colored spinning wheel and my computer fan goes crazy. I also have already lowered the resolution to "quarter" and have it set to skip every 2 frames, but it still struggles.

Here are the specs of my current Macbook:

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012) Running Catalina OS

Processor: 2.5 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5

Memory: 16GB 1333 MHz DDR3

Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB

Even though I don't know what a lot of the above specs mean, I thought 16 GB of RAM would be enough to run the program. I know AE can do 3D stuff complex special effects so I assumed that my simple 2D stuff wouldn't be an issue. My computer struggled a little to process some MoCap stuff in Character Animator and the fan went crazy but the program still ran quickly with no delays.

Could someone tell me what the ideal specs are for running this program? Do I need more RAM? Is it the processor or graphics card that's the problem? What are the specs that you all use that allow the program to run smoothly. If I have to get a new computer, what would the ideal specs be? Again, I probably won't go beyond 2D animation projects. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. I've already spent months working on this project (a whole freaking quarantine) and I really want to finish it but it's impossible to work like this. Help!

[alank99101739]

I did not reply as I have no advice on hardware. But an alternative workflow in case useful is to export video with transparency (alpha channel) and load the video clip files into AE. I find it reduces the CPU needed to do AE + CH.

[Paoloray]

This thread should tell you all you need to know about the current state of After Effects:

https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911311-after-effects/suggestions/33836305-full-program-mult...

In short, the program has been neglected by Adobe for years. It can't use modern multi-core processors so it relies on single core performance.  I have a CPU (9900k) with good single core performance and AE is still horrible to use.  It's pretty disgraceful really.