Software and approach to creating magical landscapes with a little animation?

Development Character & Animation
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Hi all,
I’m new to the world of CG and would like a little help to be put on the right track.

I’m very fond of the ambience videos on youtube and would like to create one or two myself. I’ve researched into the subject and have come across a number of software (Maya, 3DS, Blender, After Effects, Photoshop, Unreal, Megascans, Nuke, Final Cut Pro, etc…) but I am yet to narrow down what it is that I actually need.

I do not intend to build characters or computer games. I would like to build a landscape with a little animation. For example, maybe a wooden hut in the foreground with dense forest as the background - that would be the landscape. The animation part would be some raining falling and obviously the sound of rain too.

With this being a trial run, I would like ALL the needed software to be free for me to use. If I do a good job, it may become a possibility that I may sell my creations (not sure how) but I would need the software to also be free for commercial use. I may even published to youtube for feedback and if I rack up views then I may earn a couple of dollars. Essentially I would like to be able to create, post online and sell my creation with no copyright infringement or be breaking the law in any way.

Please can someone narrow down/suggest suitable software for me goals?

Many thanks.

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As far as software goes, there’s no advantage to using Unreal Engine for you, there’s just not any features there that would help you and you’d still need a separate 3D software to work with Unreal.
Blender is the only 3D software that’s free, so you can use it to do what you described.

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Most of the apps you list cost money. Most of these break down into apps that modify images or videos and some allow creating images/videos.

So choices for you: (Free) Blender (3D creation tool) and Unreal (3D game engine).

I would suggest looking at Unreal marketplace, especially each under the Free section.
What you describe can be done easily in Unreal IF the model you want exists.
Creating a forest landscape is easy in Unreal. A hut can be obtained free or cheap in the marketplace.
Megascans are free if you use Unreal and can easily be added for more realism.
There are different ways to create rain in unreal or you can buy add ons to provide rain and sound effects fairly inexpensively)

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Thank you darthviper107 and scottunreal for your replies.
It’s all still new to me and I have a lot of groundwork to do before I understand what does what and how each software gels with each other.