Combustion/AE/Shake?

[peter orland]

Hi. I'm not sure where to post this so I've posted here.

I'm a camera operator by day, and a rabid movie buff/independent filmmaker by night (and weekends).

I would like to learn one of the composting programmes to add to my existing skills, mostly for keying (greenscreen), but also for all the other things that these programmes do, that I, as a novice, am unaware of at this stage.

The guys I work for have PC's running Premier and Avid Xp, and Mac's running Final Cut Studio which I can access whenever they aren't used and I'm not working. I have a basic knowledge of all three programmes for what that's worth.

The cost factor of buying the software (Shake, After Affects, Combustion) isn't that big a deal to me as they are all available at education prices, and I'm not learning it to become an operator for hire or anything along those lines.

So, if anyone could shed any light or opinions of the pro's and con's of these three in regard to usability, ease of learning, or anything else that I should know, please post away.

Thanks.

[Ogrus]

Its the eternal dilemma....
Both Combustion and AE are pretty similar in ways of workflow, the results are the same, i`d say there are more aftereffect tutos and plugins out there than combustions. I started with combustion but soon moved over to AE because it was easier to learn due to the vast amount of info.
If you want to go pro, i suggest Digital Fusion 5. Its a whole different story and for bluescreening its grreat. Its workflow is nothing like AE or combustion.
As you say, you are amateur, go for AE, i´d do that (im a advanced-amateur) I use AE. (that not meaning you cant do amazing comps with AE)
Digital Fusion is just more pro, but basically same results...

[peter orland]

Thanks Ogrus.

I looked up the Digital Fusion 5 on their website...but when you don't really know what your looking at it all looks the same.

You didn't comment on Shake? Also do you know of any other forums that deal more with this kind of software that I could check out?

Thanks.

[Greggl]

Go AE... its got the most plugins, the most support and its inexpensive.
(I composite for a living btw.)

[peter orland]

G'day Gregg, thanks for joining in.

I looked up your site, awesome reel, the opening shots with the big torpedo thing..? is unbelievable.

Although I am a little confused as on your home page it reads at the bottom...

"Tools include Shake, Maya, Photoshop and AVID Media Illusion." No mention of AE?

On the price point, as of today in Australian dollars I can buy Shake 4 for $585 - AE 7 for $445 and Combustion 5 for $560. Does that change anything?

Thanks again for the help.

[Greggl]

Nope... Shake is a compositing suite.. its really limited for things like motion graphics. Combustion is a neat package, but its a 'limited' suite... its the bottom tier of a rather expensive set up other solutions, so its artifically crippled. Its those bells and
whistles that are 50 grand more that REALLY make discreet apps powerful.

Then there is AE. I don't like AE as I 'think' in terms of node/tree based compositing.
So Illusion and Shake are my tools. I also dont do any motion graphics work, so I
don't need that toolkit. I've used it a bunch of various projecs, but I've never owned
it and really dont plan to. I learned on Flame and Illusion and made the Illusion
investment... a poor one as its a dead app :)

AE will teach you good habits and is a SOLID package though. Thats the route I'd
go.

[peter orland]

I too doubt if I will be doing much in the way of motion graphics, and if I did I would probably use Motion in Final Cut Studio as I already have a basic understanding. My main requirement at the moment is for the keying and other compositing tasks.

Still AE?

Thanks again.

[Greggl]

Still AE :)

[k2director]

As of today, Shake has been repriced from $2999 down to only $499. Plus, it's now a Universal Binary app, so it runs fast on Intel Macs. See http://www.apple.com/shake/

[oneinfiniteloop]

Peter, I use Shake and AE both. I primarily use Shake for compositing because like Greg said "I 'think' in terms of node/tree based compositing".

That being said, Shake is very powerful, but it's also more difficult to learn and takes some time to understand the interface, logic, and workflow. If you're familiar with timeline based apps like FCP, Premiere, etc, then AE will be much easier to jump into and learn. AE is a powerhouse app that is wide in use, so learning it will give you more flexibility as well as there being more knowledge out there on it.

Download and try both, you can buy each for fairly cheap, especially if you go educationial, but try the demos first:

Shake Demo (http://www.apple.com/shake/trial/)

After Effects (http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/)

[redcap]

Did you know that Apple's Motion is based on the shake rendering engine?

And apple reports that you can open up motion files in shake.. Haven't tried it, but it might be interesting.

Regulardless, having learned AE (back in version 3), and having used shake for a few years now, I don't really ever touch AE. Ever. Shake is really cool, really fast, and once you get the hang of it will change the way you work with digital compositions. Motion is pretty cool too, if I need some sort of motion graphics type animation.

It is really worth the time to learn Shake, believe me. Plus its quite impressive when you show people the shake interface. Dunno why, but people are overwhelmed when they see it. But its really not all too complex - compared to a multi-layer multi-filter AE project file.

I project that a lot more tutorials and stuff will start hitting the web ( www.highend3d.com is a pretty good source already) due to the new pricing structure.

[peter orland]

Hello all.

I have downloaded lots of demo clips of combustion/AE/shake just to get some idea of how they look etc...after the various input from you guys.
There was an interesting clip from the combustion site covering the G buffer builder, it showed how you could separate different parts of a still image (the z depth?) and selectively define which areas would be in focus, and how if you tracked into the still the focus would shift perspective. I couldn't work out whether AE or Shake are capable of doing this sort of thing (maybe they all this feature but call it something else).

Is this something that is common to all these kind of compositing programmes, or is this something that is unique to combustion? It seems like a very useful feature.

Sorry if this is really basic.

Thanks.

[oneinfiniteloop]

Yes, this is a common technique that has been used in the days before computers, generally painted glass plates. It is commonly referred to as camera projection or camera mapping and any serious compositing package has the tools to do this. With v4 of Shake, they added multiplane compositing, so I think that's supposed to make it easier, but I'm on 3.5, so I'm not 100% on that one.