AE or Shake???

[Tom Marshall]

Tom, I beg to differ, After Effects is used in major hollywood movies all the time.

- Derrick

That's true. It is used by several agencies, The Orphanage being one of the key shops. But even in AE Studio Techniques - not sure of the exact book title - the guy who wrote it even says that AE isn't the best solution for certain tasks. It's very limited because it isn't node-based. It's like trying to write a novel with Notepad. Sure, it can be done, but it's a major pain in the arse.

Node based compositing is far superior in my opinion. Shake is a good place to start since it is cheap. I would move to Nuke. I have both actually. Getting to like Nuke more and more.

I never started with Shake, since I'm on a PC. I had 2 choices, really - Fusion and Nuke... and I LOVE Nuke... :love4:

I'll second the book that was mentioned earlier, "Digital Compositing for Film and Video." It's a great book for teaching the fundamentals. Another great book is "The Art and Science of Digital Compositing." Both excellent books.