Combustion 4

A

Aron Peterson

Active member
Is anyone here using Combustion? If so can you tell me what benefits I can get from it. I want to look into it and see what it can do for me.
 
I really like Combustion for it's industrial strength compositing and great particle system (based Particle Illusion). It's also great for stabilizing footage. It's functions overlap somewhat with AE, but if AE is a swiss army knife, Combustion is a little more of specialized tool. The learning curve is a little steep, but for advanced users (not me), some effects are much faster to create than in AE. I've always liked the interface, but with AE's new interface, the advantage is minimal. If you don't have AE, get AE first.
 
my take/spin:

Combustion is a dedicated compositor with excellent node based approach and all kinds of goodies


After Effects is more general purpose - you can do compositing, just not quite as elegantly. BUT....After Effects is a top-tier motion graphics program - in a perfect world, I'd do composites in Combustion (or Shake or Nuke etc.) and mographix in AE.

AE is a good place to start, grow into Combustion if you need more power if you're just starting.

AE is my all-time favorite user interface - flexible and scalable, best keyframing environment I've ever used.
 
I like combustion. Mostly because of the interface. I learned compositing on Flame and Inferno so Combustion was like a familier app. But Shake is my preference.
 
MikeCurtis said:
my take/spin:

Combustion is a dedicated compositor with excellent node based approach and all kinds of goodies


After Effects is more general purpose - you can do compositing, just not quite as elegantly. BUT....After Effects is a top-tier motion graphics program - in a perfect world, I'd do composites in Combustion (or Shake or Nuke etc.) and mographix in AE.

AE is a good place to start, grow into Combustion if you need more power if you're just starting.

AE is my all-time favorite user interface - flexible and scalable, best keyframing environment I've ever used.
Click to expand...

I have a weak spot for dedicated interfaces, that's why I'm interested in Combustion. I used to be a heavy After Effects and Lightwave users years ago, and Combustion reminds me of how much I enjoyed Lightwave.

I guess I have some questions then.

1. Does Combustion support IMX format or will I have to import HD in uncompressed Quicktime instead?
2. How good is the rendering output in HD? By that I mean is it totally clean and as artefact free as the footage captured by the HVX200?
3. How fast is the rendering engine?
4. Does it have real time playback?
5. Does it support layered Photoshop files?
 
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