My first Shake FX shot

redcap

redcap

Well-known member
Been learning shake this weekend and made this little video. Took me forever, but now I know how to change peoples eye color, along with a bunch of other stuff of course too. It looks simple but its actually fairly complex. But it was actually a lot of fun; which I can't say about the other fx programs..

The video was just some test shots I was doing on another shoot (shot 24p w/ anamorphic & lighting), don't tell her I'm using her as a model for a test shot, she'd hound me to do more! :D

I didn't spend much time on color correction, it really didn't seem that necessary. Yeah it does look a little dark. Oh well.

That being said, shake is the most bestest fx/composting program in the world! After Effects feels like muscular distrophy childrens' play after this program. Its too bad nobody ever talks about it much here.. I wonder why that is.

http://www.redcapmedia.com/personal/firstShakeScript.mov

and here's a link to the source footage (its only 952k)

http://www.redcapmedia.com/personal/eye_blink_raw.mov
 
Oh I was just testing focus while recording just for fun on a short shoot for my PSA.

I'm thinking of making an animation a la' "Waking Life." But I think I have a bit more to learn about shake, and I need to get some more footage of stuff and probably learn maya too. Cause I know nothing about it.

But lemme tell you shake screams on a fast enough computer, you can do stuff in there cause you're not heald back by a clunky interface, and the node view is a completely different way to work with footage/objects.

Next up I'll probably do some logo animations. Watch out, I'm gunna make it look schaweet.
 
How well do you know After Effects? I've been using it for years and I feel like I can do anything I put my mind to with it. I can get shake and I've played with it a little but I really didn't give it much of a chance since AE works for me, but now I"m wondering if I should give shake another.. shake.
 
I learned after effects in like.. high school about 7 years ago.

My main gripe with AE is that its' interface is clunky, and its really gosh darned sloooww. Its much harder for me to figure out, and I usually get fustrated when I drag one of the teeny sliders to the wrong point and screw up my entire composition. I know it well, but once I started learning shake, it really opened up my eyes, and I loved the way it would keep track of the fx you apply. Plus its really darned fast, and you don't have a million palete windows taking up space and generally confusing me (way to go adobe!)

AE is fustrating for me because I'm always waiting for the interface to update itself, and the timeline is very hard to read/ interpret, and the icons are usually way too small and don't really graphically represent anything.

And then theres the whole slowness thing. Adobe hasn't gotten around to updating AE for the G5's, I'm presuming, and it doesn't take advantage of more than 1.5 or 2 gigs of ram. Shake 3.5 on Tiger screams like a hawk.

I'm sure you can do anything you put your mind to, but the tasks that are repetitive and cumbersome are the tasks that seem to plauge my AE workflow. I don't have that problem with shake. You throw on a node, you patch it in to the other node you want it to affect, and I just really like the flexiability of the program.

But learn shake. Its hands down much more powerful than AE and better suited for keying. AE for me is kind of like an animated photoshop with a few extra object manipulation tools to complicate and slow things down. And its still pretty buggy, on MacOSX.

My point is, you could do the same stuff in AE that you can in shake, but in AE you'd probably spend about 2 to three times longer dealing with the goodness that is after effects. In Shake, its plug and play. That and the curve editor is much much much much more rohboust.
Just look at the price difference -

after effects $600,
Shake $2,999 on mac osx, and $4,999 for linux.
 
Hey redcap awesome footage. Did you happen to find any shake tutorials or was this self taught? I've been looking for tutorials online. Any input is appreciated.
 
"Its hands down much more powerful than AE and better suited for keying. AE for me is kind of like an animated photoshop with a few extra object manipulation tools to complicate and slow things down. And its still pretty buggy, on MacOSX."

lol I don't think you got to learn too much about AE according to your statement. hehe saying AE is slow compared to Shake?? what benchmarks did you read it from? do some research first before making such a bold statement. Shake is great if you're staying on FX/Film side but for any other motion graphics work forget it.
buggy on OSX?? not sure what version was it 7 years ago but things have changed quite a lot since then. I'm confident to say that AE 6.5 is very solid release on OSX. never lost work even if it crashed couple of time in that 1 year I've been using it on day to day basis.

btw nice color correction. nothing AE can't handle as well as shake if not better. btw AE has a nod view as well..lol
 
AE has a fake node view :) Try to connect a Blur output in 2 color corrections for 2 different versions after the blur or to merge the current result over the result 3 times with diferent blending modes...

About speed, I guess anything is faster than AE specially when you have a multi CPU machine. Anyway I did Digital Fusion vs AE benchmarks and proved that.

All people I met that worked with AE and moved to non linear compositing solutions, node based, like Shake, Digital Fusion, Flame, etc couldn't regret to AE. Anyway AE is a worldwide compositing solution that many people uses, so it has value and power.

Ulisses
 
I watched 3 of the four CMI dvd's on Shake. They go really really fast, however. The first shake dvd was like 'huh', but after you watch this guy play around with it for the next 5 hours, you start to figure out how it works.

I made that comp from scratch and some ingenuiety :)

Its pretty neat, and I can probably re-use it again. The script I made uses masks, radial gradients and quickPaint, I also threw in a stabalizer, sharpen, monochrome, inverts and a fade.

shakeShot.jpg


And as a response to what you said about using AE 7 years ago, I use AE 6.5 Production version. I don't need to do research, because I use both programs on the same computer. Shake is faster. Enough said.

Sure AE can do everything that shake can, but it sure would be a huge pain in the butt, and would take much much longer. Thats just the way I work, AE might work for you in what you use it for, thats excellent, its just that shake is works for me, and faster. Can we leave it at that?

I like how you said AE 6.5 is stable on mac osx, and right after you talked about crashing all the time in the year that you've been using. You'd make an excellent litigator. LOL.
 
yay, another debate as to which program is better then the other...

anyway...

your comp looks nice man...everything is tracked and color corrected nicely...excellent work.

:beer:
 
haha I had shake to crash on the first time use...that speaks for itself..no program is crash proof..drool.

NOTE: Please read more carefuly I said, couple of times NOT ALL THE TIME. In my use it's been definitely more stable experience than FCP which I use daily and Shake the few times I used it..but then again that's personal experience which will vary.
 
If someone will buy me shake, I will admit it is better...but until then, After effects rocks my world so much more than shake.
 
Dude - I love Shake about as much (and even more) as I love Avid Xpress Pro and Cubase SX3 (music compositing program). You're not alone! :grin:
( Gonna upload some of my work too, all the compositing done in Shake, hehe )
 
nice

nice

Nice footage, interesting effect.

My first thought was, the model has a very ... elvish look to her.
 
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