Correct me if I'm wrong, but nobody mentionned the Fx Tree. Is it
completly out-dated ?
Le 07/04/2013 12:03, [email protected] a écrit :
Compositing comes in many flavors – and what to use will depend on
your preferences and needs.
The main aspect is how nodal it is.
On one hand of the spectrum you have “hardly or not at all” and that
is where AE and Combustion (remember me?) sit.
Easy to get into for those who come to graphics from an Adobe point of
view – but not something to base a pipeline around. In my opinion, if
it’s not nodal it’s not a compositor – but rather a
mucking-about-with-images software – but granted, people can get some
very nice artistic work out of them – that would be hard to do in a
nodal compositor.
As mentioned Smoke and DS offer a nice hybrid – where you can organize
effects in a timeline or a nodal tree or both. Easy to get into but
they offer a lot of depth.
They offer something quite unique in the way they can handle a
complete project, editing and effects combined.
Then there are the purely nodal compositors.
A nodal tree can look intimidating to people at first (although coming
from a 3D background it really shouldn’t) – but it’s the very
mechanism that allows to manage complex work.
You could in turn categorize them by the complexity of the nodes.
Shake would be a lot of very simple, low level nodes - in the extreme:
one node does one specific operation.
Fusion would be much higher level nodes - a single node can be almost
a software in itself.
Nuke sits somewhere in the middle – and I think that’s part of it’s
success: it adapts well to both preferences – while Shake users would
have a hard time in Fusion and vise-versa.
While any nodal compositor should be able to get the job done – I
haven’t seen any that handled the amount of nodes in complex trees
with such ease as Nuke does – and with high bit depth and resolution
as well, while allowing the tree to remain human readable. Not the
most elegant software perhaps – and it can be a bit unforgiving at
times – but for compositing multilayered/multi-pass CG it just sits
(or rather stands) in a class of its own.
The Achilles heel of nodal trees is timeline and editing based
effects. If you work on a shot by shot basis, such as for film work,
it’s perfectly fine but managing a complete edit is messy at best.
So, in my opinion again, the choice for which type of compositor to
adapt is very much tied in with your approach to projects.
Does it all happen at once in a single timeline (eg. commercials and
video clips) or does each shot have to be assembled separately (film)
before it goes into the master edit. There are grey areas, where VFX
heavy commercials are better off in a film workflow and films that can
be handled with a motion graphics and video clip approach. And for
some kind of work you can just use an editing software and bypass
compositing completely.
Avoid choosing the wrong type of compositor for your workflow – just
because it’s supposedly a good software or just because it’s available.
After effects used for film/vfx compositing jumps to mind as well as
Nuke for motion graphics – it can be done but at your own risk and peril.
*From:* Jason S <mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:* Sunday, April 07, 2013 5:44 AM
*To:* [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: This is what I meant by AE integration
Paul Griswold
Personally for compositing I would always go with Fusion.
Especially now that they have Generation AM out and they just
released some great open source Python modules for pipeline building.
I know Nuke is the big boy these days and I think Nuke and Fusion
both have their strengths and weaknesses, but I just tend to feel
like Fusion is a little more artist friendly and therefore faster
for me to work with.
I heard lots of good things about Fusion... what are it's main
strengths (and weaknesses) you were reffering to in you opinion, or
what do you like most?
Also had an extra 'with' in my reply :)
<.. timeline based /[solutions]/ such as AE (with stacked effects)
it's easier to have longer /with /compositions with a number of
effects shots as single projects while keeping an overview and control
of the whole. >
cheers
On 06/04/2013 7:31 PM, Jason S wrote:
Node based workflows has the advantage of easily having the outputs
of effect streams as sources very easily (visually),
giving more space for complexity while remaning managable &
understandable.
Whereas timeline based such as AE (with stacked effects)
it's easier to have longer with compositions with a number of effects
shots as single projects while keeping an overview and control of the
whole.
Smoke (and DS) harness the best of both worlds.
But as far a I know, both AE & Fusion are excellent.
