recommended, intuitive compositing app?

pior

Hi all!

So I have been playing a bit with matte/camera projection techniques, basically having fun merging 2D and 3D together (and that's A LOT of fun)

I can output uncompressed videos from 3DSMax just fine, I have all the passes that I need (diffuse, AO, specular...). I also know quite precisely what I want to achieve when it comes to the compositing of such passes (using the zbuffer render to alpha in particles emmiters, that kind of stuff.)

But! I find it hard to find a proper, intuitive solution to merge all the video sources together. I have been playing with After Effects which I believe is widespread solution, but the way video tracks are stacked on top of each other and also the way things have to be nested together in a convoluted way ... doesn't make much sense to me and drive me crazy, quick.

Basically : I am looking for a simple, yet powerful and possibly cheap or free node-based compositing app. I want to be able to take an AO pass track, tint it the way I want in using a color ramp node, plug that in a blending node to mix with my luminance pass, add some flickering self-illumiated lights, overlay particles on top of that ... you name it.

Nuke seems to do all that, but I think it is also too complex for my needs (no idea about pricing either) :
http://static.highend3d.com/articlesimages/31/pic2_tree.jpg

I understand that Maya could do that too, but the way the node editor works in it is honestly a nightmare - at least for me!

I don't mind using a 3D program for the task (rendering video mapped to planes from a top view or whatnot) as long as it is simple.

I know about the free Jahshaka, but it refuses to even open my .avi files and crashes instantly, that's not a good sign.

Thanks for the help!

P

(not sure if this fits in 2D/3D since this is quite distinct from game art - move it over if needed!)

rollin

I worked with combustion.. it´s a lot better organized than AE imo but it´s faar from cheap

eld

blender has a node based interface for compositioning, I've never tried it myself, but I heard it works quite okay.

Bal

I've had my best compositing experiences using Shake (version is pretty old now if you don't have a mac) and Fusion, which is fairly similar but with more powerful 3D tools.
Both are great apps, not too complicated to get the hang of, much better than AE anyways, combustion just seemed bleh.

pior

Woah I am just trying out Shake4.1 ... it is ... SO EASY! Fantastic app. Expensive, but not crazy studio expensive (its 499)
Suggestions still welcome of course!

jipe

Your other options include Nuke and Fusion, but I'm sure both are well out of your price range. If you have a Mac and you want node-based compositing, it's hard to beat Shake's features + price. Just know that it's "dead" software, that is, Apple won't be releasing another version of it...

thomasp

yes, shake's my favourite, too. i found it easy to pick up and pleasantly consistent. commercially it's a dead app now that apple has abandoned it but i doubt you'd find a more intuitive, powerful and affordable package currently. and one with so many user-generated addons and documentation.

most compositing tools are intimidating, inconsistent and expensive but you might still want to look at fusion, motion and toxik - just to appreciate shake more, of course.

Microneezia

You can try this editor, It can do uncompressed however it may have a cap on the export size from what I remember. I used it a decade ago but noticed not to long ago that its still around.

it was easy for me to use at the time.

Zwei-Stein Video Editor

EDIT: its free

glib

Shake is what you want. Run, don't walk, away from combustion. AfterFX is okay, but not great. Depending on what you need to do, the xsi compositor may get teh job done as well (extra advantage is it will auto-update with all your render passes and such, then render out your final comp pass all at once if you've set it all up).

carlo_c

I would recommend fusion, it's not too hard to get to grips with and it's node based so if your used to working with nodes it'll be no problem.

However, I am not sure how much it costs as our uni had licenses for it.

jipe

Fusion is quite a bit more than Shake... like, 10 times more.
http://www.eyeonline.com/Web/EyeonWeb/Buying/PriceList.aspx

Their educational prices are also pretty funny. $1495 for a student version? Really?

ericdigital

Shake, Nuke, and Final cut Pro are all my favorite. Shake and nuke are pretty similar. Shakes a bit easier to use but nuke can handle heavier files. If you only have a pc like me nuke is your only option though.

aesir

Stick with Shake, it is niiiice.

EarthQuake

This goes in tech talk, fools!

commander_keen

Fusion is definitely my favorite.

ScoobyDoofus

I was going to recommend either AE or Shake, so I guess you've hit upon most of the best options so far. I'm surprised you don't find AE more friendly given how PS like it is/can be.

Also...Show us what you're doin! Sounds fun!

pior

I dunno, for me AE is a nightmare as it seems like there is NO WAY one can figure it out by oneself - it relies so heavily on keyboard shortcuts with no equivalent in menus or anywhere else in the app. I like programs where, if you understand the core principles,you can find your way just fine. Photoshop and Max are like that, AE and Zbrush are not! Also Photoshop is built on layers, but in AE you need to nest stuff all the time just to stack things? I just don't see any similarities between the two.

Shake has been cool so far, except, it refuses to load uncompressed AVIs. I also couldnt import 800*600 clips either, but it worked just fine with a 720*480. I just hope it will work fine with 1280*720s because that's what I want to use ultimately.

Also I am having some trouble masking a clip using something else than an aplha channel derived from this clip itself. I can easily turn something transparent using it's luminace or various other blue screen keying techniques, but I am having a hard time punching holes in a video clip using ,say, the blacks and whites of another clip. Am I missing something?

Any beginners tuts, or even better, any extensive Shake nodes description reference would be fantastic!!
I am also looking for websites offering stock video clips free of charge and royalty free, mostly particle effects like snow, falling water, dust in the wind and so on. Always easier than creating them in 3D :P

Thanks so far guys !

howmanyarms

for PC or Linux id say Nuke.

JacqueChoi

I don't think AE is all that bad. Really takes a day or 2 to get it down to what you need (Sure beats any other A/B Roll editing suites), but once you understand it you'll likely never stray from it ever again.

claydough

Haven't used AE in awhile but,
Didn't they introduce a nodal interface option a couple versions ago?

thomasp

pior: http://www.fxshare.com/shake/ for all things shake. the documentation shake 4 comes with is pretty good, too. on the apple it's in programs->shake(folder)->doc, including a node reference. also if you're on apple (and how could you not be? shake on linux is still a few thousand per seat iirc) then you will want to have a look at final cut express as well for all things video-editing. inevitable when you start playing with moving images, really.

and - before you (again: inevitably) start asking about this - the canon HV20/30/40 camcorder series is THE low-budget choice for recording decent quality HD live action footage for import into shake, FCE.

also, don't output uncompressed video files from max etc al. use image sequences. shake works fine with TGAs, RGBs, Maya-style-IFF and some others. it can import at least some quicktime formats, though.

cptincognito

AE can get to be a mess- esp if you're looking to use it for just compositing. I love it though, I'll even do video editing in it. Don't forget about adjustment layers, it can save you from precomposing in some cases.

After Effects is really awesome, and it's great for the masking things you're talking about. If it's just the interface that's got you down, give it some time- it's waaaaaaaay simpler than any 3D app. Watch some vidtuts on masking, read through the hotkeys list, ask questions- I'll answer any specific ones you have.

renderhjs

I am not so fond of AE either, I know the app but it crashed to often already- and is often tiresome and slow because you have to nest every little detail which would work on the fly in most other animation programs.
The rendering performance of AE is bad as well, it freezes almost to death with compressed footage other than MPEG2 (I read they still have a old core thats optimized for MPEG2). So if you work with H264, Xvid or other fancy new codecs its pure nightmare when it comes to rendering times.

AE comes for me in the worst Adobe applications list next to Premiere (very shitty coded, takes ages to adopt new formats and standards) and Illustrator which they haven't really updated either since the 90´s.

OBlastradiusO

Probably Fusion. I've used that often

cptincognito

Why would you work with h264 compressed footage? I'm not gonna say AE is as good as fusion or shake for primarily compositing/batching work, but it's versatile and cheap. Most every motion graphics house I know of uses it heavily for production work.

renderhjs

why should I be forced to only work with MPEG2 for compressed data? Sometimes you have footage that is already compressed or which would be insanely big GB wise with HD resolutions. They should just update their core code and adopt some proper H264 processing optimizations- like now its often a nightmare: it sometimes even crashes because it cant process anymore the decoding stuff in the rendering because of memory or CPU issues.

What I also really hate about AE that if you are unfortunate enough to end up with a non US windows you cant install AE in English it always forces a local language of the OS. Makes me really mad because the German translation is like the super retarded version of AE. I cant find like 90% of the common filters. Like for example Lens Blur becomes Verwackeln who would look of for that ?!? - so fucked up.
For all the Germans that suffer from the same, here is a translation:
http://www.after-effects-blog.de/wp-content/uebersetzung.pdf

pior

You guys know your stuff!

Great advices here again. Fusion? Now I'm confused, why do all compositing packages wear the same name!? Is it like an inside joke? Fusion Combustion Inferno Nuke! I guess I should try Lava2.3 next hehe. But thanks for the pointers.

AE ... Well I learned it just fine 6 months ago or so, even did some fake 2d/3d parallax with it. Followed a great intro to AE PDF book for that. It was fun, but I don't want to reread the whole thing next time just to be up to speed (I tried this week, but gave up). Shake however, (on the mac Thomas yeah) I know I'll pick it up again in 2 seconds next time, and if I want to know how I did something in the past I just need to open an old file and reproduce the nodes. Impossible in AE! ("shit what's the shortcut for opacity again!!!")

Also about images sequences. It makes sense, thanks for suggesting this. It was a nightmare so far to try and link a vid as an alpha channel of another one. SO yeah definately images sequences from now on. Plus I guess I can automate some fancy things I PS by running actions on their folder!

Stupid to hear that the development of Shake is stopped. There are quite a number of things that still need improvement in it (non existent multi touch trackpad support...)

Pfffffiew

TMI

cptincognito

Heh- you joke but that's pretty close to the truth

the grandaddy of awesome compositors is called:
Flame. There was a weaker version that would run on SGI o2 machines called Flint. The editing package based on that system is Smoke. The badass film resolution version of Flame is called Inferno. combustion was the baby of the bunch, and the first one to run on commodity PC hardware.

Flame machines were awesome- the software came with it's own bank of RAIDed hard drives called Stones. When you created a new project, it would actually partition a section of the drives formatted into blocks corresponding to the size of your individual frames. And SGI machines looked cool as hell- purple FTW!

Some flame work i just ran across

the opaciTy shortcut is T, obviously! that one always baffled me... WHY? Image sequences are indeed the input format of choice- export as animation and never chew compressed data in AE

howmanyarms

keep in mind most film res general shot comping is done on linux with shake and some nuke. it was a natural path from IRIX to LINUX. but it can be a hard thing to set up yourself.