Which composition software
 

Hi,

I'm thinking about buy a software to compose. But since I haven't touch any, I would like your guys help. After effects or Combustion? Should I have Premiere? Why?

Can anyone explain what each of theses softwares used for?

Hello, Rodi

Actually Premiere isn´t a compositing software but a video editing one. AfterEffects is a somewhat of an industry standard (much like Photoshop), and it´s by far the most common compositing package at the moment. It´s from Adobe (More info available here)
Combustion is Discreet´s most available (and less pricey)compositing package. It has a somewhat steep learning curve (Specially if you´re an adept to Adobe´s Products) but essentialy they both do the same. They composite. You just have to learn how to, and in reality it won´t differ too much whichever one you should choose. You´ll have to learn how to use them anyway.

By the way, now that you asked, Premiere is used to actually edit video, and it´s being used like crazy to make all those anime music videos you can find around P2P networks.

Prices?
Premiere goes for 549 US$
AfterEffects goes for 699 US$
Combustion goes for 4995 US$

Hope this helps ...

thanx adl.

helped me a alot

combustion is solid :) commotion has an interface like photoshop if u like that, butid go with combustion, very nice for the price :)

Digital fusion is also a good one. You can get the full functional demo front their website. It just adds a water mark when your render. Not sure if they have released a 4.0 demo yet since it just came out. But ive heard its good software.

Has anyone tried the new compositing software form side effects called halo i believe?

thanx guys

houdini halo, yeah i tried the apprentice of that, have it on CD, its very very confusing to use :( same as houdini master, seems very flexible tho

yeh i have been playing with the houdini apprentice stuff...its a bit mind boggling:confused: :D

I use both After Effects and Commotion for all of my compositing work.

I use Commotion mainly for roto-splines, color matching and the Primatte Keyer, and I use After Effects for everything else.
After Effects and Photoshop are my PRIMARY 2d weapons:)

Right now, I'm in the process of doing 4 compositing movie tutorials here at SM.

The first 2 are FREE:)

The first one covers:
BASIC COMPOSITING FOR VFX
Part 1
- Compositing theory
- History of Compositing
- Color spaces
About 25minutes long.

The second covers:
- Maya Render Layers, and why they are usefull for compositing.
- Photoshop and After Effects usage in VFX
- Basics of Matte creation
- Maya camera shake techniques. (For no other reason than you should know it:)


The VIP vids will cover:

VID 1 - COMPOSITING for VFX:
- zero-G explosion animation and compositing
- debris creation
- paticle instancing debris
- stock footage pyro usage
- rotoscoping

VID 2 - MORE COMPOSITING for VFX:
- inter-earth solid-body explosions
- advanced matte creation methods
- more debris creation methods
- more paticle instancing debris
- stock footage debris and pyro usage
- more rotoscoping

All of these videos cover After Effects and Photoshop usage pertaining to VFX.

There will also be links to the demo versions so you can follow along in case you don't have the software at the moment:)

Hope you check them out.

One product that seems to be looked over quite often is Boris RED. The Boris family of products has a similar interface to after Effects, but I've always found it a lot easier to use, and a lot more powerful.

The website is at http://www.borisfx.com/ and, from there, you can download the 'keyframer', which is basically a fully-working version, but without the ability to render (you can save out, and render elsewhere, though...)

rage: awesome, can't wait to see those! :beer:

I'm kind of with ragecgi on this, my set up is AE and Commotion accelerated with a Blue Ice board and I love the ease of workflow plus the fact Media 100 can export it's timeline to AE, which is nice.

I haven't used Shake yet but as it's node based set up is pretty much like Maya's I'd sure as heck like to get my grubbies on it.
In your shoes I'd go and see a few demos of AE, Combustion and Shake ask a lot of questions, see which is suited to the way you work then check your budget.
If your budget is tight then you don't need to go for the full AE production bundle the Standard version will do pretty nicely to start you off.

I dont pretend to know much about compositing but why doesnt anyone recommecd digital fusion but me? Is it that bad. Ive only used to to composite my animations that have hardware and software renderings but ive heard its powerfull.

At $5000 it should be powerful.:eek:
Seriously though there is a demo of version 4 coming soon, and again it's node based.
I for one have no experience of it, seen no demo, tell no lies.;)

its not the price of something that dictates how good a piece of software is, like inferno which is a coupla thousaind (over 10 i believe) and its basically the same as combustion but faster and better on networks

digital fusion is a very good program, but its kinda old, havent played with version 4 yet, but 3.1 was pretty good, still prefer combustion tho :)