AEvShake

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Shake is strictly compositing. It’s also and EOLed product. Apple announced that Shake won’t exist anymore as it is now and that it would be rolled into a “next generation product”. Whatever that means.

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com

[Rezzet]

Follow up question then, how does AE stack up to Combustion?
People told me about “stepping up” to Combustion I took a look at it and besides different interface, I don’t see much of the advantage. Any thoughts?

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

As far as compositing goes, Combustion can be better, equal or worse than AE depending on your taste or needs. Many people swear by its’ motion tracker, for example. On the other hand, two important composting tools, expressions and material options, AE got them long before Combustion and probably better.

For motion graphics, they are not even close. AE is in another league entirely. Not even Apple Motion comes close to AE in terms of type animation, for example. Combustion doesn’t even begin to try.

I’ll tell you an anecdote that I believe will make you feel more comfident about you own opinion regarding what you hear out there. Last year I produced/directed a motion graphics spot for use in one of those big fashion shows. There were these guys which were accepting all the spots and placing them in single tape for exhibition. They told me they voted our spot as the best of the show, and then of them said: Wow, you really used Combustion a lot here, didn’t you?

The whole spot was made with AE.

The moral of the story is: there are a few snob people with preconceptions of what is better or what is worse based on things that are outside or beyond the nature of the application. Usually these people know very little about the creative capabilities themselves, since they’re worried in what they believe will make them look good, sort of speak. This is not to say there aren’t people with very valid reasons to prefer Combustion, but those people will surely have deeper arguments to give you than talking about taking a step up. Some of the most knowledgeable people I know in terms of motion graphics and yes, compositing too, use AE every day as their main tool.

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com

[Rezzet]

Thanks, Adolfo.

Much appreciated.

[Andrew Shanks]

Hey dude,
how’s it going? I saw your post over on the Shake forum so will probably echo my views over there as well. It really depends what you want.
After Effects is the best Motion Graphics app on the globe, hands down, forget any of the rest, they are but pretenders (…ask anyone who does a serious amount of desktop based motion graphics and they’ll agree there).
In regards to compositing, AE is okay, but I prefer Shake.

As for combustion, ….yeeeeuck, …I used to use AE and Combustion, …but haven’t touched combustion in years, …I used to love its keyer, colour corrector, particles and tracker, but AE has surpassed it in recent years (and in regards to particles, I have particle illusion 3, which is the next generation particle generator that combustion has in it, …and it works far better as a stand alone, integrating well with AE). Combustion doesn’t know if it wants to be a nodal compositor, a layer/timeline compositor or a baby Inferno, …in the end its UI is a dogs breakfast compared to other desktop compositing systems around.

I use both Shake and After Effects pretty heavily, both have their strengths and weaknesses, ..I generally use After Effects for fast turn around work (such as TV series) and anything requiring timing of lots of layers (even if I do it as a guide then recreate it in Shake later on, …I did it with a recent film involving a crowd of a few hundred chimps, timing of each character was critical, and in Shake it would have taken me a lot longer to finesse and time everything out). Shake I generally use for Feature Film work or when I want to get down and dirty with my keying and compositing (due to the under the hood power shake has, …much more tweakability than in AE), …likewise sometimes I will produce mattes (or keyed elements) in Shake that go back into a comp I’ll be finishing in AE.

So there you go. If you have a large budget maybe concider Digital Fusion, …but for me the combination of AE and Shake fits very well in my freelance bag of tricks (I also use Silhouette Roto in AE for all but my most basic roto work, …it totally kicks arse, …if it’s good enough for WETA it is good enough for me 🙂

Hope that helps,

Cheers,

andrew

🙂

[Mylenium]

Actually combustion* is very much like Shake, Fusion and Nuke a compositing program. For motion graphics, AE is pretty much the best tool (with a decent collection of additional plugins). I dunno if you really would be “stepping up” with combustion for this kind of work. Their text tools are very basic and what they call “expressions” is simply a joke. It is a good tool for keying and color correction as well as roto work, but at least in the first two areas AE also has some decent tools by means of Color Finesse and Keylight. If you really have the work for it and wanna be extra-smart, use both of them depending on the job.

As for Shake – Shake is dead. Apple giving it away for a very modest price doesn’t change the fact that it’s old technology Apart from that, you always need complementary programs to create content inside it, so as a standalone solution for motion graphics it simply wouldn’t work.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Tony Kloiber]

Try it out for yourself and find out what you think. What matters more is what you can do. Just about anything can be done in most mograph/compositing apps. For somethings you need an outside source, somethings are easier in one app. then the other. What it comes down to is what you do a lot of and what can you do. If you rely on a type animation preset from AE and can’t be bothered to layup text in a program like AI or AP and bring it into Shake then you know which program to use more. If you can’t stand not being able to apply tracking info to a mask and have per knot feathering then use Shake or get a roto plugin for AE.

Tools help, they don’t create.

TonyTony

[Nicholas Toth]

Check out Fusion 5.

Its like Shake crossed with AE with an awesome particle system.
Its node based, which is sometimes hard to conceptualize the linear flow, but its pretty friggin powerful.

Most importantly, its about the artist. If you know the software you then know the limitations of it, and the more tools that you have the more approaches you can take to a project to have the most efficient and best looking workflow. Kind of like ” oh we’ll do this in AE — then this in SHAKE (or the rumored PHENOMENON) — then color correct the whole damn thing together — ”

Nicholas Toth
Freelance Animator
nicholastoth.com

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

I’ve heard and read very good things about Fusion. But I don’t think there’s much of AE, or a motion graphics app , in it.

In the last 10 years I’ve seen a whole spectrum of “AE killers” , which are now dead or in intensive care, yet AE is more alive than ever and has a market penetration that is probably higher than the combination of all others.
Tomorrow it’ll be the Phenomenon thing. Now it’s Fusion or Nuke. Before it was Motion, Combustion, Shake, RED, Commotion, etc. They all had promising and worthwhile capabilities. Some of them are better than AE at specific, specialized things. But so many people are constantly seeing the next thing that will make AE obsolete. Yeah, sure.

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com