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After Effects users, are you happy?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I think Nuke and Fusion have some advantages there, although Ae has it’s place as well.”
I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that for compositing Ae simply cannot touch node-based solutions.
(I always like a good argument.)
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Simon Ubsdell] “But it’s not entirely accurate to suggest that Nuke/Fusion don’t have timelines …”
You’re right. Precision in language matters.
I don’t mean to suggest you cannot vary properties with time (keyframes on a dopesheet), or the timing of footage elements within a composite in a nodal system. I do mean to suggest you cannot practically vary the structure of the comp itself over time. You have one static flow graph that must accommodate every frame in the range.
There’s a tradeoff between nodes and layers: what do you want to make easy? Order of operations? Shared references? Nodes. What/how you are compositing elements at a specific point in time? Layers.
(Of course, under the hood, a layered timeline is itself one static flow graph, but it’s the UI that counts.)
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “I do mean to suggest you cannot practically vary the structure of the comp itself over time. You have one static flow graph that must accommodate every frame in the range.”
To what extent is this true/not true?
I can go into the timeline view in Fusion and slide my clips around in time just as I would in Ae. If I have animation associated with that clip, I can move the animation with the clip or not as I choose.
That to me, is varying the structure of the comp over time.
What more did you have in mind?
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Jeremy Garchow] “I’d look more at Motion if had more third party support (like Mocha 5’s new plugin for example).”
Motion does support Mocha (to an extent):
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Walter Soyka] “I’m glad they’re taking this risk and doing the right thing, especially without any real competition to force their hand on the poor performance that Ae has suffered the last decade… but yes, I do see the glints of torches and pitchforks at the horizon, too.”
I don’t mind the effort, but it seems that the state of the software is some form of beta.
When Apple did this, it nearly upended the industry (well, not really, but you know what I mean … there was a LOT more anger).
It’s a weird way to go about it. Sometimes, Ae is exhausting to work in do to these slow downs. I don’t know if that’s necessarily “the right thing to do” our perhaps the slow downs don’t reach the majority of users, and it’s a calculated risk. I’m not sure the previous version was much better either.
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[Simon Ubsdell] “I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that for compositing Ae simply cannot touch node-based solutions.
(I always like a good argument.)”
I am mostly with you, but I am also mostly not a compositor.
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[Jeremy Garchow] ” I am also mostly not a compositor.”
But don’t you find that the boundary between mograph and compositing is blurring more and more over time to the point where plain and simple mograph in the old-fashioned sense almost doesn’t exist anymore?
I do appreciate your more general point though that Ae (and Ps and Ai and a few others) have become such dominant industry standards that interchange is very problematic once you step outside the Adobe zone.
In a sense Adobe dominance does have to do with the superiority of their products, but in another sense it’s very much to do with the demands of interchange within the industry.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Simon Ubsdell] “Motion does support Mocha (to an extent):
https://www.imagineersystems.com/videos/motion-tracking-tutorial-for-apple-...”
I have both the stand alone and plug-in versions of Mocha 5.
I was super resistant the plugin version at first. But now that I have some time on it, I really really like it.
Mocha’s tools, not just the tracking, but the Insert, Remove, Stabilize, and lens options are really cool to have right in your compositor. It is currently not possible to render those modules within FCPX/Motion (and from what I hear, there are no plans to support it either). So yes, I can get some of the stuff from Mocha to Motion, or I could render out mattes and composites from Mocha itself and use those in Motion as media, but as far as getting the data from Mocha to use in Motion as “native data” or use the data to generate mattes, or tracking data, I can’t. The plug-in version does all of this in Ae. (And Fusion, and others, I might add, just not Apple ProApps).
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Indeed, you are absolutely right. And these are very important considerations.
Which is why I only said it was supported “to an extent”.
I’m certainly not convinced that Mocha and Motion will ever get any further than this.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Simon Ubsdell] “But don’t you find that the boundary between mograph and compositing is blurring more and more over time to the point where plain and simple mograph in the old-fashioned sense almost doesn’t exist anymore?”
I do, especially with the advent of “easier” 3D modeling and animation, and the state of the art in terms of tools being more available to everyone, and general advancements in production technology, speed, and cost.
But there’s still, at least in my world, lots of use for pure motion graphics that don’t need much in terms of compositing in the traditional sense.
The timeline is really the only thing that I see as an advantage to Ae layers. I routinely submit consolidated timelines to mograph artists. These timeline may be edits, some of them may be timing suggestions, some of them have text built in for further animation, some of them are stacked layers for further compositing. I don’t see any other application that would allow me to work in a similar manner, although I have not tried the Resolve/Fusion combo in that manner.
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