After Effects users, are you happy?

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Jeremy Garchow] ” 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.”

Fusion Connect does now in fact allow you to do just that out of Resolve – and you have a perfectly conventional Ae style Timeline once you’re in Fusion as well. The implementation is really very good indeed and hugely impressive for a brand new feature.

However, the big challenge from your perspective would be finding enough talented artists with the kind of mograph experience who could produce Ae style graphics for you in Fusion.

That part, I will admit, is not easy …

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Simon Ubsdell] “Fusion Connect does now in fact allow you to do just that out of Resolve – and you have a perfectly conventional Ae style Timeline once you’re in Fusion as well. The implementation is really very good indeed and hugely impressive for a brand new feature.
“

I have to check this out, if not for my own work, but for external work as well.

[Shawn Miller]

[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 think there’s some truth to this – but I also think it’s fair to point out that it’s a narrow subset of compositing tasks that AE is less suited for; deep pixel compositing, using specialty AOV’s, reading OpenVDB sequences, compositing very complex scenes with thousands of elements, color space management per element/layer etc. For straight compositing and procedural animation, Nuke, Fusion, Mamba, et al are hard to beat… until you need to add complex animation and keyframe wrangling to the mix. This is why AE is so hard to replace (IMO), it’s a great animation tool with decent compositing capabilities… there just isn’t anything quite like it on the market.

Shawn

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Shawn Miller] “This is why AE is so hard to replace (IMO), it’s a great animation tool with decent compositing capabilities… there just isn’t anything quite like it on the market. “

I wouldn’t argue with that at all – it’s just that I find that Ae’s compositing abilities are often seriously oversold. I think your perspective here is just the right balance.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Shawn Miller]

[Simon Ubsdell] “I wouldn’t argue with that at all – it’s just that I find that Ae’s compositing abilities are often seriously oversold.”

I completely agree!

Shawn

[Oliver Peters]

[Simon Ubsdell] “Would you care to elaborate on where you think Fusion (and/or Nuke) doesn’t stack up in terms of motion graphics? “

Here’s a hypothetical example of something that I would consider very much in the wheelhouse of mograph. I presume Fusion or Nuke can do this, but would it be as easy as in most track/timeline tools (including nearly all NLEs)?

Let’s take a standard broadcast open of :10 to :15 for “Sports Center”. There’s a base layer of live action sports shots that change to a music track. They have a stylized treatment, maybe colorized or something like that. On top you have full screen letters animating across the screen right to left. The letters are fullscreen tall, so you keyframe the moves to play out S-P-O-R-T-S and then C-E-N-T-E-R over the total duration. There’s a fullscreen wipe of some sort between the SPORTS and CENTER sections. On top of this is some element that goes throughout – a banner or maybe glints on the top and bottom of the frame.

The SPORTS CENTER letters are created as a layered PSD so that each letter has a metallic texture and a bevel. There’s an alpha for the interior of the letter, as well as the full letter with bevel. In the layering of the letters moving across the screen, the interior of each letter is filled with a separate live action sports video, with a bit of the metallic texture still showing through. The bevel stays solid.

It seems to me that this type of look is very easy and fast to achieve in After Effects. What about node-based software?

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Walter Soyka]

[Simon Ubsdell] “That to me, is varying the structure of the comp over time. What more did you have in mind?”

In my mind, for nodes, the flow graph sets the structure of the comp. Time is expressed and can be manipulated, but it is entirely independent of the the structure. For layers, the timeline sets the structure of the comp in the X dimension and varies over time in the Y direction. They are linked.

Fusion has a rocking timeline, but you have to jump to the flow graph to get at the compositing structure.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[David Mathis]

I am interested in the Saphire Efeccts Builder for adding effects to clips but at this point it is not supported in Final Cut Pro X which is a bit disappointing. I would definitely use it in Resolve, so much better then digging through effects. I know this is not exactly motion graphics work but thought it somewhat relevant.

Motion is a good alternative for basic to intermediate work. Parameter behaviors are a nice alternative to After Effects expressions but not as powerful. Groups are better then pre-comping though the other has benefits.

The realtime performance is whats differentiates the two the most. Then again there are features that matter. One is better then the other. Why not learn as many as you can? Just my simple minded thoughts.

[Walter Soyka]

I don’t think that this is all that tricky. In fact, I think looking at a layer-based system, the idea that a track-matted layer has to be adjacent to its matte leads to a disorganization that you can very easily overcome with a free-form flow graph. Matte management is the bane of layered compositors.

IMHO, one of the areas where Ae shines the most for mograph are its design tools: text and shapes. I can’t think of why this should be an inherent advantage of a layer-based system, and I think it’s more of a target-market situation, but it is interesting to note that Ae/Motion seem to have markedly better toolsets for straight graphic design than NUKE/Fusion.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Oliver Peters]

[David Mathis] “The realtime performance is whats differentiates the two the most. “

Actually one of the things that I find really useful in AE is the fact it severely throttles done resolution while you scrub a complex timeline and then refreshes the image when you stop. That makes it fast to use without the “stickiness” of scrubbing through other apps’ timelines.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com