Leaving AE for Smoke / Nuke…?

[Bryan Woods]

My background: Camera man > Film editor > Compositor (keying and finishing) > Motion Graphics Artist.

What I’ve learned:
Never do compositing (roto/keying/3D comping) in AE, and never do motion graphics in Nuke. Use the right tool for the job. AE == Nuke in terms of “high end” tools. If I have someone wanting to join my team for motion graphics and all he knows is nuke, I’d laugh at him. If I have a green screen shot that needs keying and my artist wants to use AE I’d laugh at him too! Your post is the equivalent of saying “I’ve been using acrylic paints for years, but I think its time I stepped up to the high profile tools, like Oils”.

Learn a new tool; be that much more valuable to a potential client/house. Its as simple as that. (and have fun).

[Walter Soyka]

General question for the group: how many folks are actually seeing significant motion graphics work done in Nuke?

[andrew donaldson] “My question really is that all you guys who use AE for doing what you do, have you never thought about using Smoke, Nuke, etc to get the ‘bigger’ work? Do you see it as a step up?”

Others have commented on Nuke, but I can talk a little bit about Smoke.

I started training off-and-on with Smoke in 2011, and I got serious about it last year with Smoke 2013. I did purchase a license (it’s 20% off through the middle of this month, by the way), but I bought it for my little studio’s internal use on projects where I can dictate the workflow, not for billing myself as a Smoke freelancer. More on that in a minute.

There’s a lot I like about Smoke (including the CFX timeline workflow, Action, and the pen-oriented and context-sensitive UI).

However, I could not use Smoke as my only tool. There are some things I don’t like (no dope sheet, no vector import, no 3D tracker, no particles, no projection, poor 3D viewport navigation, secondary limits on the Colour Warper module, lots of rendering).

I view Smoke as a nice addition to my toolbox, but at this point, I think nearly every Smoke project I do will have some Ae work in it, too. Like Todd said, these are not either-or choices.

As for learning these tools to get bigger work, I think that at least in the short term, Smoke work will be tough to break into as a freelancer. Learning on Smoke 2013 will not adequately prepare you for working on Smoke 2012 or prior (the internal workflow is hugely different), so you are immediately disqualified from any shops who have not upgraded. Beyond that, there’s a lot to learn before you can sit down with a client in the room, and bedside manner matters, so most shops seem to be looking for Smoke artists with several years’ experience.

The next couple years will be an interesting ride for Smoke. It may finally see bigger adoption, given its reputation, capabilities, its new timeline centricity and its more attractive pricing, and the huge push Autodesk made at NAB last year. If more shops adopt Smoke, then of course the need for able Smoke artists will rise. On the other hand, there’s nothing you can do in Smoke that you can’t do on some other combination of desktop tools, so shops not already using Smoke may not be interested in changing their workflow.

If you have to pick between adding Smoke and Nuke to your Ae experience, I’d ask two questions: First, do you have an easier “in” with someone at one of these shops on one or the other? Second, what kind of work do you want to do more of? Smoke work will probably have some kind of editorial or finishing component, whereas Nuke work will probably be mostly single-shot compositing.

If you want to stick with pure motion design, your current combination of C4D/Ae is outstanding, and it may just be a matter of pursuing a different clientele to get more interesting work.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
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[Andrew Donaldson]

Great points about pre-2013 Smoke Walter, I wasn’t sure how significantly they had changed things. When you start saying things like having a client in the room, that’s when things start becoming a little scary with new tools!

My background is as an FCP editor who now uses AE 75% of my day for Compositing and Motion Graphics. but don’t call myself a compositor or a motion graphics designer!
The wierd thing is im not sure about calling myself a “designer”, call it stupid of crazy, i dunno…

Since i can use C4D, AE and FCP i get alot of broad-spectrum work. And the point of the thread was because AE is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades tools. And to learn Nuke would be a more specialised tool, hence less competition and more money?

Scared of repeating myself here, I’ll let others chip in their 2c/p…

[Steve Drew]

Hi Andrew

We have similar backgrounds. I started editing in 1997 on Avid, changed to FCP around 2001 and stuck with it until I stopped editing in 2010. Throughout that time I was using After Effects to do compositing, title design, motion graphics etc, and before Apple’s Color came out, for grading as well.

I made the switch to Nuke, and the decision to pursue visual effects in 2010 with the sole purpose of getting out of the tvc / broadcast industry and into feature films. It paid off, and I’m now a compositor on several ‘hollywood’ films a year.

As others have said, the choice of software is really down to your choice of career. If you want to stay in TVC / Broadcast, there is absolutely nothing wrong with After Effects. In fact, it’s probably the gold standard for graphic work. If you want to move into really high-end TVC finishing then yes, Flame / Smoke or Nuke are all very sensible options. The benefits of the Autodesk stuff is usually speed. There are clients in the room, paying £1,000+/hr and they want to get things done yesterday. After Effects can get there, but it takes time to. Nothing to do with operator speed – the fastest AE artist VS the fastest Flame artist: Flame will win.

Nuke can be quick to work in when you have to, and know how to, but it really shines in it’s ability to really perfect a shot – and that can take forever. That’s why it is getting to be the only compositing software used in the feature film industry, because as important as speed is, it really is the quality of the work that is the focus 9 times out of 10.

I left the TVC / Broadcast world because of how fed up I was becoming with the expectations of half of the people that were hiring me. Jobs like cutting a 5 min TV promo from 13hrs of footage, and they’d book me for one day. Of course, there were no camera sheets or anything… that kind of stuff depressed the hell out of me. The focus was on bashing things together in as little time as possible, with no refinement time really even cared about, let alone given.

I just decided one day to learn Nuke, off my own back, through fxPhD etc, and try to get a job in VFX – where I would take an ego hit, in not being one of the head creatives on a job, but could at least be proud of the work I was contributing to.

My point with all this waffle, is that it’s really up to you and where you want to go.

I still take motion graphics work from time to time, and I still use After Effects for it. Any compositing I do in Nuke.
Sure, you can composite in AE and do motion graphics in Nuke, there are no rules. But being very experienced in both, my advice is to work with their strengths, not against their weaknesses.

Don’t worry too much about the software. Choose your destiny, everything else will fall in line with it.

Steve Drew
Film Editor & Visual Effects Artist, Melbourne

[Nils Crompton]

Thanks sooooo much for taking the time to write these post people. I’m in a similar boat and this has been an invaluable read.

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