…Meanwhile over in Crazy Town, Smoke launches on the Mac.

[Tim Wilson]

[Alan Okey] “I always loved Combustion and hated After Effects in no small part due to their respective interfaces.”

Apple took on much of (all of?) the Combustion team many years ago. I’ve lost track of those guys since then, and have no idea what they’re doing now, but the first product to come out of their new efforts was Motion.

I wouldn’t draw even a single conclusion about FCP X from that, except to say observe that it went even further down the interface redefinition road than Combustion did. In that sense, it might be another glimpse of what Apple is thinking about minimizing the importance of the timeline.

In any case, I agree that it’s quite understandable why Discrete-desk artists are intrigued by what they’ve seen of FCP X so far.

[Chris Borjis]

[Alan Okey] “I’ve also heard that to really be fast in Smoke, you need to have a thorough command of its keyboard shortcuts…”

We hired a free-lance smoke editor once for a pretty sophisticated job (tons of animated elements and keying required) that had to be done in an impossible short time.

Watching her push the limits of that then cutting edge SGI hardware was a sight to behold!