Nucleo Pro verdict?

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

Yes – but you need at least dual processors (or 1 dual core chip) to see any fast render/preview benefits. Also, 2 GB or RAM is really the minimum.

The more processors you have the more benfit you’ll see. 2 processors might use most of the 2 chips for AE renders and such, but a quad will likely use a lot less then the full processing power. Also, I demod Nucleo Pro on an Octaflex (4 dual core processor machine) and the benefits were huge becasue the octaflex was only getting 40% processor power out of AE on some projects. Nucleo gave it 100% power which you could really see working the magic.

That said, some of the other workflow aspects of Pro, like spec preview and render and commit to disc and of course BG render are VERY helpful.

There are some rough spots like Nucleo magnifies a problem AE has with rasterizing Illustrator art – which translates out to a slowdown in some cases, and there are a few things I would like to see changed interface wise – but it is a good product that is worth the money.

I’m prepping a video podcast on it now – As I said, I demo’d Nucleo Pro at IBC, and wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t believe in the product. I was asked to do it because GridIron knew how much I liked it.

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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
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Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com

[Nicholas Toth]

Its worth it. I was a beta tester and I’ve been using it for a few months. Even though you won’t have the core advantage, your renders will speed up about 50%.

I loaded the beta version on one of our machines (dual 2.7 4.5 gigs of ram OS10.4) and the increase was about 50%. I’m running Pro on a quadcore 2.5 with 8 gigs of memory, and it smokes, and I have nucleo standard on my dualcore Macbook pro with 2 gigs of memory running Windows XP pro, somehow the laptop keeps up with the quad until it comes to MASSIVE scenes, and then I memory out. (Btw — I say scenes because I’m working on an animated series — and we needed a way cut our render times down from around 24-36 hours without opening the network — so I tried nucleo and it solved the problem)

However, I’ve come to realize the strongpoint of the softwarae is the Background render — you can just keep loading the queue and keep rendering all bloody day.

You should have bought it two months ago, when it was only 300 bucks.

[Scott Frizzle]

I agree; it’s the way to go on the quads, and probably the duals as well. It has changed my workflow considerably on more complex projects. Once you get used to all the features and implement them into your workflow you really save a ton of time, even beyond what you’d expect from fully utilizing your processors. Pay attention to how much time you spend watching AE either rendering to RAM preview or to disk while you sit there unable to do any more work. Not only will those render times drop dramatically, but you’ll be able to keep right on working while they chug away.

If you do projects of any complexity at all I say go for it.