OT: Hit Film For Mac

[Aindreas Gallagher]

You’re wrecking my fantasy buzz simon. But yeah – that all has a ring to it.

except for this bit –

“No mograph professional is going to look at any wannabe Ae competitor if it doesn’t match After Effects in every particular.”

that’s the only thing I think is basically wrong – if the competitor comes out the gate focused solely on a key mograph toolset operating at near realtime all the time – then I could very easily imagine AE types putting it into their toolset if only as a rapid prototyping area for type work, design compositing, grading and masking. make it the best possible place to do those key tasks. and have it all be realtime at 1080P.

forget all about C4D pipelines. what you want to have happen is for them to be sufficiently fond of it to start using it in conjunction with AE – then you build out the toolset and slowly start stealing mograph from under adobe. sell it for 350 quid. if you start to gain real traction with core mograph – who can always go onto AE for the crazier stuff – because you made it AE compatible, but if you can get enough people to start slotting it into their workflow, because its incredibly fast and well thought out, that would be 350 times quite a lot of people. say conservatively a quarter of a million licenses in the first three years. thats still eighty million in revenue. that should keep the wolf from the door.

there – I refined my fantasy vision.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “that’s the only thing I think is basically wrong – if the competitor comes out the gate focused solely on a key mograph toolset operating at near realtime all the time – then I could very easily imagine AE types putting it into their toolset if only as a rapid prototyping area for type work, design compositing, grading and masking. make it the best possible place to do those key tasks. and have it all be realtime at 1080P. “

If that’s all you’re asking for, then seriously, it already exists.

Motion does everything you’ve described there and in real-time, not just near real-time.

But I don’t believe that’s all you want … 😉

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “forget all about C4D pipelines. what you want to have happen is for them to be sufficiently fond of it to start using it in conjunction with AE”

I worked with a lovely girl who was a really talented motion graphics artist, who once declared to me in all seriousness that she never wanted to work in anything other than Ae, she could never imagine working on anything other than Ae, and she’d sooner poke her eyes out with hot pins that contemplate a world where Ae was anything other than the only mograph tool.

I think she’s not atypical.

It’s a really tough crowd you’re talking about.

I don’t think their responses are always entirely rational.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com

[Walter Soyka]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “hello Walter – do you, as it were, logically, view what was outlined there as generally representing Motion?”

I do. I don’t know about all the particulars (mask tracking in Motion?), but in terms of the general idea — a real-time application purpose-built for motion graphics — yes, I think Motion is that.

I pointed it out because I disagree with the premise of your argument. 20% of Ae’s capabilities is not going to be nearly enough. It’s tough to quantify, but I’d call Motion a lot more than 20% of Ae. I think that the “high floor, low ceiling” approach is valuable and has a place in the industry, but you’re going to need to convince a lot of Ae artists that they won’t bump their heads to get them to switch.

Also, I think that building a new motion graphics application from the ground up is really hard! There are an awful lot of little things that we expect as designers. Just think about the work required to develop a satisfactory type engine alone.

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
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “Nuke disrupted the flame market right? How big is the AE market?”

I don’t think Nuke disrupted the Flame market (though it may in the coming years with Nuke Studio). Nuke inherited and grew the Shake market (which previously inherited and grew the Cineon market).

As for the size of the Ae market — which one? Ae is a really broad tool, used in a lot of different ways: motion graphics, VFX, compositing, color correction, finishing… and the fact that it somewhat supports all these tasks (some better than others) is a part of its appeal that I don’t think a 20% solution could overcome.

I would love to see more competitive motion graphics applications, and I hope that HitFilm continues to develop — but the bar is set pretty high.

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
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Ricardo Marty] “what about digital fusion as an ae replacement.dont know much about it an it has never been mentioned here but its sold as a compositor and does mograph.”

Fusion is currently available for Windows and Linux only. There’s not a lot of non-Mac software discussed here.

Fusion has some pretty cool tools, especially around volumetric effects. There are a number of interesting plugins for Fusion, too.

But as Aindreas notes, Fusion is a nodal compositor, which makes it better suited to single-shot comps than flowing mograph timelines. It generally competes more with Nuke than with Ae.

Fusion 7 is eagerly anticipated among the Eyeon faithful, and will offer a new 3D system, but in general it doesn’t seem that Fusion has the huge amount of development momentum than Ae and Nuke do. It’s been over a year since the last point release, Fusion has lost a lot of mindshare to Nuke in the last few years, and Nuke is gaining some of the tools and acceleration that previously made Fusion unique.

Personally, I’ll be taking a look when Fusion 7 is released, but if I get into it, I think it would be as a supplement to Ae, not a replacement.

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
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

I normally provide some Ae-counterpoint to Simon’s Motion posts, but I think he’s written a very insightful analysis here.

I’ll mention Mamba FX here, since Simon mentioned Mistika. Mamba FX is a single-shot compositor based on Mistika that sells for 240 euros. It offers a stunning degree of real-time on good hardware.

I’ll also mention that the Ae team knows that Ae is slow, and they’re looking to fix that:

https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2014/01/happy-new-year-and-a-question.html

(This is the sort of thing that has me excited about Creative Cloud.)

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
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Richard Herd]

A version of Dynamic Link between Motion and FCP X would be very welcome.

[Richard Herd]

You said, “In conjunction with AE” and that’s a big deal, a very big deal. Exporting with alpha and importing and all that seems so ancient. Dynamic Link everything everywhere all the time. We ought to be able to import MOtion projects into AE, and AE projects into Motion, and so on. (If that’s possible, please send a link to the tutorial. Thanks)

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Walter Soyka] “Mamba FX is a single-shot compositor based on Mistika that sells for 240 euros. It offers a stunning degree of real-time on good hardware.”

Yes, I forgot Mamba FX which odes look really interesting – I had a brief brush with Jaleo way back wen and really disliked it intensely but things do seem to be looking much more promising these days.

[Walter Soyka] “I’ll also mention that the Ae team knows that Ae is slow, and they’re looking to fix that:

https://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2014/01/happy-new-year-and-a-question.h...

(This is the sort of thing that has me excited about Creative Cloud.)”

Hmmm, they’re looking to fix it (and they have been forever) but I’m not sure this says they’re about to have delivered on it (other than “hypothetically”):

I want to look into 2014 and ask you, our customer, a hypothetical question…

What if we did NOTHING else in After Effects during 2014 other than make it faster? I mean MUCH faster. I mean much faster without a specific hardware requirement (new CPU, GPU, disk, machine, etc., etc.)?

To be frank, that’s not what’s in the works currently for 2014. A lot of our developer resources are going to focus on performance, but also on workflow and creative capability. I am curious though what your reaction would be if we ditched the workflow and creative stuff for 2014, and put ALL of our resources on nothing but making After Effects killer fast. Great!, good, bad, ugly?

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com