What are you thinking about CS6?

[Angelo Lorenzo]

I haven’t had the chance to cut a full project on it since I’ve downloaded the demo. After Effects and Premiere seem more speedy overall.

Speedgrade still feels like the black sheep, but I’m glad they jammed it in the suite so soon after the acquisition. I graded a music video shot on SD camcorder (kind of a restoration job) and the speed of the program simply flew.

One big issue with the Speedgrade demo is that it doesn’t come with any help file. Really steep learning curve in terms of setting up a project. The color controls you’ve seen a million times before so they are responsive and comfortable.

Some issues I came across:
-It doesn’t seem to like dropframe timecode from EDLs
-To be really useful, the color management settings need to be in unity with After Effects and Photoshop. Speedgrade still uses its own nomenclature for these and it took some guess work before I had a matching color pipeline.

I’m suggesting both as improvements to Adobe.

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

I appreciate the effort Adobe puts into making CS a package that caters to all our needs. With some things like the new features in PSD and Speedgrade there’s a great improvement. Other features are great but the fact that are connected right now with nVidia cards only is a frustrating issue, especially in AE where you have 3rd party 3d plugins that work great on almost any card from the last 2 years.
On one hand it’s exciting to get the 3d options and the ray-traced renderer, especially when you think of the future posibilities. On the other, if you do not have an nVidia card – like me, you are stuck with using 3rd party plugins if you want to get something to the client on time. My fear is that all these new 3d capabilities are going to end up like the use of PSD 3d layers- great idea but not a practical one. (After a few frustrating tries I went back to using Zaxwerks plugins)
3D aside, AE CS6 is faster and it seems to be pretty solid.
Overall, CS6 is a step forward, opening up exciting posibilities.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Walter Soyka]

I think AE CS6 is a huge release. I’d call it an absolute must-have upgrade.

The new raytracer is getting a lot of attention, and it is pretty cool (if you have the right NVIDIA hardware), but I don’t think it’s the most important new feature.

The best new feature by a mile is the global performance cache / persistent disk cache. You have to try this for yourself — or at least see it in action — to get a sense for how big a speed boost it will be for users. Even if nothing else had changed at all, I’d think this one feature alone would be well worth the upgrade. It’s made a huge difference in how quickly I can iterate on a comp or animation. That translates to faster turnarounds or more time to spend getting the look and feel just right.

Check out Todd Kopriva’s video on the global performance cache [link].

I’d recommend getting a dedicated SSD for the new cache system. It’s like an ICE board for a new generation — only better.

Other notable new features include the 3D camera tracker, variable-width mask feathering (finally!), improved bit depth on many effects (finally!), and the ability to convert Illustrator vector layers to AE shape layers.

These features may not all sound sexy on paper, but they all make a huge difference for everyday AE users. I am really happy to see Adobe focusing on performance and workflow.

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

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

I’ve messed a bit with it and these are some of the stuff I’ve come up with –
RoRK – AE CS6 Raytracer.

RoRK – AE CS6 3D Camera Tracker.

This is the biggest AE release since 3D comps/layers were introduced to AE. Global Performance Cache will change the way folks work with AE – ie. they will be hugely more productive. Extruded Text & Shapes will open up lots of creative opportunities for users – as well as introduce a few gotchas such as having a supported nVidia GPU and working without effects, blending modes and masks for continuously rasterized layers – ie Text & Shape Layers.

The new Shift+Parent key combo is great – it’s something you might expect in a situation when Parenting meets Expressions (for transformations).

AE V11 (aka CS6) is awesome for what it brings to users. Interestingly, what it offers is not just the goodies that comes with V11 but also what lies ahead with the Ray-tracing rendering engine, 3D Camera Tracker etc etc etc. But the biggest look-ahead for me is to see how, where and how much AE more will leverage hardware acceleration in AE.neXt.

Cheers
RoRK

Intensive AE & Mocha Training in Singapore and Malaysia
Adobe ACE/ACI (version 7) & Imagineer Systems Inc Approved Mocha Trainer

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

BTW, I’ve got a What’s New in AE CS6 in-class course mostly setup – should be doable within a week. Here are a couple of demo/promo videos
–
AE CS6 Ray-tracing Module

AE CS6 3D Camera Tracker Module

So, if you’re in Singapore/Malaysia or anywhere else in Asia and want a 1 day or 2-day (intensive) look at AE CS6, do send me an email at training_at_broadcastGEMs_dot_com

Cheers
RoRK

Intensive AE & Mocha Training in Singapore and Malaysia
Adobe ACE/ACI (version 7) & Imagineer Systems Inc Approved Mocha Trainer