Shawn Miller
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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[Simon Ubsdell] ”
I can see where this is leading. You and/or Walter are going to set me a Motion compositing/VFX challenge complete with source material …… that I’m going to fail horribly and then all discussion will be at an end :(“
lol – You’ve exposed me! No, my motives are pure, just seeing if I can lend a hand to your effort. I’m also curious to see how you might go about accomplishing certain tasks in Motion… matching plates, stacking render passes, generally sexing up a shot and whatnot. Hopefully, that will spark even more conversation!
[Simon Ubsdell] “Come on, Apple – perhaps you could put just a little effort in this for my sake?”
Ha ha – for all of our sakes! I don’t think it’s good for the industry to have such few software choices.
Shawn
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[Simon Ubsdell] “I actually think they’ve made a decision to compete in the middle of the market, where the big bucks are potentially going to come from, rather than go for the top-end Ae market. I notice lots of shiny stuff in there that’s designed to sell mass market units. The only thing I looked at particularly closely was the keying which is serviceable but very definitely not top flight and that I think is quite a useful benchmarks for the product as a whole.”
Yes, that makes sense. I admire the work they’ve done so far and I hope they can stay in the game long enough to elevate the software.
[Simon Ubsdell] “Actually you and Walter are responsible for having got me started on the tutorials following our Motion/Ae discussions last summer.”
Ha ha, well… if my being a PITA encourages anyone in any small way to do work that good, I shall endeavor to be more annoying more often. 😉
[Simon Ubsdell] “One of the reasons I haven’t done much in the way of compositing tutorials is not having materials to use other than client material, and not having a funny, fat friend on hand who’s prepared to run around being blown up on camera. Anyone who’s followed Andrew Kramer will know who I’m talking about ;-)”
lol – I know exactly what you’re talking about. I’ve never really watched VCP or Film Riot for the tutorials… I just think those folks are really entertaining. Well that, and to see what products VCP is coming up with next. Let me know if you need any plates for your tutorials, I would be willing to run out and shoot something for you. 🙂
[Simon Ubsdell] “The other reasons are more to do with the limitations of Motion – the lack of true 3D, but also the poor quality of the 2D motion tracking, and so on. (I haven’t looked deeply into mObject but that does seem to be starting to offer the kind of 3D object importing that you get with Element 3D.) That makes it hard to do the kind of flashy stuff that most people want to see. But I’ll certainly give it some thought.”
Yes, please do! Who knows who you might inspire in the process. Again, let me know if I can help in any way. 🙂
Shawn
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “[Shawn Miller] ” I like where they’re going, but if they want to compete with AE, they seriously need to shed their “fan film” vibe and open the application up to third party developers. I also think Motion could be a serious contender to AE… ”
sure isn’t the point that there is currently nothing on the field challenging AE as a key mograph application?”
Yup, and I don’t disagree with your sentiments at all. A modern, dedicated mograph tool with a scripting engine, plugin architecture, near RT performance in the $349-$599 price range could potentially sell like hotcakes. Though to be honest, the application you described earlier in the thread should really cost more like $1,000 – $2,000… you would have to pare down the features to get the cost down to $350.00, I think.
As I see it, only Apple, Maxon, Boris and Adobe are interested in building tools for serious motion graphics artists… but I think Adobe and Maxon are a LOT more serious than Apple and Boris are. Maybe there is a small firm out there working on the tool of our dreams. Question is, can such a firm bring something to market at an attractive price point, that’s feature rich AND stable (cheap, good, fast… pick two)? 🙂
Shawn
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You’re right Simon, it is a tough crowd. Truthfully, I think this is the hardest nut to crack for any software package that’s looking to win over AE users, while luring new designers. They’re not just competing on software features and performance, they’re contending with a VERY energetic and active Adobe user base (designers and developers). Experienced AE operators are used to having boatloads of plugins and scripts that ease and accelerate their work. Intermediate users can easily find really good training for free, and GREAT training materials very cheaply. For potential designers, the visibility of high-end AE work really sort of makes the choice of which mograph tool to learn a no-brainier.
I actually bought a Hitfilm license when it was in its beta stages (back in the FXHome days), because I thought those guys were onto something and I wanted to support their work. I like where they’re going, but if they want to compete with AE, they seriously need to shed their “fan film” vibe and open the application up to third party developers. I also think Motion could be a serious contender to AE… but it would need to be cross platform and have a scripting engine (IMO). 🙂
Lastly, I like what you’re doing with your Motion tutorial site… any plans to do more VFX centric stuff? There’s so much overlap between mograph and VFX now, it almost seems like a necessity to show a blend of the two. 🙂
Shawn
Shawn
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[Simon Ubsdell] ”
AME watch folders are a truly useful concept but my experience has been that they can be really flaky and I keep having to delete them – a shame cos I’d love to use them more.Have you not found this or am I just unlucky?”
[Shawn completely butting in]
I’ve not found watch folders to be flaky at all. I have a laptop tucked in a corner that does nothing but ‘watch’ a public folder on our local network. When I need to do really common encoding tasks, like converting .wav to .mp3, or .wmv to .mp4, I just drop the source files into the appropriate sub folder, and then pick them twenty minutes later. 🙂
Shawn
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[Michael Gissing] “Shawn, I am too small to set up a room for VFX. I sub contract to other freelancers who have their own setup. I don’t have enough demand to justify this. I am excited about Resolve as a finishing tool but I am not needing advanced compositing.”
Ah, I see. For some reason, I thought you ran a smallish (~10 person) post house.
I’m also excited about Resolve 11, I’ve been learning and using 9 and 10 for about a year now, and I really like it. NukeX Studio looks like an amazing opportunity for small houses. It will be interesting to see if its price point encourages the growth of more boutique VFX/finishing shops.
Shawn
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[Michael Gissing] “This is big for VFX people. Such power at a cheap price point. If I need proper VFX work done I always send it to a pro. I don’t try to do a job that is outside my skills base and the worth every penny to leverage such expertise. So being cheaper actually makes it more likely I will use a pro as their cost base has come down but not the concept of paying people properly for talent and expertise. I value my time too much to do a poor job on After Effects just because I have it but can’t drive it like a pro.”
Makes sense. At this price point, would you consider building a bay for NukeX Studio and ‘hiring in’ VFX/finishing work? I mean, for less than $15k you have a more powerful VFX/finishing capability than Flame or Inferno, and NukeX probably has a much bigger talent pool to draw from… I think I’ve only ever met two Inferno operators in my life. Something to consider, maybe?
Shawn
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[Walter Soyka] “The Foundry has just shown NUKE STUDIO, an all-in-one-ish product that combines NUKEX with HIERO’s editorial timeline and adds real-time GPU timeline effects and background rendering.
This should be released later this year.
https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/about-us/news-awards/nuke-studio/
Pricing is still TBD, but they said in the webcast that it will be an upgrade from NUKEX ($8144), and Production Collective ($9600) users get a free upgrade.
Assuming NUKE STUDIO works well, I think it will be a major competitor to Flame with a price tag relevant in the current decade.”
Just took a look at the demo… wow! I would NEVER have imagined that a tool like this could be offered for ~$10k. I’m curious to know what the folks at Autodesk think about this.
Shawn
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[Shawn Larkin] “My perfect world scenario would have Resolve add 3D Compositing — which I am sure will happen — and some sort of amazing roundtrip feature for AE and Motion projects so it really was “all in one” but I won’t hold my breath on that last one.”
It seems a lot of people have this desire. That Resolve will be able to act as a 3D compositor, and also round-trip to AE or Motion. I’m curious, how deep do you want the compositing to be… do you want to be able to do simple keying and maybe overlay a few graphics and text elements (which Resolve can sort of already do)? Or do you want to be able to build up complex shots with hundreds of elements and sophisticated effects… like Nuke?
Shawn
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[Jeremy Garchow] ”
If I pay them $1,000 for the privilege of using AJA hardware, shouldn’t that be enough of a love tap?”Well… no. Hardware lock-in is the real cost of premium software at fire sale prices. 🙂
Shawn