Simon Ubsdell
6
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Thanks, Stephen.
I’m a bit of a one-trick pony with my filters – I always reach for Indent first and hope it does the job 😉
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
Well, that’s good to hear, Bruce 🙂
Sounds as though you’ve been having a bit of s struggle on this one.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
This may not be what you’re looking for, it’s so hard to tell from the low-res framegrab:
If it’s helpful here’s a link to my Motion project:
https://tokyo-uk.com/downloads/Label.motn.zip
I made a smaller version of the main shape to sit over the top of the main one and then I used the Indent filter to get the inner edge effect.
EDIT: I meant to add that if you make the inner shape darker you can create the inward bevel that you see above, while making it brighter creates an outward bevel.
Hope that helps in some way.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Tim Wilson] “The value of RAW is overstated I think. For a lot of workflows, it creates insurmountable problems. “
Could you please engrave this in stone and set it up where everyone can see it for evermore?
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Shawn Miller] “Let me know if you need any plates for your tutorials, I would be willing to run out and shoot something for you. 🙂 “
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 🙁
Seriously, thanks for your encouragement – and Walter’s too, of course.
It’s been an interesting adventure that I certainly wouldn’t have embarked upon if it weren’t for you two.
What it’s shown me is both how far you can push Motion if you try hard enough, but also how impenetrable the barriers are when you run into them.
Come on, Apple – perhaps you could put just a little effort in this for my sake?
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Walter Soyka] “A lot of the value that Ae adds is the VFXy stuff. You noted LUTs and mask tracking in your original feature list. I’d consider these compositing, closer to VFX than mograph — yet you think they are essential features for mograph. I think that’s because the lines around mograph have become so blurred.”
The expansion of mograph to encompass so many more areas than just mograph in the old-fashioned sense is almost certainly directly driven specifically by what Ae has come to be over the years.
More users started to like using Ae for VFX, so more VFX tools got added, so more mograph began to have a VFX component, and so on. Mograph doesn’t especially need 3D camera tracking – 2D should be enough for most purposes, but now it’s here we’ll see 3D tracking everywhere.
Ae has effectively defined the market that any competitor has to get to grips with. Mograph means what Ae and its devoted users have defined it as meaning.
Which is why Aindreas’ dream application is going to struggle. You can’t appeal to the Ae audience without offering the full range of tools and workflows that Ae has defined as “essential”.
I think the point you make about convergence is right – we see it happening everywhere, and we may well start to see fewer specialist tools and more monster agglomerations, which may well not do the job as well but which seem to be what the market is asking for.
I think that’s a shame – I’m a big believer in dedicated tools that are refined to do a few things well rather than many things indifferently. And I have no problem in hopping between applications to take advantage of their individual strengths. But I suspect I’m in a tiny minority.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Shawn Miller] “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. “
Yes, I think these are really key points – no rival product is going to be able to create that kind of supportive ecosystem any time soon. It’s taken decades for Ae to get there.
[Shawn Miller] “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 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.
[Shawn Miller] “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. :-)”
Actually you and Walter are responsible for having got me started on the tutorials following our Motion/Ae discussions last summer.
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 😉
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.
The interesting thing about working in Motion is that because you don’t have many of the easy instant tools that come with Ae, you have to build things from scratch and/or create workarounds, so it does actually teach you to be more inventive and resourceful and that’s no bad thing. But the limits are very obvious and I’m not at all sure that Apple will be trying to do anything about that – I think to move it forward, they would really need to bring in a whole new team with a higher end mindset and skill base. Not at all likely …
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[Aindreas Gallagher] “but the thing is you’re forgetting how incredible this new application is, how tightly focused on mograph and performance, how slick and clean the toolset is, its really an amazing app. I wish you could see simon, how incredible this competitor that integrates so well with AE is. “
Well, hell, yeah! If it glows like that it’s gotta be good, right?
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com -
[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 -
[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
