Best Compositor..houdini, Fusion??

[Overload]

Ok I know this is one of those "Windows or Mac" questions. The studio (www.artisticimage.com) that I am at, we are trying to decide the best route for compositing software. They have been looking into buying a few seats of Houdini master, but they have invested alot of time money into 3dMax, RenderDrive, and Thinking Particles. I personally prefer Houdini over all of them.

Anyway to the real question. We all can't stand how weak AfterEffects and Combustion are with High Res footage. And want another alternative. Right now its between, Nuke, Fusion, and Houdini. I hear alot of complaints about the COP's in Houdini (but I have not used it enought to make the call). Maybe someone can shead some light on this, or maybe personal experience or preference. We want to make the decision soon, and go ahead purchase and train on it. Thanks guys, your always a great help!

Anthony

[michael]

as much as I'd like to say go with Houdini for compositing...I can't...go with Nuke...

[symek]

All depends on what are you going to do on this software.

Halo is great but still not ready to handle common/daily image processing tasks. It's more like a compositiong aid kid for 3d masters . There is no reason for complaining about that - this is noticeable SESI decision.

If your work is mostly TV/commercial/motiondesign - I would prefer DF over Nuke/Shake(?).

The only advantage of Combustion is price. Autodesk likes to give it for 1/10 of its shoping price with any other of its products. And this is the end of bright sides.

AFX on the over hand is quite useful because of its integration with others Adobe products and numbers of plugins. As long as you work on motiondesing and TV (and you're familiar with it) it's ok.

At the end: Nuke/Shake. Nuke is still uncapable for fast graphical works/small retouches/finishig, so as long as you not planing to work on hard/high-res/heavy/tricky 2K/4K shots it will not show its power. Simple title job will drive you to madness. Shake handles little better in this respect although not so good as DF/AFX. Both Nuke and Shake are not "every task" tools. Maybe Shake was little better both in TV and film work. Now Nuke rulez in film but it's really hard to imagine its role in TV studio.

I still heavly rely on Shake and I'm sure it will keep its possibilities up to 2-3 years from now.

I'm also to lazzy to jump deeply in DF. Aside this Nuke is purely movie-like tool and is unusable outside of this context (exept some obious exeptions ) (sorry guys!)

cheers,

SY.

[3__]

DF for sure. Its taken a turn for the worse in recent times though

(slower, stickier UI, dev time 'wasted' on 3D and linux instead of

making things faster and more elegant).

It is perhaps the most elegant, practical desktop compositing app

for win32 I've tried since rayz. only problems I've had are with

sequences not showing in the loaders (if they are not 'on' at the

current frame) and the awkward spline editor (nothing comes close

to jive, ever). sometimes have to watch for matte lines building

up when alpha channels are combined through merging (more of a user

problem, but don't remember it being so common in previous versions)...

Also you'll probably need to buy a 3rd party keying plugin... ultimatte

or primatte, I think.

-cpb

[symek]

DF for sure. Its taken a turn for the

It is perhaps the most elegant, practical desktop compositing app

for win32 I've tried since rayz.

Rayz! Where are you?! So nice app. it was. Bought by Apple though...

[Visual Cortex Lab]

my vote would go to shake... or yeah .. DF on win32 ... but Shake at first.. ther's linux anyway

my 0.02

[Overload]

Wow, fast replies...thanks dudes

All depends on what are you going to do on this software.

Aside this Nuke is purely movie-like tool and is unusable outside of this context (exept some obious exeptions )

Yea, that was my concern also. We really want to have something with alot of functionality...

DF for sure. Its taken a turn for the worse in recent times though

(slower, stickier UI, dev time 'wasted' on 3D and linux instead of

making things faster and more elegant).

I will have to look into that.... thanks man.

[one' date=Sep 19 2006, 03:41 PM' post='30815]

my vote would go to shake... or yeah .. DF on win32 ... but Shake at first.. ther's linux anyway

Yea Shake was another option, but they dont want to turn to linux (because it takes lots of time to learn, and then training people..bla bla ) Or buy a few G5's, which are freeking expensive. So basically we want to stick with Windows, which seems to work well with the current pipeline. Thanks again for the replies...

[rob]

I have been using DF a feature and after my experience with it I would never use it ever again. it really is the poor mans shake. Shake wins hands down anyday even the old windows version. Its a shame theres just not a a good mid level compositor out there. Ive not heard much about Discreet Toxic or Nuke. I would get the various resellers in and really give the different applications a hammering and see what suits your pipeline,anything has to better than DF

rob

[Val]

if you widows based then DF is best

and most AFFX plugins working with DF.

[MADjestic]

if you widows based then DF is best

and most AFFX plugins working with DF.

My primary compositing application of choice is Shake, imo it is good for everything except montage-like operations (when you need to create titles and alike), it is doable, though the way shake works with the timeline may seem awkward (if you are used to AFX). It has the worst 3D compositing tools as well (the least developed, thanks to Apple)

Nuke is very much like shake (workflow-wise), though aimed at movies – it simply kicks ass when you need 2k-4k cineons or dfx to process. I haven’t really tried it’s retouching tools though, it seems to be all there, but whether it is comfortable or not – I can not say. Shake is very inexpensive now – check the Apple site about it’s price. Nuke+Shake for retouching/keying might be a great combo!

AFX – has tons of plugins and if you want to create some morphing, intricate – transforming effect – it is the tool of choice. It has a nice timeline with all your key-frames marked. I often saw it used for montage-like operations as well.

DF seems to be a little bit of everything (AFX and shake, but not Nuke). It definitely lacks simplicity of shake, but has some nice features (including hundreds of plugins) of AFX. I didn’t like the way it works with masks and channels, if you re used to the way shale processes individual channels and masks, DF is less intuitive/elegant in this respect.

My $/100*2

EDIT:

Oh, yeah - I forgot to mention HALO - it's a great post-processing/relightning tool for a houdini pipeline. It lacks retouching, keying and tracking tools though. Not diving too deep into its' memory use issues - I find it unsuitable for everyday compositing tasks.

[digitallysane]

From my (limited) experience, Fusion is very good. The new 3D space it's very nice and improving. The software is fast and it scales well with multiprocessor PC. As a matter of fact, it "feels" the most interactive in the viewport, compared with AFX or Nuke or Combustion.

It has some particularities compared with other node-based, film oriented compositors, which make it somewhat more flexible and adaptable to various jobs (like motion graphics, titling, commercials).

What I like (and didn't find in other node based compositors): very powerful Text operator (excellent for motion graphics); very good path-animation options, and very good modifiers for connecting various objects to paths, with offsets etc. It generally has nice options for building relationsips between objects and parameters, without the use of expressions (expressions are also available); full 3D particle system, pretty powerful but often quite slow; 3D import (FBX etc), very good for integrating camera tracks; can be integrated with some selected capture/output boards so you get preview on a broadcast monitor; pretty good array of third party plugins.

All this are things which you can't find in Nuke (for example) and generally in more film-oriented compositors. I feel Fusion is in the middle between a node compositor and a graphics/effects machine. Kind of a desktop Flame if you want.

However, Nuke has better and more color correcting tools. I like its workflow with many channels (like Halo). Also I don't trust Fusion keyers very much and i don't understand why they don't bundle Primatte or something equivalent. Nuke's 3D space is also very powerful and offers the option of tweaking the geometry which you can't do in Fusion (yet). The Nuke demo I played with doesn't seem to have any video-related functions (field processing and such) and I don't like this. I think if film compositing its strictly what you're after, then Nuke its the best, but it feels too specialized.

AFX... what can I say: excellent graphics tool, very flexible and surprinsingly good for compositing, but playing with your nerves when doing that. You say it's slow with hires footage (I never used it for this), but there are some 3rd party options for using grid-computing with it.

[Overload]

Thanks for the synopsis, digitallysane . I think Fusion is looking more and more like what we want. I'm glad to hear that more than one person has used and liked it. I know its not for all people, but then again no software is. AFX is a great tool, and will definitly not be something we get rid of. I am more used to a node based approach, and the owner really likes Fusion. We'll see what happpens. Thanks for all the replies, very much appreciated

Anthony