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Compositing With Houdini?


haggi

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Hi,

because we will prepare our new animation project soon, I'd like to replace the existing afterEffects pipeline with something faster and maybe better.

So it would be nice to know how houdinis compositing compares with shake or nuke.

Are there any experiences?

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This topic is discussed from time to time here and on SESI site. Halo is not a fully featured compositor. It lacks some tools with minor meaning for CGI work like tracker or keyer. It has some huge potential thanks to integration with 3d package (lighting aid, shading, auto-compositing of passes/layers).

It has also powerful VEX, pointcloud sampling, CHOPS and such. So in many respects it offers more then shake or Nuke even.

At the same time its simply incapable to handle ordinary compositing jobs. Its slow, RAM hungry and pretty unstable monster. Perhaps the last issue is less visible in the age of 64nit machines. But still it exists and waits for you... ;). Simply roto job in Halo can kill your budda's calm.

So there is no clear answer on your question. Personally I use it a lot for some smarty trick (like soft shadows), but I would never jump to it in case of live action footage or +2K composition.

hope this help,

sy.

Edited by SYmek
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COPs was actually not too bad... when it was ICE on the indys.

The only thing still worth using now is tima (if you have eternal patience),

geometry or maybe vops filters if you're in a bind and don't know/like C++.

If only sidefx rescued rayz before apple took it for a drive in the woods. <_<

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If only sidefx rescued rayz before apple took it for a drive in the woods. dry.gif

True, true. I loved Silicon Grail's Rays - the viewer was sooo... fast!

EDIT:

I wonder if Apple bought Silicon Grail because of the technology they got or to not allow Rayz take a place after Shake was taken on Apple's side. Do you have some info?

Edited by SYmek
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EDIT:

I wonder if Apple bought Silicon Grail because of the technology they got or to not allow Rayz take a place after Shake was taken on Apple's side. Do you have some info?

nope, haven't been to those parties.

but since nothing rayz-like has surfaced in years...

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If you're project is an all-3D project I'm guessing COPs is as good of a solution as any, maybe better. The pixel operator makes a lot of complex color math very easy. And Digital assets makes it extremely easy to automate tasks on a production. For instance, there isn't a single other-compositor in existance that can automate a hue shift with a wire-dynamics simulation (i've done that before it's fun).

If you're looking for a great key-tracker than take your pick with the industry standard packages ... after effects is so bad that it should be illegal though.

Edited by andrewlowell
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If you're looking for a great key-tracker than take your pick with the industry standard packages ... after effects is so bad that it should be illegal though.

After Effects works very well in lots of situations and has a very good price/performance ratio. It's tracker is decent (not the best but not bad either) and it comes with Keylight bundled, which is a great keyer.

I found many times I solve my problems faster and better in After Effects than in Nuke or Halo. For complex composites I prefer Nuke of course, but this doesn't mean that lots of stuff can't be done in After Effects. Saying "it's so bad it should be illegal" is a little bit much for a software that generally delivers what it promises.

Dragos

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yes I guess you're right ... it does do what it says. I just can't stand a package, especially one put out by one of the largest software companies in the world (who could design it any way they wanted in a short time), that almost forces the user to build a bad and/or inefficient workflow. As long as someone understands node-based workflow to begin with I guess it's a choice on whether to work that way or not. However, it's very crippling for students to learn compositing on after effects, then try to make a transition to a node-based package. All the other apps work that way for a very good reason i'd say. Ok, just my 2c

So, if I were stranded on a desert island and had to choose between food, after effects, and COPs, I'd definitely choose COPs :)

Edited by andrewlowell
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that almost forces the user to build a bad and/or inefficient workflow.

Well, again I don't agree :) . Of course, when the task is to build some very complex composite with lots of masks and channel swapping, AFX is a pain. But the workflow is excellent in many other cases, the layer based approach is powerful and logical for animations and sequencing of stuff, the timeline is good, its expressions very powerful. It's weaknesses are also its most powerful features (the same goes for node based apps or for Houdini for example). On the right project its timeline based approach is excellent and you can save yourself tons of pain by doing such a project in AFX instead of a node based app.

There were so many times when I'd wish for an AFX like workflow in Nuke.

Also, AFX doesn't sell itself as a hardcore compositing tool. The market sees it as a motion graphics tool with (very powerful) compositing features.

I agree of course that for "pure" compositing the node-based approach is the best, but the jobs don't always mean pure compositing.

Basically I can say that while I love Nuke and Halo and Fusion, having After Effects in my toolset is also a must.

Dragos

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Hi

I did some nice "hacks" with cops and sops for solving some matte projection passes for Golden compass.

It shrinked our secondary passes time to under one minute for 4k frames since it was all setup with constant shaders.

Also on Fred Clause I used to preview passes and procedural terrains in cops flipbooking it so i almost didnt need to go out of Houdini:)

Slap comps and render checks with shake were much slower.

Of course this doesn't mean that cops is full service production ready comp software like nuke or fusion

Architecture is there and with some effort from sesi it could be closer to nuke than anything else on market especialy

beacuse of 2d/3d workflow.

z

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As much as I hate working on AFX I have to agree with digitallysane. Sometimes it's much easier and faster to work with Adobe.

I also see what zoki is talking about. 2d/3d integration in Halo can be really big help. But problem with Halo is not a case of a minor tweaks. I think that's why SESI abandoned its strong development. I suppose something is wrong in its render/cache engine - thus something really deep inside - that's why it's hard to fix it. The way it works and toolset is great. It simply cannot render stuff in a way it should, blow up memory usage, recooks unnecessary nodes etc. I think also that Fusion has a similar problem on a smaller scale... (but sic!)

cheers,

sy.

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I suppose something is wrong in its render/cache engine - thus something really deep inside - that's why it's hard to fix it. The way it works and toolset is great. It simply cannot render stuff in a way it should, blow up memory usage, recooks unnecessary nodes etc. I think also that Fusion has a similar problem on a smaller scale... (but sic!)

cheers,

sy.

Just curious sy, is your experience with Halo compositing under Win32? I have to say that the difference between running under that OS and 64-bit Linux has been like night and day, stability and performance-wise, for Halo in my experience. Of course, it shouldn't be like that, and obviously it's got some major limitations for live action work, but as a compositor for multiple 3-d passes coming out of Mantra I've been pretty happy with it.

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well, personally I like the combustion workflow. It does have the layer-hirarchy approach as in AE but doesn't force the user to work that way.

I'd agree for some tasks a full-blown node based system isn't necessary and can slow things down. For those kind of tasks (like bring it in, key it, color correct it, template title, bring it out) my argument would be there there is normally more than one shot, and in that case it's more efficient to use a single project with multiple node-trees to keep everything organized. So, the node based approach is still useful in just about every situation.

My problem with combustion is how hard it is to do complex math operations because the expression stuff isn't very easy to get to, and the alpha math is separate from the color math. It always takes multiple tree-branches etc. That's why the pixel op is so cool I think. They also had the right idea with "capsules" but they are only a shadow of the power of a Digital Asset.

Also, let's not forget about the fact that all of these other compositing programs usually have a "scaled down," inconvenient, or at least not quite full featured animation tool-set. Animating in COPs you have full access to the channel editor and CHOPs which clearly sets it ahead in that department.

Edited by andrewlowell
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Just curious sy, is your experience with Halo compositing under Win32? I have to say that the difference between running under that OS and 64-bit Linux has been like night and day, stability and performance-wise, for Halo in my experience. Of course, it shouldn't be like that, and obviously it's got some major limitations for live action work, but as a compositor for multiple 3-d passes coming out of Mantra I've been pretty happy with it.

Most of my experience with composition were in 32bit systems both Win and Linux since it was happening mostly 2-3 years ago. And you're absolutely right about a difference 64bit Linux made here - I tried to state it clear in my first post. I'm also aware of the fact that Halo is meant to be mainly an aid for 3d work and can handle many smart tricks. So I think we have an agreement here ;).

But I also think that application working on a big data chunk should be somehow aware of it and has a mechanism to avoid memory overflow. The only important thing in Shake or Nuke is a way they handle memory. Both application have a similar toolsets to Afx or Combustion and what makes them the Shake or the Nuke is the way they addresses this challenge. That's why I cannot understand why Halo is so incapable in this field. The fact that you have 8 or 16 GB of RAM in your 64bit system doesn't mean your compositor should use it all. There always be the limit and decent application should think of it ahead ;).

I'm sure you get my point.

cheers,

sy.

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This is up for debate I think. Some view a compositing app using most of the computer's memory as "not waisting" memory. (I'm sure you're aware but for the sake of the post) There's a limit to how much memory COPs uses ... actually there's two limits. One for the cooking, and one for the viewport preview.

However, if too much memory is still used I'd prefer the application not crash :)

What I don't understand is why COPs slows down so much once the cache fills up. It should have the same speed even if the buffer is full and should just release previous stuff. I can't think that process would slow it down so much.

The fact that you have 8 or 16 GB of RAM in your 64bit system doesn't mean your compositor should use it all.
Edited by andrewlowell
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