If you have $2000

[westiemad]

i'd buy shake, but its stopped at version 2.5 for windows. AE seems to be the big favorite I beleive. Combustion is good but seems to lean towards Max (cause its made by disreet). I've never used DF, but it I think is similar to shake as it was the comp tool that was started in maya then sold off or something.

[Whelkn]

I would go with DF. The new version looks freaking amazing with all the new features. You can get a demo of it at www.eyeonline.com (http://www.eyeonline.com). I dont think DF ever was part of maya but I could be wrong I have been a time or two in the past.

Jeremy

[westiemad]

neither DF or shake where part of maya, the orignal comp tool that was in maya was dropped and sold off (i believe), thats why its called digital fusion i think.

[SalaTar]

It was called "Maya Fusion" in the beginning.

the creators at eyeon developed Digital Fusion in 1988 to meet the increasing demands of post-production work. eyeon has delivered five major releases since 1997,

it was a Partnership with eyeon Software and SGI to make a plugin for Maya..

http://www.digitalproducer.com/pages/alias_wavefront_maya_fusion.htm

[Ross Forster]

Disregarding price, I would opt for either Shake or Nuke...both on Linux. If it came down to the wire though, between C* and DF, you would honestly have to demo them for yourself, both have a lot to offer.:scream:

...hey westie, long time mate. Hows things?

[westiemad]

Hey Ross, I'm doing good, working hard, and trying to get on with 3D, although still not "there". I'll send you a PM.

[Dutchman]

With After Effects you gonna love Adobe even more...! Unknown I've learnt it allot in about 2 years (used for some simple things all the time), but now it seems I know all techniques in it! Really cool!

By the way, I think AE is also the cheapest :)

[SalaTar]

What are you going to do? Thats what it comes down to.
D2 Nuke is fairly Film house only..has huge potential
Shake is a old workhorse but...Old and workhorse eventuallyy meets glue factory
DF runs on windows and does SD and film easy and is in a few houses and is actively getting users with there support and SDK
AFX is almost everywhere, but as apple goes with Motion, you'll see a shift

Not to mention it Houdini and a few others are doing the gambit to make a claim also

[beaker]

What are you going to do? Thats what it comes down to.
D2 Nuke is fairly Film house only..has huge potential
Shake is a old workhorse but...Old and workhorse eventuallyy meets glue factory
DF runs on windows and does SD and film easy and is in a few houses and is actively getting users with there support and SDK
AFX is almost everywhere, but as apple goes with Motion, you'll see a shift

Not to mention it Houdini and a few others are doing the gambit to make a claim alsoNuke, AE and Digital Fusion, FFI, etc... are all much older than Shake, so I dont get where whole "old workhorse" comes from. In fact Combustion is the only tool that is newer than Shake but most of the tools in it are 6-8 year old FFI tools(which is why they can say it has inferno's keyer, yea, the keyer they had over 5 years ago). Nuke and AE are over 10 years old and DF not far behind being 8 years old. Shake is only about 6 years old(I saw 1.0 at siggraph 98 and it was command line only, no gui). Unless of course your counting Bonsai at SPIW, which was made by the same guys but not the same code.

[beaker]

To answer the original posters question. If you know Combustion and Shake then your pretty much all set for film. For television its more AE and Combustion.

[SalaTar]

1996
"An early version of Shake (possibly before it was called that, and possibly still in a prototype shape) was actually used on the opening shot from Titanic," says Brinkman. "A deep underwater shot where everything was a similar shade of ocean- blue. The shot originally been started at 8 bits/channel of colour information but the subtle tonal gradiations brought out tremendous banding problems. Shake was brought in and its higher bit-depth capabilities were crucial to getting a clean artifact free shot out the door".
1997
Digital Fusion was a proprietary compositing solution at the post facility Steve started in Sydney. Shortly after some serious interest by Toronto based DPS, eyeon was born and moved to Ontario, Canada in early 1997 where it is currently based. Rony Soussan, was one of the first ever Digital Fusion users, Rony Soussan, " I was one of the first customers to purchase Digital Fusion and I can tell you that it has gone through quite a few changes. It first appeared as a single point tracker, then eventually a 4 point corner positioner. Soon after that we began building triangulation into the tracker and we created a stabilizer version.

[beaker]

Yes, and XSI is actually as old as Maya because I saw beta versions of it shown at Siggraph 98 the year maya shipped. :)

Shake wasn't a shipping product till 98. Arnaud Hervas is one of the founders of Nothing Real and programmer of shake. He worked on Titanic at Banned from the Ranch.
http://www.bftr.com/Pages/projects/titanicd.html

Here is an archive of the June 98 version of the nothing real's first web site showing shake 1.0 shipping.
http://web.archive.org/web/19980611155027/http://www.nothingreal.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.nothingreal.com

Here is an archive of 4D vision's site showing off Digital Fusion shipping in the Fall of 96(4d vision marketed and sold DF originally for Eyeon):
http://web.archive.org/web/19961023021932/www.4dvision.com/dfs.htm

These both confim what I originally said. As a shipping product Shake is 6 years old and Digital Fusion is 8. Both products were in development and used in house before they were shipped as a professional product.

No need to be a dick about this crap.

[marmphi]

For graphics, AE is the king. Combustion and DF is more for compositing. But, most of the studios use Shake for compositing. I suggest to ask for a shake linux demo.

[maxtomaya]

I do not want to start a war here. But this is from my experience!

If you have 2000 you should consider between Combustion and DFX+. Eyeonline has anounced their special (I should say new) pricing. DFX+ WITH Module 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 for $1295. This makes DFX+ powerful enough to compare with highend products such as Digital Fusion, Shake and Flame. (NOTE that DXF+'s existing features are of the SAME quality as those in DF/Shake/Inerno but DF and Shake has much more). Also, DF's particle system is way more advanced than Combustion and Combustion is defenitly better than AE (although Combustion basically rips off the Partucle Illusion 'as it is'). DFX+'s node based system is much flexible and is probably the best since this is the only product that offers the node-based system at this price level.

DFX+'s particle system is powerful but it does not comes with all the pre-defined systems as in Combustion. So for starters this might seem bad. But once you find the ability to mix the nodes with particles, you will not want to leave this.

DF is also a power house in all areas (Tracking/CC/Keying etc.. etc..). If you learn DFX+/Digital Fusion, then learning Shake is very easy (and viceversa). If you learn Combustion, learning Flame/Inferno is easy. However Flame/Inferno is for a wooping 16K (what I heard from some friends). Flame is NOT pure node-based and has its own pros and cons. With SpeedSix plugins for Digital Fusion, it is like Inferno is Fusion ("Digiferno"):thumbsup:

After Effects doesn't even come to the picture if you have 2000. I didnt' feel comfortable in Combustion. It is hard to see things through when things are not visualy representable as in DF or Shake. That is why DFX+ would be better than combustion.

Combustion doesn't have much resources for starters. Eyeonline has released video training (a video for every slick features:applause: ) for free for download. You have two great bundle to help you see things clear in DFX+, ONE is the pdf Tutorial AND the Video tutorials. Also, there is Tips/Resource things in their homepage as well.

Just to let you know that everything is possible in anything! It is the process that is different. As always Digital Fusion and Shake rules over everything:)

[Hugh]

However Flame/Inferno is for a wooping 16K (what I heard from some friends).
For a high-end inferno, you'll probably want to double that figure... five times....

A top of the range Inferno (so I'm told) usually comes to somewhere around $500k

The whole FFI (Flame, Flint, Inferno) suite of tools are a very different ball-park from Combustion, DF, Shake.... They are dedicated systems (as opposed to straight software), and are designed for speed - you are paying for the ability to be able to make a change and immediately see it running in real-time (generally you'd have a client behind you who's paying ridiculous amounts of money per minute and doesn't want to spend any more than they have to...)

[maxtomaya]

Oh! what in the fxxxxx hell is that?:bounce: I doubt that is the only thing flame/inferno has. If that is then all.... then the people who buy that are STUPIDS! STUPIDS! and STUPIDS! (I must be wrong here right?)

We have the same so called realtime setup here. What more, my friend has something close to it for less than 25K (including the price of shake). If you consider the fact that today's P4 4GHZ and make it dual and add 4 to 10 such systems and you still get the slowest possible blur effect in shake run at 500 fps. What more, IBM servers are even cheeper than that. AND they process equations of much sophisticated levels faster than we can render/run Final Fantasy Spiritswithin movie real time.

500k for hardware, unless they give a whole render farm with it is a lot more price one pay for software/hardware.

Just for people's knowledge, Servers (which is not a common word in Graphics industry as much as in Tech) I am refering to is real hardware servers (Sun, IBM etc...). ONE Box holds anywhere from 8 to 256 processors. AND my last lookup, for 125K you can get a server that holds 48 processors (comes with 12 installed for 125K) from these guys. That is like have 12 Xeon processors running just to render the royal Shake:)

[Hugh]

I don't know much about Infernos at all, but I'm sure there are very good reasons for spending that much on them....

Not least because clients are willing to pay so much more for an Inferno session....

[maxtomaya]

Very interesting point...:)

I would like to know what makes Flame that much powerful. If anyone with experience in Flame and Shake would explain it would be nice. May be I should post it in the discreet section of the forum.

Having used Shake and DF I say there is not much difference in the "ability" and overall facility the two provides to ease our time contrained work. Is Flame that much more powerful? If then, it is worth studying and a new asset:)

Hope I get some respose on this!

[SalaTar]

flame dont even fit into the 2k range...what makes it so powerfull is its real time for most things it does...you apply an effect it does it,client in room....simple as that

[AlexMateo]

im going to by a dual xeon :D

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