Paint and Roto: Replacements for Commotion?

[dprgb]

Eyeon Fusion 5... if you don't absolutely need 16 bit, then DFX+5...

[theotheo]

I wouldnt recommend fusion for its painting capabilities right now, its a bit sluggish and unstable, but hopefully fu5.1 will solve that :)

[beaker]

Kat:

Unfortunatly there isn't a really good solution for paint out there. The best I found is to cobble together different apps for their strengths. I do paint work all the time and this subject annoys me that no one in all these years can come out with that killer pain app.

Combustion: pretty good tools, but slow and crashes all the time which just pisses me off so much, sad to say I would rather use Shake even though the tool set isn't as nice because atleast it is fast and doesn't crash nearly as much.

Shake: It along with Furnace, makes for a decent tool, but as you probably know, its handling of time isn't very slick.

I'm starting to evaluate Toxik here in a week or two. We are beta testers for v2007, and supposedly it has some very nice new paint tools(Matador like). We have two artists that still off and on still use Matador on an old Octane we have. Usually for killer paint shots. There was this cool up an coming tool called "gFX" made by ex-Matador programmers, but they didn't always listen to peoples advice on improving it and then Adobe ended up licensing the technology and now the software is caput, doh!

We currently have Silhouette roto, but I haven't had a chance to check out Paint yet(eval ran out). What do you like and dislike about it?

[beaker]

- powerful wire removal tools (something that is a step up from Commotion's wire removal tool)Ill just let you know that all the wire removal tools out there suck. Thats why the good old methods of making a clean plate and tracking it in is still the battle tested way to go.

The best one is the Furnace wire removal plugin for Shake/AE/FFI(really expensive though). Even that only works on certain things and often times requires painting over it. The nice thing is it gets you much farter then the standard wire removal tools out there. It is slow as piss though.

Another thing you might want to look into adding into your arsenal is a matchmoving application. I use it all the time to 3d track shots and then pick 4 points and export it as a stabilize node on clean plates that rotate and pan a lot. Like many other tools, Shake's stabilize(tracker) node takes rotation and scale into account when applying a track. Recently I used this method on Pirates 2 to remove people from shots.

[Smartypants]

Hey, all, thanks for the feedback. Beaker, you sound like you've been around the block a few times when it comes to paint. Yes, I've used the Furnace wire removal plugin, and it is great for wire removal... when it works. I have employed a lot of the tricks you mention; I create cornerpins in Boujou or Syntheyes all the time and bring them into Shake to track in clean plates.

I'm really looking for something comparable to Commotion for those tasks where you have to paint by hand, at least for a portion of the shot. There are a few tools in Commotion that are just fantastic, such as the superclone tool, and the ability to record a series of brushstrokes, attatch a tracker to that series, and repeat the brushstrokes over a series of frames. It's such a great way to get rid of tracking markers.

I don't understand why some software company hasn't stepped up to the plate to fill this need. There is a huge gaping hole in the area of sequential paint, and nobody seems to be filling it. If a software company could write a great tool for this, they would dominate the market. If any software people are reading this, I'd be happy to provide you with suggestions.

[beaker]

and the ability to record a series of brushstrokes, attatch a tracker to that series, and repeat the brushstrokes over a series of frames. It's such a great way to get rid of tracking markers.You can do that with quickpaint in shake. Only really annoying thing is you can't do it to a whole node but instead only per stroke. For some reason quickpaint lays down extra strokes when you just rotate the brush.

Anyways, just hit the "edit" in the parameters, select a stroke, right click on it in the viewport and "attach to tracker". Move the slider to another stroke and repeat(ugh, annoying). Very usefull though, as you said for removing tracking markers.

[fudini]

Hi,

Bauhaus' Mirage has a 30 day fully functional demo.
Why not take it for a spin?

The features are too numerous to mention but it might be what you're looking for. I'll just mention it is 32 bit.

http://www.bauhaussoftware.com/products_mirage_features.php

You can also check out their forums:
http://www.bauhaussoftware.com/forum/

HTH,

f.

[Studev]

Hi beaker,

I believe Furnace is not the best solution. It's good for certain situation, but most of the times, it requires a lot of paintings. The good old method where you have a clean plate is nice. But a lot of people doesn't have clean plates.

I found Mokey is the best solution out there. I won't say it's good for every situations. The thing about Wire Removal, there're so many and different situations that will not make one apps the best. It's still require different apps to get the job done. But yes, mokey has safe my ass a lot especially where they have a lot of camera motion and no clean plates. It's clean! The downside is, it takes a lot of practice to make most out of it. And also since v4, mokey price has increase a lot compare to v3. 100% or more.

Regards

[beaker]

Furnace has a rig removal plugin that is exactly like mokey(and cheaper). I was simply saying that Furnace Wire Removal plugin was the best of the straight wire tool out there (draw a line and it removes the wire). Comparing it to that crappy ones that comes with C*, AE, Commotion, etc... I never said it was the best method for all wire removal.

As for cleanplates, I create my own, whether from patching together many plates with a combo of stitching, rig removal/mokey like tools. Much of the time I am making up stuff and painting my own to fill in the missing information. The camera often times doesnt move enough to get a full background.

[fudini]

Hi,

Bauhaus' Mirage has a 30 day fully functional demo.
Why not take it for a spin?



On closer inspection it looks like Mirage can't clone from other frames in the sequence.

[roto baggins]

i usually use combustion or ffi when doing rig and wire removals. furnace is good, but only to a certain degree. it can help you out though. there's nothing like tracking a patch (or several patches) to get rid of something.

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