Hey all,
I noticed (by accident on the Apple web site 404 error page) that Shake 4 is shipping now. Hadn’t seen this news posted here yet and wanted to post in case it’s been missed.
Peachpit Press’ web site also says the Shake 4 book will be shipping on July 29th.
Good stuff.
Thanks for the info, was waiting for this… I’m wondering though if I should upgrade from 3.5.
Can anyone briefly explain what is the advantage of multi-plane compositing?
It is not simply a technology for composition in 3D? If me deceit the Shake did not have this capacity in the previous versions. I am not user of the Shake.
Hi Al,
At first glance, the multiplane compositing aspects of Shake 4 appear to be of value as really sort of a composite “check off”. What I mean by that is it appears to be more of a reference tool that simplifies the layering process in your comps. It makes it very easy to see how layers are moving and interacting when looking at them in 3D space.
However…upon playing with it some more we found the node to be highly animateable (sp) and highly useful. There’s actually a sense of a 3D environment within Shake now and the thought of loading .ma camera data directly from Maya into a 3D camera IN Shake is very appealing. Note, I still don’t know if that’s exactly the case because we haven’t done that yet, but I did hear or read somewhere that it was capable of having 3D and matchmoving app camera data loaded into it.
The controls for the camera feel a bit sluggish but I plan on looking into it more when I get back to the software after the break.
BTW, I do recommend this upgrade to all who have 3.5. At $999, multiplane compositing alone might not be worth it, but the enhanced node view (which SHOWS concatenation links and breaks), and the Smoothcam node are great, among some of the other improvements. The addition of a “Console” tab in the node workspace tabs is great! It gives you realtime error feedback a la Terminal from within Shake. Good stuff.
Sorry for the long winded response. I’ll try to post some more when I get back to work on Tuesday.
Hope that was somewhat helpful. 
Hey, thanks for the info, make sure you post as much info you can!
So as I understand, 3D multiplane is just another way to see the node view. I use softimage XSI for my 3D work, so for the moment, I won’t be able to export camera data.
Waiting for more info from you 
- Node view enhancements look nice though.
So as I understand, 3D multiplane is just another way to see the node view. I use softimage XSI for my 3D work, so for the moment, I won’t be able to export camera data.
Negative
3d multiplane is a way to place cards with fotage on them in true 3d space. Not using 4 yeat but it will include the ability to "import 3D tracking data from applications including Maya, Boujou and Pixel Farm "
it is supposed to include a cache node for commiting upstream nodes to pre-render/cache.
an a optical flow retiming tool similar to kronos from furnace or ‘motion estimation’ in FFI.
tracking points on rotoshape… now if they could just add proper keyframes !!!
a big feature that no one is talking about is Truelight Monitor Calibration which will mean a lot to those working with log cineons and DPX’s and for all those working linear float 32 bit support for primate and keylight !
proabably a few more little things !
reading more off the webiste :
[ul]
[li]New Auto-align[/li][li]Optical flow-based resizing[/li][li]New Lens warp node [/li][li]Automatic persistent node caching [/li][li]Open EXR, Cineon and DPX support (exr supprt out of the box is new !0 [/li][li]New Smoothcam optical flow based stabilization [/li][/ul] some interesting additions there !
“true” = “faked”
The MultiPlane node is pretty much just a wrapper with a nice interface for already existing Shake nodes.
All it really gives you is better positioning for planes and cameras combined into one Move3D node, followed by layer nodes. It also looks after ordering them the correct way.
One of the main things that’s missing from it is z-depth - there is nothing in there at the moment that would allow you to do intersecting planes. (If the Move3D node gave you some kind of z-depth data, you could easily use the z-compose node)
Multiplane is still very nice - the interface is good (uses OpenGL to give you quick feedback, although the actual render will still be software - this is the big advance here) - and it has an importer for camera data from a .ma file.
The new UI interface utilities are nice - you can have it so that you an tell at a glance what colour channels are going down a noodle (by its colour) and what bit-depth (by its style). You’ve also got something to show when nodes are concatenating, and it’s easier to see which nodes are being viewed/tweaked.
Undo works (or is certainly a lot faster than it used to be - I’ve not stress-tested it, though).
There are a few other new nodes, but I’ve not really had a play with them.
Oh, and adding trackers to RotoShape points is cool 
Hey Hugh,
Is the optical flow stuff useful ? slow ?
“true” = “faked”
The MultiPlane node is pretty much just a wrapper with a nice interface for already existing Shake nodes.
All it really gives you is better positioning for planes and cameras combined into one Move3D node, followed by layer nodes. It also looks after ordering them the correct way.
One of the main things that’s missing from it is z-depth - there is nothing in there at the moment that would allow you to do intersecting planes. (If the Move3D node gave you some kind of z-depth data, you could easily use the z-compose node)
thats a major bummer ! I was hoping for a more nuke/ fusion wrokspace. Damn it 
Undo’s … I had been without them for so long I forgot they exist !
Hey fake, real whatever … as long as its stable, and I can convince someone to pay me to use it !
Was working in Sydney when they had the demo in Melbourne for shake 4 so I have not seen it at all yet, just listening to Apple’s PR !
I figure optical flow stuff will be like Kronos ! Just fiished up a freelance gig so I guess it will be a while before I get my hands on it.
SO there wont be any renderer in 3d space node ?
Ech bummer, I’m a flame/inferno user and I love the real 3D env that Discreet have put hter . I can add shading parameters to each card, lights etc, and everything moves according to real camera movement. I saw the same features in NUKE, so was hoping to see them also in Shake
This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.