Choosing a compositing software

#1

Hi all,

I want to learn a compositing software, but cant decide which. These are what confuses me:

  1. Is toxik better than combustion and worser than flint/flame/inferno, because it is listed between combustion and flint, combustion being at the bottom?

  2. I will most probably not use flint/flame/inferno because they are expensive and I cant even find a computer to run them?

  3. It is Autodesk 3ds max, combustion and toxik but discreet flint/flame/inferno. Is it because Autodesk will port everything to windows and will dump flint/flame/inferno, so it is ok to title them with discreet? So toxik would be the high end while combustion would be the low end?

  4. Am I right in assuming toxik works in windows?

  5. Toxik can do anything combustion can do? Does it inherit anything from flint/flame/inferno?

Please give me some insight…

Thanks!
Tyson

#2

Tyson,

You can find info on toxik at the autodesk website. At the moment if you are interested in learning about compositing I suggest you look into Shake, Combustion, After effects, or Digital Fusion. Not in any particular order, just pick one that looks like you can afford it, and that interests you. The pricipals you learn in one will apply to the others more or less.

Hell you can learn to composite with Photoshop, for that matter.

As for your question about the positioning of Toxik, it’s a workgroup compositing tool that is in its early stages of development. (actually its been developed for some time but recently released) In my opinion it’s not quite ready for prime time do to its lacking tool set, but wait a awhile and you should see some of the tools from FFI trickle down. This according to what I heard at NAB last year. My hope is that more of the tools in Combustion are availible in Toxik but only time will tell.

Regards
Alan Bell

#3

like alan said you could try shake, After effects or combustion. i use shake at school, and i love it. i am currently trying out the combustion 4 and AE demo as i type this response. so far i love combustions layout and the node viewer which is similar to shake. AE has a few things i like too. man so much good software…lol

just pick one and learn it.

#4

in response to your question about autodesk dropping support for flint/flame/inferno, they won’t.
at all.
the reason its name still contains ‘discreet’ is because since the renaming of the company Autodesk has yet to release a new version of those programs under the time frame of the new name and i’m glad they didn’t. Sales would have had a difficult time explaining to customers why their super cool Discreet Inferno system is being overtaken by the also super cool Autodesk Inferno system.

Also i have toxik and it runs on windows :D, you just can’t purchase it like a boxed program however.

#5

They changed everything to “Autodesk Inferno”, “Autodesk Flame”, etc… about 6 months ago. All the current versions have “Autodesk” on it instead of “Discreet” since NAB.

#6

You have nothing to lose in doing what I’m doing right now. Get the 30 day trials and try them out! Okay, you can’t do that for the FFI systems but to my knowledge Combustion, AE and Shake are all available as 30 day trials.

For me the descision is easy. I don’t have a Mac so Shake is out of the question. I’ve looked into AE but I come from a 3ds max background; The ability to intergrate the two applications via RPF beats means Combustion beats AE hands down (IMHO).

#7

Thanks for the info Alan, answered most of my problems too.

#8

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