after effects over combustion

[t3dm]

Hi All,

we are in the middle of producing our first live footage/3D architectural animation and untill now I have always used combustion to pull 3D animation together but know with my ugrade to combustion 4 and now on xp 64bit etc for max, I am running into all sorts of compatibility issues and crashes in combustion.

simple question... do I swap to after effects now, there seems to be very little support out there regarding combustion.

cheers.

g

[DanielBrew]

Hi,

Sorry can't help you with your decision as I have no experience with AE but did you know there is a recent service pack for Combustion? It takes it up to 4.0.5.228 and is supposed to fix some stability issues as well as improve .exr support, might be worth a try.

That said, I know what you mean about lack of support/updates. There are persistent rumours on the web about Autodesk ditching Combustion completely but it wasn't that long ago that they were doing seminars promoting it as the perfect companion to Max. It's certainly escaped the Autodesk yearly update syndrome and I haven't seen anything about Combustion 2008. Who knows...

Dan

[charleyc]

Adobe has made great strides in AE lately. It has really become quite the tool. And when using it with the whole Adobe suite, it is even more powerful. However, I do not like it as a compositor. It is great for creating motion graphics, but some of the basics are still problematic for it. It does not handle pre-multiplied Alpha's as well as Combustion. It does not color correct anywhere near as well, even with its new CC tools in CS3. And it does not work well with RPF's if you use that stuff for things like depth of field, camera imports....But all that said, it is still a preference program. Many still prefer AE and (at least a few) prefer Combustion. There has been info leaked recently on the web that there will be a Combustion 2008, supposedly due out this fall (ie any day), but there has been no Autodesk confirmation on this, and while the leaked link was to the Autodesk site, the material has been removed.

I am curious though, what specific problems are you having in XP64? I have used C4 on that off and on in xp64 without any noticeable problems.

[LarsSonparsson]

I have used combustion and ae in xp 64 two years now and had any problems.
For compositing and colour correcting, combustion in the must tool for me.
For motion graphics I'm using ae. For me, Combustion 4 has been the most stable software ever.
I've been working 4 months with current film project
using combustion every day and it have crashed three times. Not bad?
It eats alot of memory and you have to be prepared to it.

...and yes, I'm so much waiting for update to 2008 version. There is nothing
wrong with the current version, but some today addons could make it so
much better.

[t3dm]

thanks for all your honest oppions..

I have hit a real problem with combustion 4 and importing quicktime files (black magic, h.264 and more) combustion just crashes, to say autodesk have been less than helpfull is a understatement, and there seems to be very little forums talking about combustion 4..

I suppose I am looking for a one stop shop for compositing and doing motion graphics for arch vis, and running out HD content now.

I am thinking of ditching xp64 on one of our boxx machines and going back to xp pro and combustion 4 for stability.. might be the best way to move forward?

or shake?

[RErender]

I can't help except to say I am having the same issue on my workstation, weird though because of 18 boxes with the same exact specs, mine is the only one doing this...

Have you tried reinstalling? I haven't had any time to troubleshoot mine, if I get the time and find anything I'll let you know.

[t3dm]

still troubleshooting now..

laptop= 32 bit windows, not quicktime (or itunes!) combusiton will look at importing all files no problems.. so I think this is a quicktime issue, 7 and above!

all our other workstations are 64bit boxx machines with quicktime 7 pro, so heading into the office to look into this now.

its a real pain as my HD camera people are using final cut HD and giving me h.264 files to have a quick look at, so even if I was not to import the quicktime file, it will crash if you point combustion to a folder with quicktime 7 files in it.. you can disable the thumbnail browser in the preferences section of combustion but this is a pain especially when working with sequences etc..

I am also usign the h264 codec to show clients previews of all the content we are developing.

just about to load a old quicktime (7.12) to see if that will cause the problem. very frustrating!

[Shimakaze]

I'm having issues with AE. If OpenGL is on it crashes instantly, taking my whole computer down with it. Still haven't found a solution.

[charleyc]

I don't have QT Pro on my 64bit workstation, but I am running QT7, and I don't have any problems importing. I will get in on here and see if it makes a difference.

[t3dm]

It seems to be definitely qt7 (and I have pro) and combustion 2.1, 3 or 4 on import of h264 encoded quicktime black magic encoded quicktime (all encoded from a mac or quicktime 7 pro) .. quicktime 6 works fine, but of course it will not load the h264 codec etc!

very frustrating, it even happens on xp 32bit, so its not a 32bt/64bit problem. Gone over to after effects, and will have to use that for the moment,

will still use combustion for colour correcting, keying but will have to be so careful that I only import my TGA layoffs etc.