Combustion or After Effects for VRay

[Infrared digital]

We are about to setup a dedicated post production machine for editing and compositing but which is best for using with VRay ?

Alot of work will be done using a green screen - merging video and CG using HD footage, this will utilise Render Elements from VRay alot more I would expect.

The thread by Chris Nichols mentioned Digital Fusion but its way too expensive for us presently.

Any help, suggestions or experience would be fantastic.

Thanks

N

[Paul Oblomov]

Hm. Combustion. Max can export render elements in combustion workspace directly. Maybe will work for VRay. I'm using fusion and exr.

[panthon]

Combustion without a doubt. I was using after effects for years till i discovered combustion and started using it. I never went back. Once u get used to combustion, AE looks like a useless bloated toy.
The only reason why i could get AE was if i was a premiere-based video editor and would like to share projects between apps.
I´ve found that the integrated Diamond keyer in combustion is very capable of pulling good results from HD chroma screens, but either way, using AE or combustion, u could always look into third party keyers, just to be sure which one is more suitable for you.

[joconnell]

If anything combustion is way heavier on memory than after effects - Combustion is cheaper and may be more direct for effects job but I've found after effects incredibly good over the years supplemented with a few plug ins to make it better still for visual effects work. I do like the discreet colour correctors interface though...

[cpnichols]

Nuke is actually the best, but may be out of your price point.

[percydaman]

personally I prefer fusion for straight compositing. But we just picked up the production studio from adobe, and the dynamic linking throughout all their products is quite nice, so am planning on brushing up on after effects. Never really liked combustion.

[Paul Oblomov]

I like onle node-based composers. Much faster to work with 'em.

[dlparisi]

AE7 also has the timewarp feature with Pixel Motion (maybe in production ver. only-not sure). Works great to retime animations, even to the point of rendering out half the frames normally necessary. You can get the twixtor plugin from reVision for combustion but it'll add another ~$300.

One thing I hate though about AE is the way that it handles (or doesn't handle) image alphas. Maybe I just am doing something wrong but I can't seem to get it to be able to import footage with an alpha (32bit TIF's) and both completely ignore the alpha but still bring in the alpha. I want to be able sometimes to bring in the alpha so I can use it in a "Set Matte" effect to make adjustments, etc to only certain portions of an image. The only way I've been able to work this out is to bring in another footage sequence and set the interpretation on each to what I need.

[percydaman]

AE7 also has the timewarp feature with Pixel Motion (maybe in production ver. only-not sure). Works great to retime animations, even to the point of rendering out half the frames normally necessary. You can get the twixtor plugin from reVision for combustion but it'll add another ~$300.

One thing I hate though about AE is the way that it handles (or doesn't handle) image alphas. Maybe I just am doing something wrong but I can't seem to get it to be able to import footage with an alpha (32bit TIF's) and both completely ignore the alpha but still bring in the alpha. I want to be able sometimes to bring in the alpha so I can use it in a "Set Matte" effect to make adjustments, etc to only certain portions of an image. The only way I've been able to work this out is to bring in another footage sequence and set the interpretation on each to what I need.

I agree with the pixel motion. its great. before using twixtor was overkill. Ive heard alot of complaints with the alpha in AE. Since I still haven't gone over to AE for compositing, I haven't come across it yet, but Ive heard stories

[davision]

dlparisi -- I don't know if this will help... but regarding the alpha issue on AE7. Have you looked at the "interpretation rules.txt" file somewhere in the Adobe program directory. Maybe it will help?

Here's a almost useful Google Link I just found (I think most of the info is AE help or the text file itself)...
http://safari.oreilly.com/032119957X/ch02lev1sec20

[panthon]

Talking about bugs, there's one particularly annoying in combustion which will clamp your 32 bit footage IF you click premultiply alpha, losing lots of valuable info.
Besides, combustion rendering is SLOW, but on the other side, it integrates nicely with your backburner renderfarm, so u can render max scenes and combustion projects without any hassle.

[dlparisi]

dlparisi -- I don't know if this will help... but regarding the alpha issue on AE7. Have you looked at the "interpretation rules.txt" file somewhere in the Adobe program directory. Maybe it will help?

Here's a almost useful Google Link I just found (I think most of the info is AE help or the text file itself)...
http://safari.oreilly.com/032119957X/ch02lev1sec20

Thanks for the pointer but it doesn't really help. It just sets up the rules to interpret footage automatically depending on the type of file (good to know but doesn't solve my problem). The only quick workaround I found is if you go into the project list you can select the footage piece and do Ctrl-D to quickly just duplicate it and then Ctrl-F to changes the interpretation settings. You're still stuck dragging it into a composition again though if you want to use it's alpha.

[joconnell]

For that I normally make an adjustment layer with the effects I want to use, then using the track matte controls, set it to alpha matte with a copy of my footage above - it'll use the alpha of your render above to limit the effects of the adjustment layer. You can do the same with luma too.

[dlparisi]

Using the track matte always seemed cumbersome because I had to have the alpha layer just above my adjustment layer. It's just a personal preference but I like to use the "set matte" effect under Channels (more options and I can pick any layer I want). I can shove the layer with the alpha I want to use at the bottom of the stack and just forget about it. Are there any advantages to using the Track Matte that I'm not aware of?

[dlparisi]

Using the track matte always seemed cumbersome because I had to have the alpha layer just above my adjustment layer. It's just a personal preference but I like to use the "set matte" effect under Channels (more options and I can pick any layer I want). I can shove the layer with the alpha I want to use at the bottom of the stack and just forget about it. Are there any advantages to using the Track Matte that I'm not aware of?