Re: the end is near

[Phil Radelat] "No big deal. The program as is works, and works well. The vast majority of compositing processes most people need in typical a production can be handled in combustion. Hell, I still work with version 2.1 on a PC, and I don't feel cramped."

If you haven't run up against Combustion's limitations, then congratulations to you. Some of us, however, see room for improvement of an already great application.

"So if combustion rides off into the sunset, who cares? You have it, right? It works for you, right?"

I would care, because there are still lots of improvements that could be made to Combustion that would benefit me directly. There have been concrete improvements in Combustion since version 2.1 that I use and appreciate. I won't bore you with a laundry list, but suffice it to say that I would rather see certain issues addressed and certain features added in future revisions than use a separate application that forces me to interrupt my workflow and step outside of Combustion.

"Eventually you may need to learn to use something else to keep working competitively in the field, but in the meantime there's already a capable compositor right in your system, right now."

Who said otherwise? My desire is to see an already great application that I depend on get even better. It's true that many people don't use all of the tools provided to them even in legacy versions of various applications, but I hardly think that's an excuse to punish power users who fully exploit an application's current feature set by ceasing development of improvements and new features.

"So don't worry if combustion "goes away". Be happy. :-)"

I would not be happy, although I wouldn't worry either. If Combustion goes away, I'll need to use other tools to address Combustion's shortcomings, but it's more appealing to me from a financial and logistical perspective for Combustion to continue to improve and expand its toolset.