Re: Great news about Toxik

[Alan Okey] "I'm curious about Toxik's use of disk arrays: does Toxik utilize disk-based playback like FFI/Smoke utilizes Stone arrays, or does it use RAM caching akin to Combustion? Or is it neither method?"

It does both. All image data is cached to disk but, by default, nodes [operators] are processed and their output is cached to RAM. When you run out of RAM, you can press the Intermediate Result [IR] button on the last node in the tree and its output will be cached to disk, freeing up more RAM for new nodes. It is like a really slick "commit to disk", but you don't have to tell it where to put the rendered files or wait for it to process.

[opteroner] "And if what people said about rumors of death of Combustion is right, and if it means that Toxik will replace C*...and so that i have to learn Toxik from zero from beginning, cause i dont know anything about Toxik."

Toxik has a lot of the same tools as Combustion and it didn't really take me long at all to get into the groove with it. But I wouldn't be too worried about the death of Combustion just yet because Toxik is very narrowly focussed on film compositing and it lacks a lot of the tools Combustion has for motion graphics. It will be a while yet before Toxik is in a position to replace Combustion in everyday use so I am confident that Combustion will be around for a while yet [but this is just my personal opinion, I have no inside knowledge of what is planned].

[Jeff Brown] "Is there anything in C* that is _not_ in Toxic? Just curious. One thing I saw missing from the press release was interoperability with 3ds Max, though perhaps that's a "given" from earlier releases."

Plenty. Toxik only has a very basic text tool, designed purely for making slates [it is even called the "Slate" tool]. There is only a very basic timeline because, like Flame, it is a shot-based compositor. There are no particles as yet, no Discreet Keyer [but it does have a more powerful version of the Master Keyer], no equivalent of the Edit operator, nothing like Paint [Toxik's paint is raster-based and nowhere near as full-featured] and no support for AE plug-ins [it has it's own plug-in format and supports OFX]. Toxik is not designed as an end-to-end solution so, in it's current form, it could not replace Combustion on the desktop. i.e. It has limited I/O functionality [no AVI or audio support, for example]. Like Shake, it is focussed on doing one thing very well [film] and I think that, in the longer term, this may give future development of Combustion more focus on filling in the gaps [again, just my personal opinion, not based on insider knowledge].

A lot of the interoperability with Maya is done through scripting so it is possible to do most of it with 3DS Max or XSI or anything else. Where it gets a little better with Maya is that it is moving over to Python, which Toxik already employs extensively, which makes the inter-operability easier and stronger. There is no support for RPF but Toxik2008 will support multi-channel EXR files.

[jamination] "Perhaps someone could shed some light on what it does that constitutes its price point. It would seem for a bit more you got a lot more with fusion?"

Right now that may be true, although there is a lot more to getting work done than a list of features. Look how long it has taken Eyeon to get a stable version of Fusion 5 out. In the same time Toxik's toolset has tripled and we've had two revision's of it's GUI/workflow. You should also check out how Toxik and Maya will interact - it is light-years ahead of anything currently out there.
Maybe Fusion looks like a better bet right now but I reckon anyone who chose it would be kicking themselves in a year or two. I've been involved in a lot of beta programmes over the years but nothing like Toxik's. The developers are incredibly responsive to user input and what they are building is basically a tool that artists want to use.