Re: Why does AD bother with desktop Compositors?

Eric, I don't disagree with what you're saying about them cheaply upgrading the motion graphics through the use of expressions. I was/am just hoping that they do something for the performance as well.
The particles, as nice as they are, was long in the tooth when C4 first came out...that's why I was hoping that AD would take a look at Trapcode (Particular, Shine, and 3D Stroke are Motion Graphics tools as much as VFX).

The 3d geometry handling is something I think could help AD SELL Combustion to a large percentage of Max users, since you already have such good integration already. That's the angle I'm coming from. You can already use CB's paint tools to do live texture painting in Max...it even has a nifty UV template. You can re-texture an object in CB without having to re-render in Max. AD never properly marketed that. Even now, if they would stop making it SO hard to find Combustion on their website, and if they'd show some decent demonstration videos of these integration features on both CB's and Max's site, they'd start selling a considerable higher percentage of seats than they currently are.

Now if they could ADD to that functionality by allowing a Max user to open a Max file in CB, you'd be stupid to still choose AE instead.

Adobe gains most of it's advantage with AE because of it's bundling and integration with Photoshop. Doesn't mean it's a better compositor than CB, but they sell the integration...not so much the merit of the program itself.

That's the other thing about Toxic...they specifically target the Maya userbase instead of Max's. That too tells me they have no intention whatsoever of making Toxic the successor to Combustion.

My contention, then, is that AD's refusing to update Combustion is why there is no revenue...yet they have it backwards. If it had decent upgrades every 18-24mos as AE did, Combustion would be in a much better position. I think they may have fired the wrong folks a while back.

Case in point...Look at Shake. It dropped lower than CB did and Apple even told their customers that it was a dead product. Yet they got more sales afterward than before, and it's still quite popular.
I think it's a combination that Combustion is 1) not promoted at all 2) perceived as a "Jack of all trades and Master of none" and 3) the deafening silence from AD fosters a lack of confidence in the product
Combustion's failing is a self-inflicted wound. More than anything else, that's why I'm not touching Toxic with a 10ft pole. It's a very appropriate name, actually...cause they've demonstrated that their handling of the desktop compositing segment is downright, well...you guess it, Toxic.