Re: Six foot under

To me the biggest problem is the nagging feeling that I don't know if I can trust Autodesk to stay commited to their products.

I freelance as a flame/smoke op, but I also have my own setup based around Final Cut with Combustion as the primary compositing app. I have truly tried to stay commited to C* despite its obvious slow death. Using C* 2008 on mac has been a less than pleasant experience. Trying to find workaround to stupid bugs so that my clients wouldn't realize that I was using software that never ought to have been released.

So during the past six months I have been in agony trying to decide what to do. Should I move to AE? Doesn't seem like a good enough compositor to me. I like scehmatic/nodes. How about Nuke? A really good compositor, but I do more online/finishing rahter than heavy effects.

Then one glorious day the answer to all my questions is released. Smoke on mac!!! Exactly what I need! The pricetag is hefty compared to nuke and AE, but its still my wet dream coming true.

But what will this do to the market? I think many of the big post houses will buy a bunch of Smoke on mac seats. This means that it should have a strong user base. But this is in direct competition to the more expensive versions. Is this Autodesks new plan? To move completely into this new price range? Try to sell more copies but at a lower price? Is the market for this kind of specialized product in this price segment really that big? Will the revenue be enough for Autodesk to keep pushing it forward? It wasn't for C*, was it?

I truly hope so. But I'm not yet convinced to the point of betting $15k on it... So here I am, still in agony... Should I go with AE or Nuke or live the dream with Smoke on mac and hope I never have to wake up...

Stephan