Re: the end is near by Joe Murray on Aug 22, 2006 at 3:22:41 pm
Ken, your responses neither confirm nor deny future releases or EOL for combustion. I know you can't say anything if combustion is on the way out, but it would be reassuring to hear you say something about continued development, or that there will be a version 5, nevermind when...
Re: the end is near by Alan Okey on Aug 21, 2006 at 3:33:28 am
I'll nominate this post for FUD Post of the Year.
It would be an act of colossal stupidity for Autodesk to kill Combustion. I see this as highly unlikely, especially given the recent release of a universal binary version of Combustion 4 for the Mac. Someone is bound to bring up Discreet's murder of Edit, but hopefully that was an anomaly.
Re: the end is near by Phil Radelat on Aug 21, 2006 at 2:11:44 pm
>>It would be an act of colossal stupidity for Autodesk to kill Combustion.<<
Why? When was the last time you saw an ad for combustion in a trade magazine? Remember the cool website there used to be for discreet combustion? Have you seen the the site for autodesk combustion? If you were at siggraph, if it weren't for a demo Ken gave on it on a Mac, you wouldn't know autodesk had combustion to offer at all. Plenty of banners for all their other software, however.
As far as I can tell, I think autodesk would love to for combustion to just "go away". What better way than to not promote it? This way, when sales figures drop below a certain level, they can just say that sales did not justify continuing development on the product, and away it goes.
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.
So if combustion rides off into the sunset, who cares? You have it, right? It works for you, right? 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.
So don't worry if combustion "goes away". Be happy. :-)
Re: the end is near by Alan Okey on Aug 21, 2006 at 7:54:55 pm
[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.
Re: the end is near by Phil Radelat on Aug 21, 2006 at 11:14:19 pm
>>My desire is to see an already great application that I depend on get even better.<<
I used to feel the same way and would argue that point endlessly here, but I don't anymore. The subject of autodesk's neglect of combustion is very old.
Re: the end is near by Carl Braun on Aug 24, 2006 at 11:02:48 pm
Couple O things a dog in a way back machine told me......
Autodesk bought the intellectual property rights to 5D's compositing package before it did the HILLARIOUSLY stupid thing of consolidating to the land of Santa Claus from the land of Santa Cruz. Most of the best features of said program are not implimented in Combustion or in Toxik Hmmmmmm. It was a rather nice albet Mad expensive PC app. That means thier is room to grow.
On the flip side the particle system in Combustion is no outdated and at least for me buggier than a beehive. The "compositing tools they have been adding have been for lack of a better term "editing tools".
I dunno I know development continues but I am more afraid of Autodesk "souring the milk" and developing more slowly for Combustion than for Tokix to get shops to upgrade. My monney is on a lack luster but user efficiency filled release for the next Combustion, oh and don't count on it for staying written for the Mac. Autodesk is not stupid and Adobe sees it too... Apple making it's own apps spells get lost developers, it's 1984 and its Job's face where the IBM's guys was saying we control the harware, we conttrol the software...yuck
