That's right, not a single mention of Combustion. There you have it, folks. Move along, nothing to see here. Buy Toxik or shut the hell up and go away. If you aren't going to buy Toxik, then Autodesk doesn't want you as a customer.
If you're foolish enough to trust Autodesk and you buy Toxik, don't come crying to us when Autodesk kills it with no warning in a couple of years, or abandons it to a slow, languishing death while it turns all of its attention toward its latest new toy that promises you the world.
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by Christopher Wright on Apr 21, 2009 at 4:19:10 am
Yes they are releasing a "software only" version of Flame (at 20% of the cost!!) for the interns at big post houses to play with, but wait!...You have to buy a full seat of Flame, Inferno etc. to be able to order it! I think the name of it is "Bic lighter" or something...
Dual 2.5 G5, IO, Kona LH, IO, Medea Raid, UL4D, NVidia 6800, 4Gig RAM
Octocore 8 GB Ram, Radeon card, MBP, MXO
Windows Vista Adobe Studio CS4, Vegas 8.0, Lightwave 9.3, Sound Forge 9, Acid Pro 7, Continuum 5, Boris Red 4, Combustion 2008, Sapphire Effects
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by greg gilpatrick on Apr 21, 2009 at 4:08:51 pm
huh? It would be nice if it were $12,000 but Flare is in the range of $40K
But much more interesting to those of us on the Combustion side is that The Foundry has announced Nuke 6 and it has some very Combustion-like Paint&Roto features:
RotoPaint
Any number of shapes and paint strokes with a flexible layer/group hierarchy
Per-point and global feather
Per shape motion blur
Individual shape, stroke and group attributes and transformations
Animation key frame and tracker support
Recursive clone and other brush effects
Blending modes and layer operations
In other words, Combustion is dead! Long live Combustion (in Nuke)!
It still costs 3.5 the cost of Combustion but its far less expensive than Flare or Toxik. Nuke is pretty similar to Shake, which I've always liked but wished it had Combustion's paint and roto features. I hope they got it right.
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by Don Nash on Apr 21, 2009 at 9:52:28 pm
I think Fusion is the natural progression. Paint tools, Check. Roto tools, check. Particles, check...etc
What they should do with Combustion is turn it over to the 3ds Max development team and have it included with every copy of Max from here on out, for the next 3-5yrs, as there is obviously no longer support or development on it...yet it's still quite valuable to Max users (XSI, Houdini and Blender have their own compositors).
The way AD treated Combustion users is the main reason I won't touch Toxic (how aptly named it is...a Toxic asset for anyone investing time and treasure on it) with a 10ft pole
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by greg gilpatrick on Apr 22, 2009 at 12:42:37 am
Fusion sounded good on paper but the paint and roto tools were very disappointing - paint could do little more than clone and draw some lines and roto (as far as I could tell) didn't have separate keyframes for each point. Also, no way to connect paint and roto points to tracker data. Fusion in general seems like a finishing tool for CG-heavy work, not the 2D paint&roto-heavy photoreal vfx I work on. I'm especially happy about Nuke because a little bird told me that they knew that Combustion was the best paint/roto package out there and they were going in that direction.
But I'm totally with you on Autodesk giving up some apps to the community. They have let so many apps die - Edit, Cleaner for Mac, Cinestream, Plasma...
What could they possibly plan to do with 3 totally separate 3D programs? You know one of thems got to go. Why don't they at least do what Apple did with shake and let companies buy the source code.
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by Christopher Wright on Apr 22, 2009 at 3:11:29 am
Yes, Nuke does seem like the more promising "affordable" new compositing app. If you are able to give it a whirl, please let us know your findings and impressions Greg!
Dual 2.5 G5, IO, Kona LH, IO, Medea Raid, UL4D, NVidia 6800, 4Gig RAM
Octocore 8 GB Ram, Radeon card, MBP, MXO
Windows Vista Adobe Studio CS4, Vegas 8.0, Lightwave 9.3, Sound Forge 9, Acid Pro 7, Continuum 5, Boris Red 4, Combustion 2008, Sapphire Effects
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by Kode Rosenbaum on Apr 22, 2009 at 3:59:50 am
I own a copy or two of Combustion and it is a little sad that Autodesk has not pushed it as much as they could. With the better marketing and some support behind publishers to make books or new content could have grown the community.
They pretty much have let it die when it was far beyond the competion when the newest version was released. It is only more obvious when you see that the competing applications now have much of the same functionality with more stuff.
I think it would be a good idea to give combustion away with 3ds max. They make a perfect match.
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by Aaron Neitz on Apr 22, 2009 at 3:33:07 pm
Flame software-only is about $60K. So 20% is $12K. Of course you can't use a flame unless you buy their $180K worth of gear.... I know, we have one. Oh and don't forget the $15K a year in support costs.... at least you can get someone on the phone 24/7 and they can fix almost any issue....
I've been using Nuke a lot to replace Shake in my workflows. It's still a lot more... technical.... in it's approach to effects that Combustion. You've got a lot more mathmatically based sliders, reformats, channels, and colorspace things that have to be dealt with manually where Combustion did things behind the curtains for you.
For me what makes Combustion's paint tool so great is it's like Photoshop. Super quick and reactive, wonderfully art-like approach to working. Difficult paint work is a snap.
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by Don Nash on Apr 23, 2009 at 12:21:26 am
That's why it's so valuable to the 3ds Max user...with the Combustion Material activated in Max, you can use Combustion like BodyPaint 3D, Since it's vector based it makes easy work of crisp graphics...not so easy to do in bodypaint, deep paint 3d, mudbox, etc
I wish Nuke had particles...would be hard to ignore
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by Mark Suszko on Apr 23, 2009 at 2:54:34 pm
All I know is, every time I hear bad news or no news about Combustion, it drives me more and more to just bag it and give in to the majority, and go buy AfterEffects instead. Even though it really isn't the same for painting frames. I used to think being trained in Combustion would be good job security, but not if nobody uses it anywhere any more.
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by Alan Okey on Apr 23, 2009 at 3:34:17 pm
I know people will say "if Combustion works for you now, why don't you just keep on using it?" That's valid to a point, but the problem is, the Mac version of Combustion is broken and languishing while we wait for fixes.
How is it broken, you ask? Well, it used to handle 10-bit Quicktime files (import and render) with no problem. Oops, not anymore. It used to support the most current OS. Oops, not anymore.
I am not a high end film compositor. I work in HD and SD video. I edit, grade color, finish and do compositing and VFX work. Toxik is useless to me - no Combustion-like frame buffer support, etc. I don't want to be forced to not upgrade my OS for 2 years or adapt to an image sequence-based workflow just to make Combustion work properly. Combustion was a great tool a few years ago when it worked the way it was supposed to. Now, it just reeks of neglect. It's silly to expect users to stay frozen in the year 2007 just to use Combustion. As the rest of the industry advances, Combustion stays standing still. It's a cruel joke that they call it Combustion 2008 when you can't even run it on an operating system released in the previous year. I'm not about to buy a completely separate system (PC, even) just to run one application when the rest of my software works perfectly.
I need to run Leopard on my Mac in order to take advantage of the latest updates to Final Cut Studio 2. Combustion is still not supported on Leopard over a year and a half after Leopard's release. On Leopard, Combustion crashes whenever exiting the application or completing a render. This means I can't queue up multiple comps to render in Render Queue, because the app crashes as soon as the first comp finishes rendering. It is truly pathetic that Autodesk is too busy with the Next Big Thing (Toxik) to bother making Combustion work properly.
I'll continue to use Combustion as much as I can, as it is a great app for my needs. But if Autodesk doesn't update or replace Combustion with another app with the same functionality (i.e. NOT just high end film compositing), then they'll lose me as a customer.
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by Luis Serra santos on May 6, 2009 at 1:30:58 pm
I've just seen this thread about the future of C*..
I don't know if this is relevant, but here it goes:
I interviewed Marc Petit, Vice-President od Autodesk ME in San Diego, Siggraph 2007 for a portuguese video magazine - Produção Profissional. Among the questions, i asked him about the future of C*. I use Babel Fish to translate the questions and his answers. The english is not perfect, but i think you will understand:
Produção Profissional: We have attended the annual launching of new versions of 3DS Max and now of the Maya, but the Combustion did not have an update in 3 years. This year will only leave a new version. The Combustion, that for signal has a low price, comparativily to other products of the Autodesk, is forgotten?
Marc Petit: It is difficult to answer to this question without disclosing the “great plan”. I can say that we do not go to abandon these customers, nor the Combustion. It is an important product for us. We have to find the platform correct. We have worked very in this direction in recent years. The results could one or two be seen in next three years. The Combustion is not forgotten. The product evolved of a form, where we need to review a series of things. We consider that the Combustion is one of the secrets most kept of the industry. It makes a series of things, it evolved from the Flame and it has an enormous value for the price that has. But it is difficult to learn and difficult to bring up to date. We need another platform. I find that we will arrive there.
Produção Profissional: It said that it has a “great plan”. It can speak of this?
Marc Petit: For the time being not. But I reaffirm that the Combustion is not forgotten…
Guys, just like many of you, i still do all work in C*. It's my favorite application. I work in C* since it were paint* and effect*. I evangelized combustion for years in Portugal, as a combustion instructor. Half the people that use C* in Portugal were trained by me, and it's very sad to see what's happening.
As you saw the answers of Marc Petit, my question is: Should we have hope?
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by Alan Okey on May 6, 2009 at 7:46:39 pm
Allow me to translate:
"We consider that the Combustion is one of the secrets most kept of the industry."
(We're relieved that Combustion has a small enough user base that we still have a chance to kill it without inciting mass rioting.)
"It makes a series of things, it evolved from the Flame and it has an enormous value for the price that has."
(We've given away far too much of our great technology in Combustion for far too low a price.)
"But it is difficult to learn and difficult to bring up to date. We need another platform."
(We're scared shitless that Combustion is keeping people from buying our newer, more expensive products, so we have to wean people off of this cheap, versatile tool and get them hooked on Toxik instead.)
Autodesk isn't going to invest much in the way of resources into an old product that has a relatively low profit margin. I understand this from a business standpoint, but from a creative standpoint it sucks.
I disagree that Combustion is "difficult to learn." A few years back I opted to buy Combustion 2.1 instead of AE because it was much easier to use, had better tools and had a much better UI and workflow. After Combustion 4, it became more apparent that Combustion was being given a lower priority at Autodesk.
I don't think any of this happened by accident. I think Autodesk realized after the fact that they lowered the price of Combustion too far and painted themselves into a corner. One you drop the price of an application, you can't raise it significantly without inciting howls of protest from your user base.
I'll bet that internally, Combustion has been an albatross around the neck of Autodesk's Media and Entertainment division. They probably want to avoid another Edit-style PR fiasco, so killing Combustion outright has been avoided. However, the relatively low profit margin of the application can't justify the extensive resources it would consume to significantly update/rewrite the app, so the policy has been to just keep Combustion on life support for a few years while they get Toxik ready for prime time. Unfortunately, Toxik only addresses the needs of the high end film compositing market, not the video market that Combustion also serves. Unless Toxik is expanded to include more of Combustion's video-oriented features (frame buffer support, vector paint, particles, etc.), Autodesk is going to lose Combustion's video user base to AE or other options. The sad part is, if Toxik were to incorporate all of Combustion's toolset, I'd guess that at least half of the old Combustion user base might consider upgrading to Toxik even though the price point is much higher. Combustion users are a loyal group, and it's foolish of Autodesk to ignore them when they could have their cake and eat it too.
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by Ron Thompson on Jun 6, 2009 at 11:12:07 pm
As an editor I have to say I'm relying more on AE, force learning it, and actually enjoying CS4 (AE,PS).
I was once a Combustion only editor, but I haven't seen any movement on the app other than the occasional "dot" updates to keep up with the OS. AE has done a nice job making itself more competitive in the compositing world, and most importantly, making the UI more friendly for non-gfx artists like myself who need the occasional roto or clean green screen.
Besides the occasional particle, I'm really not using Combustion anymore, and I'm glad I wasn't suckered into the last upgrade. C3 still works for me, but AE CS4 runs circles around it.
I've seen this same pattern with Cinewave and Commotion. It's over. (unfortunately)
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by Dean DeCarlo on Jun 8, 2009 at 4:19:00 pm
I found the opposite recently. I forced myself to comp a project in AE and found that the interface is still sort of unsophisticated and that the speed on the same machine didn't impress me. It's perfectly fine and workable but I wasn't that impressed. I should say it's atleast partially due to my inexperience with AE and compfort with Combustion. And how am I supposed to key with any precision? Keylight? Where are the manual controls? Ugh. I guess it's inevitable since Autodesk is dropping the ball on Combustion in such a big way. What a shame.
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by Alan Okey on Jul 7, 2009 at 7:43:52 pm
[Dean DeCarlo]"Flare is $40k or something like that. Absurd. "
What really gets to me is that no one has seriously taken aim at Autodesk's systems products, which are sitting ducks. It seems that there are still plenty of customers willing to shell out $60K and up for Smoke and FFI, but there's a huge gap between the Systems products used by high end post facilities and desktop apps used by freelancers because no one has released a software product with features similar to the Systems at a much lower price point.
I'm dumbfounded that no one else (Adobe, Apple, Avid, etc.) has come out with a software-only product with features similar to Smoke - an application with integrated editing, compositing, roto, paint, etc. That's what Smoke has in spades over other solutions - supreme integration of tools in a single application. Even without extensive GPU acceleration and a disk-based framesotre, a software-only app that offered editing and compositing tools in a well-integrated product would be in high demand by freelancers everywhere. Adobe is headed in the right direction with its dynamic linking between apps, but it still isn't as good or as fast as having a single integrated editing/compositing/finishing app with a broad toolset. Apple possesses the engineering resources to address this product space, but they're mainly focused on consumer hardware and software development and couldn't care less about midrange/high end post.
While we all wring our hands and bitch about Autodesk's abandonware and the high price of their Systems products, the Great Untapped Market lies dormant, waiting for an enterprising new company to fill the void. Just imagine how Autodesk would react in the face of some real competition - they would be forced to adapt or die, which means they would need to either lower the price of their Advanced Systems or develop new, less expensive software-based products to compete with the upstarts.
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by Mark Suszko on Jul 7, 2009 at 10:23:15 pm
You think its a vast market, and to us, it may seem like that, but to Autodesk, we are a spit in the ocean, compared to the market for Autocad and architecture-related products. They focus their attention where the big money and VOLUME is. A small product in a big company is mostly a bother to them. I think we're seeing this happen with the way Apple treats FCP as well. I predict the situation with Autodesk will not improve until these Discreet-related apps are sold off to some smaller company that considers them a Big Deal and nurtures them again... or uses them as a stepping stone to a new product.
Re: Autodesk's plans for Combustion by Dean DeCarlo on Jul 9, 2009 at 1:20:01 pm
Agreed. I too have been mystified for years that someone hasn't developed or at least ripped off Flame / Smoke like interface and functionality. Combustion is close to that type of product and it just doesn't have any traction. In the meantime it seems there are still enough places that can justify spending $250k on a compositing system for Autodesk to keep the prices where they are. Go figure.
