Noob Toxik question
by Phil Hoppes
on
Aug 20, 2009 at 3:42:17 pm
I'm a Maya and Shake user. I just loaded up Maya 2010 that comes with Toxik ..... I mean Maya Composer. I'm not too keen on giving up Shake as for what I need at the moment it works fine. That being said I fear it may not be too long until some new format comes out that Shake can't deal with along with the desire to work in a 64 bit app that I may be forced to switch. For that reason I have been playing around with Toxik a little. That it is node based I like. (I don't care what Apple says, Motion 4 is not a composition editor) It has a few UI qwirks but I clearly will need to work with it.
One of the first things I noticed however is it only renders out an image sequence. Is this something standard in the large animation production workfows? This is not a huge deal but in the past, among other things, I've used shake to dump a .mov of what I've crated in Maya for import into AE or FCP. These will take an image sequence but it introduces another step if I want to make a quick movie for viewing.
Also, for the moment their appears to be a dirth of training info on Toxik/Composer on the AD website. I'm hoping that this is maybe a transnational thing. I've googled around a bit but there does not appear to be a lot of info. I am a Digital Tutors member and there are a few tut's on there. Any other links to training would be welcome.
Phil
PS - At the moment I would say that MatchMover, the other new free app that was bundled with Maya 2010 is DOA, at least on a Mac. I can't even get through the first tutorial without the display viewer going blank.
Re: Noob Toxik question by Matthew Beall on Aug 20, 2009 at 8:31:27 pm
One of the first things I noticed however is it only renders out an image sequence. Is this something standard in the large animation production workfows?
I think this is because Toxik has a collaborative workflow, so if several operators are working on different parts of the same project, they can render to image sequences and it updates for everyone that may be accessing them.. Can't do that with AVI or MOV..
Re: Noob Toxik question by Eric Craft on Aug 20, 2009 at 9:39:46 pm
Plus if you think about it .mov is only supported on Mac and Windows 32bit, so only 2/5 of the Toxik OS platforms. Would you invest time and money in something that works on less than half of your target platforms? Also, Toxik supports network rendering through backburner (not sure about on the mac side of things) and you can only render to image sequences with most network rendering tools. It really is the animation standard to go to frames and not video files.
Of course those are my opinions on the situation, only Autodesk knows the truth behind the decision.
Re: Noob Toxik question by Phil Hoppes on Aug 20, 2009 at 9:46:58 pm
Ah, that answers it. Like I said, not a big deal as I can work with it but I was just curious. Now on to figuring out the rest of the UI..... new tools .... never ends does it?
Re: Noob Toxik question by Kenneth La Rue on Aug 21, 2009 at 1:50:42 pm
Hi Phil,
I'm in the process of hitting you with a lot f training for Maya Composite/Toxik, a lot for free and some for purchase.
I will have a training page on the Area under Maya very soon. (http://area.autodesk.com/) There will be written tutorials to help you understand the UI and workflow with all footage so you can follow along. Then there will also be QuickTime videos that cover different elements such as the schematic view, marcos, tool presets and several videos I know you will enjoy called “Toxik for the Shake User”. Some of these videos were created with Toxik 2009 but are still very helpful in Maya Composite and I will be updating them. All of these will be free on the Area. I will also have a Maya Composite Blog starting soon where I will be sharing information about what I see happening in the industry and interesting stories about how Maya Composite is being used.
Then if you want some extreme in-depth training I'll be shipping Maya Composite training DVDs in a couple weeks through my own company named The Street Productions, Inc. These will be several hours long and will help you not only use the software but use it as efficiently as possible. I'll keep you posted on the shipping date.
Lastly always come here with any question no matter how simple you think it is.
Re: Noob Toxik question by Eric Craft on Aug 24, 2009 at 9:08:36 pm
Gary Davis already did one of those available over at the AREA. If you are looking for Compositing then you should be good to go with the videos over at the AREA and the Autodesk Self-Paced Training page. Outside of Compositing and VFX (Blurs, distortions, matte painting, rig removal, etc) you aren't going to find stuff like Particles and Vector Paint/Text in the current Toxik toolset.
Re: Noob Toxik question by Andy Rosen on Aug 25, 2009 at 4:15:54 am
Indeed. Additionally, .mov files don't carry alpha (or any other extra) channels. In a collaborative environment, and as part of an animation/VFX pipeline, the standard is uncompressed frames. Mov and avi are only for playback.
Also, if you stick with frames, and your render dies for any reason, you've only lost the frame-in-progress, rather than the entire mov or avi file.
Re: Noob Toxik question by Eric Craft on Aug 25, 2009 at 8:45:56 pm
.mov can carry alpha if you save the codec as Millions of Colors+, but only certain codecs support the Alpha channel. You are correct on the Extended Channels though. Also, certain quicktime codecs do offer lossless compression and there is uncompressed codec as well.
Re: Noob Toxik question by Chris Brearley on Sep 6, 2009 at 10:35:05 am
Phil, you can always open up the image sequence in QT. Just go to File > Open Image Sequence. I use it all the time for watching back tif sequences and it works great.
Re: Noob Toxik question by Phil Hoppes on Sep 8, 2009 at 11:10:21 pm
Yea, I know...actually FCP will open it right up to so I know it is not like I don't have a solution I was just curious as to why it did not do it. I realize my exposure and workflow is peanuts to how most of these tools are used in a production environment so I was actually trying to get a little better understanding of that, which I got from the responses that were given. Learn a new thing every day. That's what I like!
