AF,combustion or D-Fusion,3D animator choise

[Ben Lumumba]

AE, Combustion,D-Fusion,which route

Hi
I ´d do mostly 3d character animation,Motin Builder for pure biped,real-time human like character animation,Houdini for procedural modeling(and for some complex animation ,) and Electric Image Universe for final rendering,staging,lighting,texturing
But now I need to be able to integrate my characters with live footage background by myself,because if I go as self contactor/freelancer,indepedently or working for others
when there is s no job in studio´s,
Actually,I´m forced to go indipedently because THERE IS NO job
Some people ( most of them) don´t like raw animation but
finished footage,so I have to do all by myself
Of course,I´m here to chooose between Discreet Combustion,After Effects and Digital Fusion because that is what I can afford and what I know a little about,but I need to ask for
pro´s and contra´s
Some friends of mine suggested C3 (3DMAX guy´s) as compatible format for other big bosses from discreet products,as flint,inferno... so if I work as self contractor for other studios could be a plus for format compactability.I don´t know

That is my key requirements from my potentional compsing application:
basic composing,
motion tracking,
rotoscoping,
adjusting contrast between my charaters and footage,
(actually adjusting my character,footage is as it is)
stabilising (the bigest problem)...
I don´t know about keying,color correction,does it fall in integration of my characetr in live footage?

Just to sale my character

So I am not VFX guy just 3D aninmator who needs to integrate his 3D character in live footage scene
So no motion graphics,fancy effects,painting,flying logos
And yes sometimes some basic effects...like my dinosaurus is falling in dust( dust particles) or blowing A FIRE(fire particles)
But in that case Houdini offers me much more powerfull options as fully integrated 3D particles in my scene
But I like to stay away from this.I ´m just new to this

So any objective comparation

Best regards,
Ben

[Hugh]

I'm sure you've read it, but for anyone else who's interested, I'm going to copy and paste (with a few small changes) my post from CGTalk on this:

Oh, and welcome to VFXTalk - hope you enjoy it here!

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After Effects' strong point is when it comes to motion graphics - a lot of design companies use it for just this, and this is where it excels. However, for compositing work it's not ideal - it can feel very klunky when you're trying to do larger composites...
Personal opinion: I found AE very intuitive at first - it was easy to find what I was looking for, but as I got better, I found this slowed me down - there didn't seem to be a faster way of doing things...

Disclaimer: I've never used Combustion 3, so my comments are based on version 2...
Combustion is a great combination between the motion graphics and the compositing. It has some great compositing tools (partly taken, I believe, from the FFI family) and it also has a good graphics toolkit. If you're going to be doing a little bit of each, then definately go this route. A major downside of Combustion when it comes to compositing is the lack of a proper node system. It has the schematic view, but this is purely a node-based view of the layers that Combustion uses. When I used to use Combustion, I would occasionally try to actually work with the schematic view, but this gets very painful (there's a reason why it's called a schematic view and not a schematic workspace)

Personally, I mainly do compositing, and for that, I don't think you can really beat Shake... (although Digital Fusion, and it's younger brother DFX+ come close)

DF is a proper node-based compositor set to rival Shake. I don't find it quite as flexible as Shake, but with Shake being discontinued on Windows, Digital Fusion does seem to be being introduced to a lot of film VFX houses. DFX+ is the more TV-oriented version (only supporting 8-bit images), and comes with a smaller tool-set. More tools can be added by buying addon 'modules' - so DFX+ with all the modules is, I believe, just an 8-bit version of Digital Fusion.


Try out the various demos - there's a Digital Fusion demo available from Eyeon's website (http://www.eyeonline.com) and there's a Combustion one from Discreet (http://www.discreet.com). I'm not sure about an After Effects demo, but check out the Adobe website (http://www.adobe.com) if you want...

[Paul Moran]

just to reiterate Hughs comments ...Digital Fusion is easily the best out of those 3 apps.. ONLY IF you can justify spending 5 times more than you could on Combustion! DFX+ and combustion are priced at the sma epoint ($995) ...

Digital Fusion (not to be confused with DFX+) is a much more powerful application and will give you much more longevity...but if you only need what you have mentioned...id go for Combustion. DF will accomodate all various formats of footage..as will Combustion...but Fusions tools are more geared towards film production...

SO, to cut a long ramble short... if you have the money...go Fusion...if not...go Combustion...they are both great apps...

You cant lose ;)

Cheers mate

Paul