Best Compositing software and why?

[Praveenleo7887]

Now I am under going Autodesk certification in Combustion and Adobe certification in After Effects CS3. But i want to know which is the best compositing software and why? any of yours comments please..

[Matt P]

No such thing. And I have no idea why people keep asking.

The reality is that different applications cater towards certain tasks and that most applications have specific qualities - be that features, plugins, workflows, platform, reliability which some people prefer over others.

We're just shifting pixels around afterall. I don't consider one application as the best, though Nuke is my personal favourite.

-Matt

[beaker]

I know it is another forum but read this because it is pretty much the opinion from most professionals about "what software is best" threads:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=2&t=19315

[Praveenleo7887]

No such thing. And I have no idea why people keep asking.

The reality is that different applications cater towards certain tasks and that most applications have specific qualities - be that features, plugins, workflows, platform, reliability which some people prefer over others.

We're just shifting pixels around afterall. I don't consider one application as the best, though Nuke is my personal favourite.

-Matt

nice answer and thank you for your comment..

[im.thatoneguy]

Nuke for bread and butter.

After Effects for anything from photoshop. And anything that needs precise timing more than pixel manipulation. (Edit related tasks).

Combustion for anything that requires paint or color grading.

Oh wait was I supposed to choose one?

[bio]

No such thing. And I have no idea why people keep asking.

Very true, but I guess we've all asked that question when were just starting off

As for the 'best software', I feel that one should just have a good understanding of the principles of compositing. I would recommend that you learn any good layer based (AE or combustion) as well as a node based software (nuke or fusion or shake). Migrating to any other software is pretty easy.
If you want to play it safe then just do some research and check which software's being used in majority of the big studios and then go ahead with that. (If I'm not mistaken, most of the studios in India use either shake or nuke)

[pingking]

(If I'm not mistaken, most of the studios in India use either shake or nuke)

and fusion, with prime focus purchased 1000 seats of fusion this year.

[Praveenleo7887]

Very true, but I guess we've all asked that question when were just starting off

As for the 'best software', I feel that one should just have a good understanding of the principles of compositing. I would recommend that you learn any good layer based (AE or combustion) as well as a node based software (nuke or fusion or shake). Migrating to any other software is pretty easy.
If you want to play it safe then just do some research and check which software's being used in majority of the big studios and then go ahead with that. (If I'm not mistaken, most of the studios in India use either shake or nuke)

ya thank u..

for this reason only i make this question that, which is best..
thank you for your nice answer

[Buggy166]

chances are any 1 package will be enough to do anything compositing with and if its missing something, someone, somewhere, developed a plugin for it.

[Gentle Fury]

Notepad

[im.thatoneguy]

I've found notepad's rasterization tools too limiting in the past. Perhaps it deserves a second look.

[pengvisor]

I think the best software is the one that you know the most and can do everything on it. I'm more of a fusion/inferno a bit of Nuke user and after effects is a bad soft for me, on the other hand buddy of mine is a ninja in AE and can create wonderful images in this app so its all up to operators perspective. There are also other things to think about for example

Toxik mix good with Maya
Digital Fuison, shake and Nuke is great for comping 3d stuff
Combustion/flame/inferno are a different breed of comp apps

[AmirAzizi]

The question is what do you want to do ?

Layer based softwares like After effetcs or Apple Motion are basically developed for Motion Graphics, on the other hand Node based apps like Nuke and Shake are specificly for Compositing. Although you can Composite with After effects or create Motion Graphics with Nuke but it could be a very painful process simply because they ment to do something else.

Fusion has a very powerful Particle system, so if you have a lot of particle works Fusion could be the software of choice.


If I want to put all of them in a diagram it would look like this:

[pengvisor]

I think you should forget about shake, its a great software but its dead since apple wont release new version. Nuke is the new Shake. Its still good for home work since its cheap and works great on Mac but I dont think any studio will decide to put it in their workflow if its not there for years now.

[AmirAzizi]

gboom, u might be right and it could be crap, that is only my personal opinion by my own experience , just that, thanks anyway.

by the way please add your comments , like what do u think and what should be changed, cuz not only me but I guess nobody knows why it is Crap.