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I have both inferno 2007 and smoke 2007. I am mostly finishing film trailers. It seems that most places use inferno/flame over smoke for their film finishing. I have tried both extensivly and I love the inferno for compositing/effects graphics…but over all I can finish a trailer ….do the effects….. and make the producers changes much faster in the smoke…WHAT AM I MISSING???
ThanksMy answer:) – batch tool -it has the modular keyer and custom 1d and 3dluts,resize,motion anaylzer,timewarps,optics,color warper,3d tracking,warper etc…. built right in, which you can apply soft effects in the timeline. Most of these are not accessible in smoke. You will find yourself
using these tools quite often in trailer finishing environment. There are times you may even need to import 3d geometry and need to warp it using deform lattice. However you don’t have the capabilites smoke has with a multilayer vertical editor. Most of this has to be timed in action.Also you are not really comparing like with like, while smoke is an editor with some effects capability, Inferno is a compositing package with some editing capability.
Horses for courses.Yes, I agree with all the above,
but with the plugins available, I can do most of what inferno does on smoke (with the excpetion of advanced expressions). But I find the timeline in Batch so limited.. Also,
how do you guys deal with a multilayer edls in flame/inferno. More and more I get checker boarded edls that I can conform in smoke quickly. Is there a trick to handling them in flame/inferno.
And as far as luts, I do all my film work (with the exception of fx/comps)in log.
Sorry to ask so many questions, but a friend is opening his own house and is not sure which platform to go with (I LOVE having both)and he can only afford one right now and I want to give him the best advice possible (thanks to you guys!!)
Thanks againI guess that depends o waht you main work will be, I work on 2K comps for film, so smoke wouldn’t be much good to me, but I guess if you’re banging out lots of versions of a commercial, then smoke would be your preferred tool.
Paul,
Why wouldnt smoke be useful for 2k film comps? I have experimented on 4k comps on both platforms and while inferno’s interactivity ( and batch) was faster, I was able to use smoke and deliver the same quality comps in DVE in an acceptable time frame.(My cinetal has 3d luts suppled from the place that films it out). There is absolutely no question that if 75% of my work was film comps/specialfx/grfx, the inferno supercedes the smoke. But i am talking about a start up company that specializes in assembling trailers for film out.
Thanks again for all yout replies…..my friend (who is NOT a user) says thanks!!!For finishing film trailers, if I had to chose one or the other…Smoke hands down. The editorial capabilities alone make it superior to Inferno/Flame. Smoke has the majority of vfx tools to do what you need to finish film trailers. What Inferno has that Smoke doesn’t is generally immaterial to the majority of the needs for creating film trailers. Batch, 3d tracker and such are great, but you can easily get by without them. If I were to start a small shop I would begin with a Smoke, and as time and billing allowed, add an Inferno. Technicolor last I heard had many seats of Smoke for film finishing.
In the end, it’s the driver that makes the system perform at peak capability of course!
mpixls,
I agree. Ironically enough though. technicolor called me about an opening.. finishing trailers….on the Inferno!!!! Other houses I have talked with mostly use Inferno. That is why I questioned my initial knee-jerk answer to my friends question.hi all
i find smokes interface is much faster than inferno.
if your projects has more than 75% of compositing work which really requires 3d tracker, camera projection and animating camera then u must opt for inferno.
but other alternative is smoke!
with its killer speed ! i can do most of the things what inferno does in dve.
remaining 3d tracking and camera could be done in bojou, matchmove and 3ds max.
what makes smokes user interface faster is its editing zenith.
so it is as good as flame+avid !
with amazing 2d tracker and stabilizer , master keyer and color warper smoke has no turning back!
again its my personal opinion!
so for commercials and music videos and film trailers smoke delivers on time !
inferno is a great dad !
it comes in extremely difficult compositing solutions !
perhaps inferno is the best vfx system !
but smoke is editing and vfx !
so, for me smoke wins !
feel free to correct me
cheers
adolffhi all
i find smokes interface is much faster than inferno.
if your projects has more than 75% of compositing work which really requires 3d tracker, camera projection and animating camera then u must opt for inferno.
but other alternative is smoke!
with its killer speed ! i can do most of the things what inferno does in dve.
remaining 3d tracking and camera could be done in bojou, matchmove and 3ds max.
what makes smokes user interface faster is its editing zenith.
so it is as good as flame+avid !
with amazing 2d tracker and stabilizer , master keyer and color warper smoke has no turning back!
again its my personal opinion!
so for commercials and music videos and film trailers smoke delivers on time !
inferno is a great dad !
it comes in extremely difficult compositing solutions !
perhaps inferno is the best vfx system !
but smoke is editing and vfx !
so, for me smoke wins !
feel free to correct me
cheers
adolff@newone 23714 wrote:
mpixls,
I agree. Ironically enough though. technicolor called me about an opening.. finishing trailers….on the Inferno!!!! Other houses I have talked with mostly use Inferno. That is why I questioned my initial knee-jerk answer to my friends question.Until linux machines arrived, most of the infernos were running on onyx2 or onyx350, and most of the smokes were running on octanes. So even if the software capabilities of smoke might be even better for trailers, the hardware performance of infernos would win over octanes.
But with the arrival of linux boxes, this problem became obsolete. If you ask my opinion, smoke itself is a good start. But maybe your friend should ask for a flame/smoke combo. That does cost only a little more than a flame only setup. Maybe even start with a smoke only, and add a flame license on the same box later…
hi kuban
what about getting a smoke for all vfx other than camera and 3d tracking and particles system?
smoke has a master keyer which does a very very good job. great keys! as good as modular keyer !
again, color warper is a brilliant tool! great for advanced color matching and all!
2d tracker and stabilizer is perhaps one of the best!
whats left is
( poor mans choice )
3d track ! bojou or matchmove? why not?3d particle system! 3ds max or maya ?
modular keyer ! master keyer ?
expressions! after effects ?
batch? do u need it die hard? if yes, then shake is in for u !
warping and morphing! for warping sapphire warp spark and morphing ( timewarp motion estimation, cheap alternative) elastic reality! after effects
action ! dve !
again these are affordable choices! no doubt inferno is the best compositing system but my options also do very well !
for really high end 32bit float images and 4k compositing inferno is best !
why not go for smoke first and gofor inferno when u get ur hands on 3ds max, bojou and expressions!
please feel free to correct me !
cheers
adolff@adolff 23721 wrote:
3d particle system! 3ds max or maya ?
modular keyer ! master keyer ?
expressions! after effects ?
batch? do u need it die hard? if yes, then shake is in for u !
warping and morphing! for warping sapphire warp spark and morphing ( timewarp motion estimation, cheap alternative) elastic reality! after effects
action ! dve !
cheers
adolffWhen you work like this, you will be in big trouble, when it comes to revisions, and client attended creative sessions! You will have to tell the client: I did the bg animation in Aftereffects, let’s change the animation curves in there, then change the background color in smoke, then increase the amount of particles in Max. Client won’t be able to see everything together
.
But with inferno, I finish most of the shots in one (sometimes huge) batch setup. I even name my nodes, sometimes take notes for some of the complex nodes. When I finish my job for a commercial, I only have 20-30 batch setups + revisions of them. My naming convention is something like this:s01_comp
s01_comp_rev1
s01_comp_rev2
…
…s02_comp
…
ps_comp_v1 (I’m almost sure that I will make some other versions of the packshot)
ps_comp_v2
…I know this doesn’t seem to be very process efficient way, but I don’t want to keep duplicate data. I want to keep track of the revision history, etc… When I work on desktop, I loose track. I almost never work like this: first CC, then add some sparks, comp in action, CC the comp again, add some sparks for final. No, that’s not my way. I always want to edit any step, and see what final result looks like! So I want all my processes in one huge batch setup. That setup takes the source, computes the comp.
Again, this might not be the best way of finishing, but that’s the way I like to work. Smoke won’t allow me to work like this 🙁
hi kuban
many thanks for ur reply
inferno is definately the best compositing system now !
my case is a poor mans case!
where we need to do tvc, promo packaging, music videos, film trailers, gfx etc!
if we would have had the budget then we would havesurely gone for inferno.
again inferno needs a huge setup!
so a poor man like me can manage without inferno unless its heavy 4k film work !
what do u feel?
adolfHI Kuban,
I work pretty much the same way in Inferno, but I also emulate this workflow in Smoke using multiple record areas for revisions and the timeline soft effects. While I love the 3d tracker in Inferno, when I am Smoke I use Morpheus and Particles from SPEEDSIX and they usually suffice. But if they put batch in Smoke I would probably use Inferno less frequently.
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