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Get a Flint system over a loaded G5 with Shake?
I’m not trying to start a holy war here I’m just looking for some opinioins on the Flint systems. I’ve seen them used for about $25,000, what makes them so expensive? Does Discreet just make better stuff? 😀cheers,
robbedit
Ok so let me clarify a little bit here… I use Final Cut Pro for editorial work but the effects are not too great on it and I’m gettting sick of After Effects’ lame GUI. I’m starting to do work for a DP that is use to using Discreet products and I’m thinking that a Flint system would be a good entry point to the Discreet line.robbyracer wrote:Get a Flint system over a loaded G5 with Shake?
I’m not trying to start a holy war here I’m just looking for some opinioins on the Flint systems. I’ve seen them used for about $25,000, what makes them so expensive? Does Discreet just make better stuff? 😀cheers,
robbThere are quite a few differences between the two.
Shake is more likely to be used in film compositing, especially if a lot of 3D elements are involved. It’s not really meant to be a standalone effects/finishing system. Typically, multiple seats of Shake are deployed in a compositing pipeline for a film project.
Flint is better suited to effects and finishing, especially short-form commerical work. Flint is designed to be highly interactive so that an artist can sit with a client, make changes on the fly and preview them quickly for approval.
A more relevant comparison to flint than Shake on a G5 would be combustion on a new PC vs. flint on an (older) SGI Octane. For $25K, you probably won’t find flint on the newer, more powerful Octane 2. The Mac version of combustion is not as well optimised as the PC version, so it’s best to avoid it unless you already have a Mac and don’t want to buy new hardware.
The biggest difference between flint and combustion is that combustion doesn’t play footage directly from disk, it caches it to RAM to achieve realtime playback, just like After Effects. Clip length is limited to whatever you can fit into 2GB of RAM. The resolution and color depth of your source material and the complexity of your composite will determine how many seconds of realtime playback you’ll get. Flint renders straight to disk and plays back directly from disk, usually to a proprietary discreet disk array called a stone. This gives flint a much more responsive interactive feel, and playback time is limited only by storage space. Combustion and flint share a similar toolset, but combustion has a 2D particle system vs. flint’s true 3D particle system.
If you’re comparing a used flint to a new G5 or PC with combustion, the Mac and PC will be much faster than an SGI Octane in terms of raw CPU power. Since combustion caches footage to RAM for playback, flint has the edge in interactivity, but rendering complex comps in flint would be slower.
When you buy combustion, you’re just buying software. It’s up to you to put together a workstation to run it on. When you buy a flint, you’re getting an integrated system of hardware and software that has been professionally integrated and optimised to give the best possible performance.
Factors such as your budget, other systems in your production pipeline and the type of effects/compositing work you do will help determine the best solution for your needs. Will your comps involve a lot of layers and elements in 3D space, or will you be doing color correction and layering of 2D elements? Do you anticipate doing a lot of work with particles? Do you need a true 3D particle system, or will a 2D system suffice? Would you be comfortable doing system administration on an SGI machine? Would you be buying a discreet support contract? These are all relevant questions to ask yourself when making a purchasing decision.
If I were you, I would definitely try to see a flint demo of some sort, or at least talk to some flint artists to get their opinion. Spend some time playing with demo versions of Shake and combustion, and become familiar with the toolsets offered by each. There’s no one correct answer for everyone, so take the time to research all of the options before you make a decision.
Good luck!
-zolo
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