[John Montgomery]

We’ll see if there’s someone to help you, but it would be great if we good get a little more information. Things such aas:

– Operating System
– Computer Specs
– Specific Product Version

And so forth. It really helps when trying to debug and troubleshoot software problems to be as specific as possible.

Thanks for visiting the site!

givole wrote:

Every time I open Combustion it closes again after 40 seconds. This is not crashing. Even if I open it and sit and look at the desktop after exactly 40 seconds Combustion closes it self down.

What is going on?

[John Montgomery]

Too funny — especially being a smartass myself. Yeah…I’m sure folks around the world is hanging on the edge of their seats wondering what is coming up for us in the next couple of days. 😉

Seriously, though, we’ve got some pretty major changes and expansion coming up in the first six months of the year. Obviously one is happening this week. After a holiday break for these last several weeks, we’ll be back in the flow of bringing out content…..

loops wrote:

So 2 sites are becoming 1? In 5 days and counting?

I am ALL AGOG 🙂

I predict a merger with http://grouphug.us. I can just imagine it.

Seriously though… vfxblog.com? Tween? WHO COULD IT BE?

[John Montgomery]

givole wrote:

Hi there,

i am looking for resources to learn Flame.

Hi Mike —

We also have DVDs recorded at events we have done in Las Vegas….lots of tips and tricks in a fast-paced format.

http://www.customflix.com/Store/ShowEStore.jsp?id=206770

[John Montgomery]

You need the plugin. While I know you were asking about AE, there was some interesting discussion on flame-news regarding using particles in flame to generate the stroke.

In the end, I just find it much more efficient to use the plug-in for After Effects. Its really worth the cost….

eltopo wrote:

Was hoping to do them in AE 6.5 Pro

[John Montgomery]

OK Paul, ye ask and ye shall receive. 🙂

First off, you should be able to save the file within the media player which is opened when you click the “Listen” link. This is useful if you listen to it on the computer but want to also save for reference later.

But I’ve added a “download” link of sorts to the main article pages. Right click on the link to download and save to your computer. Its not really a direct download (there are some stupid ways that web browsers always want to play media files), but it’ll get the job done for you for now.

[John Montgomery]

ha…too funny.

Well….honestly, the printing process at cafe press (our online supplier) is such that black printing is about half saturated and looks quite awful. But I’ve added one just for you in case it is acceptable. 🙂

Thanks for the comments — and thanks for being such an active member and contributing to our forums. We appreciate it a ton….

(except for this message) 😉

loops wrote:

…are so early 90s. Seriously. That discreet subway map is lovely and all, but who in their right mind would wear a white tshirt? The fashion police would lock you up on sight.

Could we please have some black ones?

🙂

[John Montgomery]

It won’t help for this project, but in the 2004 fxguide live event we covered expressions. There are some sample files on the DVD to help get you started….and the discs are on sale now.

http://www.customflix.com/206780

Expressions are cool in flame — but if you’re looking for something like After Effects’ implementation for text you’ll be a bit out of luck.

[John Montgomery]

Hey…thanks for sharing, and no worries about being a rookie. 🙂

I’d love to dive in with some constructive criticism, but before doing so I’m curious to hear what you’re looking at improving in the shot. What do you feel could be improved?

[John Montgomery]

Thanks for asking. First off…I think you know we’re all mac heads, so we’d notice issues if they happened on the mac 🙂

It could totally be our problem, but there seem to be some issues with timeouts and podcasts. There’s a thread over on MacFixit about it:

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20051125092654740

Jeff had some problems as well…but they ended up going away. Have you tried the direct download link?

eltopo wrote:

Hello Mike Jeff and John

I haven’t been able to download the last 2 podcast the connection always times out.

I use Panther and Itunes 6 and have a cable connection

Thanks

[John Montgomery]

loops wrote:

Good point that man 🙂

But since I’ve written the Spark anyway I may as well post it.

That is waaaaay awesome — thanks so much for sharing. Its totally cool to see folks sharing stuff here….one of the big reasons Jeff, Mike and I started the site.

[John Montgomery]

There is most certainly a wall you hit when using flint and high resoultion imagery. I like to use high res stuff for graphic projects and without proxy mode, interactivity really bogs down on flint.

Not allowed to talk publicly about flame yet, except to say its fast…..

blumediaprojekt wrote:

hmmmm……. when i tested flint on linux in one of the backrooms at nab this year i found it to be much less interactive than even an octane2 v12. I put 4 layers of 1080p into action and ALL interactivity was gone. This is definitely something Im not used to when working on an octane2 v12. Unless they figured out how to pimp that gfx hardware better, I would wait it out.

[John Montgomery]

EDIT: I should read the friggin subject.

If you did your fcp timeline at 29.97 and bring it into a 29.97 NTSC project, I believe you should be fine.

You’re correct, imho, to simply output an image sequence. That’s how I work between After Effects and flame/smoke.

[John Montgomery]

eltopo wrote:

Until now…

I imagine you were referring to my point about GPU speedups in After Effects on the PC. I wasn’t clear what I was speaking of…I meant to equate this AE GPU use with fxPlug. The PC AE app uses the GPUs to do to certain operations in the card…similar to fxPlug in Motion. This is not available in AE for OSX.

That being said, you’re correct about the newer gfx cards coming out on OSX — finally its gonna be on par with the PC platform — I think we both commented on this on another thread. I’m quite pleased about finally getting pro-quality cards on the Mac platform. I didn’t go with the fx4500 on the order of my new quad….but the 7800GT finally became available and I upgraded to that one.

[John Montgomery]

All I think Mike meant was in response to the poster’s original comment about moving to the Macintosh and apps on the Mac. Though you were spot on……he hates PCs with a passion.

I’m so kidding about that…REALLY! 😆 😆 😆 I think anyone who really works in this biz would have a really hard time legitimately taking part in the ages-old PC vs. Mac flame war. There’s just too many good reasons to use both platforms.

Combustion and AE on the PC most certainly rock for doing design work. That being said, I’ll use Motion and AE on the Mac. I simply like working on Macintosh systems much better for most of my tasks…and while I’ve got a dual proc Xeon which I use for many thinngs I don’t own a license for the PC versions of the Adobe apps. Obviously the PC version of combustion is way faster and way more solid than its Mac counterpart (not to mention it is released as version 4). There are also some graphics card processing speed ups for AE on the PC which aren’t available on the Mac platform.

patdawg wrote:

mseymour7 wrote:

Shake is an exceptional compositing tool, but most people use After Effects for design work on the Mac.

Not only is AE good for design but it has a great plugin community

Mike

Hey now, don’t wanna start a flame war, but there are plenty of us that are doing design work on PCs with combustion and AE.

[John Montgomery]

For design work — posters here are correct regarding After Effects. I use it for a ton of motion graphics design work….it also has some nice compositing tools. While as a longtime flame user I really miss the speed and functionality of a lot of things, the integration with Photoshop and Illustrator is fantastic. As a sidebar, in many ways compositing 3D graphics with various passes (including depth mattes) is quite good in AE compared with flame.

I’d have a look at Apple’s Motion as well. You can’t beat the price of the product. I used it for a pretty major design job this summer and grew quite used to the real time interaction with it versus After Effects. I actually loved using Motion once I got used to how it worked. Do take a look at it — its work the money just to buy a copy and play around with it. They’re doing some very interesting things with hardware accelleration and plugins….I think we’ll see more and more fxPlug enabled plugins in the future.

richard_grant wrote:

i’ve been using flame for broadcast design work for the last 5 years and have been more than happy with the speed and toolset. sadly, there is now talk of going ‘mac’. i’m about to download the shake demo to have a play, meanwhile, i was wondering if anyone has any experience with the two products, and can advise on what I will be losing or gaining in making the shift.

ps. i have posted this question in the shake forum as well, apologies for the cross postings.

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