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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

After Effects vs. Shake

Joe Walker

Joe Walker

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Hi all,

So right now on my personal Mac I have After Effects CS3, Shake, and Combustion. As of lately I've found myself using After Effects almost exclusively for most of my compositing, keying, graphics, etc. I've learned AE inside and out very easily and just love using it, and quite frankly I'm having a hard time justifying keeping Shake or Combustion still loaded on this machine. I guess my question is this, what can Shake do that After Effects can't? What can Combustion do that the others can't? Any thoughts? I would love to hear what the rest of you use and or think about the sub $1,000 compositing/gfx/vfx software out there. Thanks.
 
I've been a long time AE user myself and I think you should keep all the appz.

Shake is a very powerful keyer, probably the best keyer for the money. Of course there are other features that are very useful in shake.

Combustion has a great tracking tool. I find it being more accurate and much simpler to work with targets that are moving in and out of the foreground.

When it comes down to CG, I love AE. The output is so clean and vivid since day one.

I guess it all comes down to using the right tools for the right job. There is no one perfect tool.

Except the RED :)
 
Joe Walker said:
I guess my question is this, what can Shake do that After Effects can't?
Click to expand...

Nodal compositing. And AE does layer-based compositing. Other than that, they're much the same - it's the interface to the rendering engine that's the trick.
 
Sadly Shake is a dying app. The inudstry is moving to Nuke. Apart from this, Shake is a powerfull node based compositor with sripting abilities and some very rudementary moving graphics abilities, while AE was always cosidered as a superior moving graphics app. and less capable when it comes to rotoscoping, keying, etc...

Nowadays the line is blurred and AE is used in many more ways including keying and compositing. Nonetheless, I guess for complex green screen compositions Shake is still the better tool. Me as an long time Shaker and only occasional AE user I miss the nodes in AE badly. Probably in a year or so I'm in the market for Nuke which costs 3K, with Tinder and Furnace bundled 5K plus, quite an imvestment.

Shake has been an 3K app. and only because it reached its EOL two years ago it's a cheap software now.

Hans
 
Shake is still the dominant desktop compositing app in most high-end VFX shops, and will continue to be for quite awhile. Nuke is quickly gaining mindshare, but it's high pricetag and relative newness (at least to the non-D2 general public) will keep Shake the tool of choice for most people.

I've been an AE user since 1993 (and have the floppydisks to prove it! :)), so I'm hardly a node-snob. But after switching to Shake for most of my compositing work about 4 years ago, I can honestly say that it is much better than AE for VFX work. Shake's tracking, roto and keying tools make AE seem like a hobbyist's app (brilliant guys like Mark Christiansen, DorkmanScott and Stu Maschwitz notwithstanding). And the node-based UI makes complicated comps much easier to manage than with AE's horribly cumbersome layer/precomp paradigm.

That said, it's a mistake to make blanket comparisons of a swiss-army-knife application like AE to more focused apps like Shake. They excel in the areas which they were intended to excel at. Shake is a huge pain for motiongfx type jobs where you have to manage many layers of elements both in time and space. But it wasnt really designed for that. Conversely, AE's motiontracker seems "bolted on" to the main AE interface, and is obviously not designed for the type of person who finds themself tracking and matchmoving things day in, day out. Sure, it can be done in AE, but Shake does it much more elegantly, and with much more depth and granularity than AE

But truth be told, I generally find myself integrating all of these apps together in order to complete a project. I think it's really a mistake to marry yourself to one single app just for the sake of it (unless of course you can't afford it, or simply dont want to learn different packages to expand your skillset). Most of the time, I'll do all my tracking and keying in Shake, then bring either the tracking data or Shake-rendered mattes & comps into AE for further processing. Or for those times when even Shake can't cut it, I'll use Imagineer's Mocha/Mokey instead. There have even been times when I've found FCP's built-in keying tools to give me better end-results than Keylight in AE or Shake! It's all about using the right/best tool for the job.

If you already own Shake, I can't imagine not being able to "justify" having it on your machine simply because you prefer AE. But I guess I can understand not ever needing it, if you actually feel that there is nothing lacking in AE for the type of work you do. My own venture into the noodly world of Shake started mostly because a client of mine presented me with 'boards for a VFX heavy spot that I knew would be a huge pain in the ass in AE. It was one of the best career decisions I've ever made, because getting proficient at node-based compositing has--by necessity--made me more knowledgable about what goes on "under the hood" of compositing software (e.g., Apps like AE and Motion hide things like premultiplication and concatenation-of-operations from the user, whereas tools like Shake and Nuke dont). Now that I understand all that stuff, I've found it incredibly easy to switch my knowledge over to Nuke (as well as the ColorFX room in Apple Color)...and if I'm ever lucky enough to sit in front of a Toxik workstation, or for some crazy reason I ever decide to learn a 3D app like Houdini, the learning curve will be much less steep for me.

But if you use Shake ONLY for tracking, it's still worth keeping around. At least the price is right.
 
Firstly Im not a compositor but I do run areas that use the systems. I think the answer is you need all of them for now. May be add Nuke to that too. The problem real seems to be not the cost of the application licence but the cost of plug-ins if they are not node licensed. What I do see on walking around a graphics area is AE being open more than the other apps as a rule.

Dave
UK
 
melorama said:
Shake is still the dominant desktop compositing app in most high-end VFX shops, and will continue to be for quite awhile. Nuke is quickly gaining mindshare, but it's high pricetag and relative newness (at least to the non-D2 general public) will keep Shake the tool of choice for most people.

I've been an AE user since 1993 (and have the floppydisks to prove it! :)), so I'm hardly a node-snob. But after switching to Shake for most of my compositing work about 4 years ago, I can honestly say that it is much better than AE for VFX work. Shake's tracking, roto and keying tools make AE seem like a hobbyist's app (brilliant guys like Mark Christiansen, DorkmanScott and Stu Maschwitz notwithstanding). And the node-based UI makes complicated comps much easier to manage than with AE's horribly cumbersome layer/precomp paradigm.

That said, it's a mistake to make blanket comparisons of a swiss-army-knife application like AE to more focused apps like Shake. They excel in the areas which they were intended to excel at. Shake is a huge pain for motiongfx type jobs where you have to manage many layers of elements both in time and space. But it wasnt really designed for that. Conversely, AE's motiontracker seems "bolted on" to the main AE interface, and is obviously not designed for the type of person who finds themself tracking and matchmoving things day in, day out. Sure, it can be done in AE, but Shake does it much more elegantly, and with much more depth and granularity than AE

But truth be told, I generally find myself integrating all of these apps together in order to complete a project. I think it's really a mistake to marry yourself to one single app just for the sake of it (unless of course you can't afford it, or simply dont want to learn different packages to expand your skillset). Most of the time, I'll do all my tracking and keying in Shake, then bring either the tracking data or Shake-rendered mattes & comps into AE for further processing. Or for those times when even Shake can't cut it, I'll use Imagineer's Mocha/Mokey instead. There have even been times when I've found FCP's built-in keying tools to give me better end-results than Keylight in AE or Shake! It's all about using the right/best tool for the job.

If you already own Shake, I can't imagine not being able to "justify" having it on your machine simply because you prefer AE. But I guess I can understand not ever needing it, if you actually feel that there is nothing lacking in AE for the type of work you do. My own venture into the noodly world of Shake started mostly because a client of mine presented me with 'boards for a VFX heavy spot that I knew would be a huge pain in the ass in AE. It was one of the best career decisions I've ever made, because getting proficient at node-based compositing has--by necessity--made me more knowledgable about what goes on "under the hood" of compositing software (e.g., Apps like AE and Motion hide things like premultiplication and concatenation-of-operations from the user, whereas tools like Shake and Nuke dont). Now that I understand all that stuff, I've found it incredibly easy to switch my knowledge over to Nuke (as well as the ColorFX room in Apple Color)...and if I'm ever lucky enough to sit in front of a Toxik workstation, or for some crazy reason I ever decide to learn a 3D app like Houdini, the learning curve will be much less steep for me.

But if you use Shake ONLY for tracking, it's still worth keeping around. At least the price is right.
Click to expand...

Wow Mel, that really puts it all in perspective. I think I mis-worded my first statement though, believe me I have no intention of simply dumping these programs. I just found it rather odd lately that I've been able to get most of what I need in my compositing FX work through AE these days and with very acceptable results. I haven't seen Nuke or Toxik yet. Interesting stuff all around.
 
Just to agree with what seems to be the consensus. I would never use Shake for mogfx, but then I probably wouldn't use AE for anything else. I find Shake's way of working so much easier for planning, executing, and modifying a composite. That said, Shake's QT support sucks (and I think that might be a generous term to use). I generally do images in and out of Shake and use AE to make images of QT's and vice versa. I'm not sure I could get my work done with just one or the other.
 
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