AUTODESK SMOKE EDITING SOFTWARE. Your thought

[Mark Toia]

Rendering at the end is fine.. but not every single thing.... Boring.

PS. Horses for courses...
I like useing what ever gets me the job done quickly & painlessly... I'm a slave to none of the above. I float through them all.

But render heavy workflows usually get flicked pretty quickly.

 

[Jean Déraps]

I agree with you Mark, that Nuke can be frustratingly slow. But I just saw a beta demo of Nuke 7 that takes advantage of GPU power....it was like 8x faster than no GPU. I was told release end of summer...

Of course, this doesn't help us....now!

 

[Björn Benckert]

CW and CW are pretty much useless and they have nothing to do with Lustre technology. Based on that, I doubt very much the claim of thousands color gradings of music videos and commercials in Smoke.

your wrong, I personally graded almost one thousand music videos in Fire... i.e the old smoke..

 

[Dermot Shane]

I hate the import/export crap that I have when working with standard NLE's. And then the gamma shift of death. Or the dreadful, tedious reconformings... Smoke is a revelation! Rendering, so what. All serious VFX apps have to render sometime.

Hans

I don't import/export, and i don't render every single color correction change...

Really smack is a great idea, but the lack of RT gradeing + grade management + node based grades in context means huge roundtrips, trashing the whole concept of finishing in the box...

Fluster, DS, Pablo, Mystika & to a lesser exrtent Scratch are all used every day for this, it's not surprise that they all grade in RT, all have graded management, all have nodes/layers in context, all can edit, conform, title, effects, audio to a sample...

Saying all VFX app's have to render is a trueisim, saying all finishing/gradeing app's have to render every single simple gradeing choice is far from reality eh?

smack seems to be just not enough, and when they all hit the ground in the fall, it may will be poorly compared to MC + Baselight + Digital Fusion... on any one file smack is weaker on paper, but really it the lack of real gradeing tools that kneecap it whole and complete.. oh and tieing it to iMac also....

maybe smack a hackintosh on a z820 + SpeedGrade + PF track, and then render DPX and roundtrip is an answer... with all the issues that arrise when buying into that workflow.. but we are now far from a toolset that allows one to finish in the app.


d

 

[Björn Benckert]

I like autodesk but I love FLAME....

Flame cost a lot now more than 100 times the price of a smoke license. But if you use FLAME correctly it will pay off...

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

...but we are now far from a toolset that allows one to finish in the app.

d

Then, I guess, all of my recent projects left the house unfinished.

Hans

 

[Dermot Shane]

your wrong, I personally graded almost one thousand music videos in Fire... i.e the old smoke..

I think Jake's main point is right.. Luster finds it's lineage in AD's purchase of Cyborg and has the square root of zero in common with the CW.

Killing Cybog is up there with some other amazingly stuppie moves by AD, like kneecaping Combustion and handing the desktop market over to the Foundry.... they have a long history of protecting their access to flame owner's wallets at all costs, even when the cost is to throw away entire markets that they once owned whole and complete.

Yea, i guess with memories of the hype of the rollout that remined me of the roll out of Toxik.... another app that was going to change everything... and the under whelming responce, the next question is how long until they kill smack like they did Toxik, Combustion, Edit, Cyborg?

Take any bets that 2014 sees smack dropped?

 

[Dermot Shane]

Then, I guess, all of my recent projects left the house unfinished.

Hans

you are using smoke/flame/luster right?

smack is not Fluster eh?

Media Composer is not DS either, but rolling out a list of my recent work on DS and saying because it's an Avid then MC has the ablity to do what i do?

comparing shinny red delicous apples to tiny sour green crabapples, and somehow thinking that because the red delicous is awesome that the crabapple will be as well?

take smack on it own merits, compare to MC/Baselight/DF and PP/AE/SG, and it comes up short on many files.

take smack as a FCP7 replacement and a feeder to Fluster? pretty darn good...

take smack as a finishing "hero box"... only the hard core fanboys could overlook the huge gaps

d

 

[Dermot Shane]

I like autodesk but I love FLAME....

Flame cost a lot now more than 100 times the price of a smoke license. But if you use FLAME correctly it will pay off...

Absoultly, no question
but Flame is not smack, and smack is really not Flame

d

 

[Björn Benckert]

Absoultly, no question
but Flame is not smack, and smack is really not Flame

d

Got the "Smack" swell on my portable station to bring with the rocket raid to shoots. What I mean is, if you are serious about finishing, editing and vex work then you probably do better getting a flame. Since then you get the right workflow from start. Starting out with smoke will make your mindset all messed up and it will take a few years to learn.. then some more years to learn flame.. then life is short.

 

[shashbugu]

I think Jake's main point is right.. Luster finds it's lineage in AD's purchase of Cyborg and has the square root of zero in common with the CW.

Killing Cybog is up there with some other amazingly stuppie moves by AD, like kneecaping Combustion and handing the desktop market over to the Foundry.... they have a long history of protecting their access to flame owner's wallets at all costs, even when the cost is to throw away entire markets that they once owned whole and complete.

Yea, i guess with memories of the hype of the rollout that remined me of the roll out of Toxik.... another app that was going to change everything... and the under whelming responce, the next question is how long until they kill smack like they did Toxik, Combustion, Edit, Cyborg?

Take any bets that 2014 sees smack dropped?

You lost me there.... Hopefully more people and schools will get a chance to step up they're productions a notch. The EOL'ing of combustion was really sad, mostly because you could use all of the AE plugins in it.

D you really think with the continuous advancements in AE NUkE will be here in 2016? I can name 20 highend tools from 12 years ago that have EOL'ed. Even the 35mm camera has been EOL'ed.

No one on here has used Smack 2013.
Realtime is relative to the type of clients you have.
The rendering in Smoke is extremely fast and non-destructive. Its a non issue. It does not decrease the quality of your image in any way whatsoever.
Nuke is a great shot to shot tool no question. Most of us don't work in pipeline efx chains. We are small studios centered around the Red cameras. We don't limit ourselves to any one technology as in A is better than B. If we have jobs that need A or B we send them out. 49% of effects, CC, Audio, media management, and finishing work can be performed on Smack. hopefully now we can even edit on it.
There are a host of other very capable tools like the Adobe CS master collection and fcp3. Its almost a must to have these in you studio. Honestly the most difficult part of smack is or was the interface. I use it all the time along with the CS products, but I have to visit Grant Kay's blog to figure out each step to a new vfx challenge. I find it much easier to do graphics and effects work in smack than in AE. keying, cleanup, removals, rotoscoping, etc is a breeze and fast. After pulling a traditional key, the 3D space inspires you to create elements you hadn't initially conceived. There's always a new light you could drop in a scene, add a spring sky, make elements appear and disappear because of the roto-tracking speed. I cant wait for CS6 and Smack 2013. I don't use media composer, and i sure as hell don't have an interest in fusion, pablo, mystika, or DS.

 

[shashbugu]

If you gave most people smoke for free they would have no use for it. Life is short Smoke Smack

 

[jake blackstone]

We could compare individual tools, advantages of one over the other ad nauseam. But I'd like to remind to everyone, that it is not any single element of Smoke, that makes this software so compelling and unique. It's the sum of all parts, good or bad. It is the only true finishing software, that given time and desire allows for pretty much any task to be accomplished on the same platform. And when it is all done, everything can be archived to be restored later at any time with a push of a button. Try that with combination of Adobe CS, NUKE, Resolve etc.
Just please, bring the Lustre back!!!

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

Just please, bring the Lustre back!!!

I'm pretty sure they are working on that.

Hans

 

[shashbugu]

We could compare individual tools, advantages of one over the other ad nauseam. But I'd like to remind to everyone, that it is not any single element of Smoke, that makes this software so compelling and unique. It's the sum of all parts, good or bad. It is the only true finishing software, that given time and desire allows for pretty much any task to be accomplished on the same platform. And when it is all done, everything can be archived to be restored later at any time with a push of a button. Try that with combination of Adobe CS, NUKE, Resolve etc.
Just please, bring the Lustre back!!!

did somebody say baselight sparks plugin

 

[Dermot Shane]

It is the only true finishing software, that given time and desire allows for pretty much any task to be accomplished on the same platform.!

*cough cough DS cough*

Smoke's not the only true finishing software in town by a long shot....

Honorable mention to Mystika & Pablo too eh?

d

 

[Dermot Shane]

I can name 20 highend tools from 12 years ago that have EOL'ed. .

I'm haveing a hard time finding 20.... in 2000 i eval'd pretty much everything out there...
DS lives on as DS
Fire lives on as Smoke
EditBox lives on as Pablo
Jaleo lives on a Mystika
Pharrannia lives on as Pharrahina
Cyborg partly lives on as Luster, edit/gfx/3Dcomps are dead tho
Scroatto is dead and burried
Spectrum is history

that was the list in 2001, and of the eight tools i eval'd six are still with us in one form or another.. i count two dead, one half dead - where's the other seventeen and a half?

 

[jake blackstone]

*cough cough DS cough*

Smoke's not the only true finishing software in town by a long shot....

Honorable mention to Mystika & Pablo too eh?

d

*cough cough $3500 cough*
Over the years, how many high end commercials were finished on Smoke/Flame vs DS vs Mistika vs Pablo?
I maintain, that DS is more of a niche product, while Smoke/Flame is a mainstream product, that is set to become even more widely used at $3500... or not

 

[Dermot Shane]

*cough cough $3500 cough*
Over the years, how many high end commercials were finished on Smoke/Flame vs DS vs Mistika vs Pablo?
I maintain, that DS is more of a niche product, while Smoke/Flame is a mainstream product, that is set to become even more widely used at $3500... or not

Totaly agree, Flame is an awesome toolset, well suited to short form.. but that said, a ton of short form gets done in DS too.

DS is really the tool of choice for long form, up here in Vancouver, there's far more DS installs than there is Smoke, but Vancouver is really a long form town, most commericals that shoot up here ship to TO, LA, Chicago, or NYC for editorial & finish.

Most of the local spots are done on FCP or lately PP, so they would be targets for the new smack for sure...

There's very few Canadian national spots completed in Vancouver, and i do my fair share of finishing what there is, and now that Technicolor has shut down it seems even more are heading my way.

And yea, i do them in DS top to tail normaly, and sometimes Resolve, not often tho... end game is that the real Fame/Smoke is great, awesome, amazing, but not the only option, a good option, just not the only one...

d

 

[michaellines]

smoke2012

smoke2012

i'm on SMAC 2012 highend box with burn node and RAID that is getting sustained speeds of 800MBps
It does have a rich feature set that separates it form the pack. renders are lightning fast, color warper is amazing with secondaries and when using the modular keyer I can grade footage with selective blurs, gmasks, and selective color areas that I track and create beauty beyond what I saw in the camera originals. Paint, flame FX, true 3d environment, lighting, amazing lens blurs...all of this is truly a dream in one box.

As an editor it is clunky and leaves a lot to be desired. the current build is very buggy. Long form + RED is a nightmare on smoke 2012.
Projects get corrupt, clips get corrupt, hotkeys stop working, exports fail.

I was a believer but am pushing my system aside for premiere until I can revaluate smoke 2013 end of summer.
hoping for the best with smoke 2013

Michael