Smoke on MAC is here!!

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Will SmokeHD... without Batch... without LUTs... without GPU->SDI... will it be a valid client-supervised system?

Nope. Or at least I don't see $15K + $2K annual of value there. So far, the best justification for this system I have seen was what Bruce Allen posted. But that wouldn't be the way I would approach the situation. Not to say either of us is right or wrong, but there are other options out there besides Smoke and various post houses and more capable post workflows that one can buy into or work with that will take a long time to add up to $20K in three years, plus the cost of system hardware and system upgrades.

If you're going to buy into a finishing solution like Smoke. I see no reason to not go full bore with all the goodies on a Linux turn-key box. IMO, it would be easier to keep that system busy than a lesser version on a Mac Pro. Of course, the Mac could serve duty for other applications too, but then again, editing in Final Cut isn't usually going to pay off that $15K investment in some other software on the same box.

And finally... WTF? Autodesk should've ported MAX to OSX first. I suppose they already have that market covered with Maya, but still... Why Smoke first? Or is it just a sign of more OSX support to come? Could Flame, Inferno and Flare be close behind?

 

[M Most]

And finally... WTF? Autodesk should've ported MAX to OSX first. I suppose they already have that market covered with Maya, but still... Why Smoke first? Or is it just a sign of more OSX support to come? Could Flame, Inferno and Flare be close behind?

Of all of Autodesk's current media industry products, 3D Studio Max is the most tied to its Windows underpinnings. It has never existed on any other platform, and even with recent rewrites is very much a Windows product. Maya and Softimage have both been multiplatform for some time (both originated on SGI Irix, but Maya was ported to Linux, Windows, and the Mac some time ago, and Softimage was ported to Windows when Microsoft bought the program). Flint, Flame, and Inferno likely share a good deal of code with Smoke (itself originally a cut down version of Fire), so they are likely good candidates for an OS X port if Smoke does well on that platform. Personally, I would think that Lustre would be a good candidate as well, in part because Autodesk once showed an early Mac version of the program a few years ago, and also in part because there is currently nothing on the Mac in that particular space (Color is basically free and pretty capable, but it is very limited by its inability to do real time playback with HD formats, and its almost complete lack of real conforming tools, among other things).

 

[Simon Blackledge]

Yes.

The only real time playback limitation I saw (I saw the system demonstrated tonight) was that it won't do live downconversions (what they call real time mastering). And, predictably, the performance (both GUI interaction and any rendering) is a bit sluggish compared to the turnkey Linux boxes. But I did not really see a problem with playout (via the Kona 3) in the original format (in this case, 1080/23.98), much to my surprise. The lack of Batch limits a bit of the group copying functionality, and limits a bit of the compositing flexibility. But that, to me, is hardly a deal breaker, and it's likely to be something a client never notices. In fact, I was pretty impressed with what I saw, especially considering it's really a version 1 on this platform.

From someone who has seen it, can you , or can you not.. in SD and HD be working on the smoke and see it RT a full screen image on a second monitor via sdi ? plasma or grade 1 etc ?

 

[Ben Rojas]

Ok... so...

1) Imported hi-res QTs and edit.
2) Export XML
3) Wiretap to Smoke
4) Wiretap reads XML, finds R3D files
5) Wiretap converts R3D -> DPX
6) Smoke imports XML and DPX

...and for this, you need a crapload of storage for the DPX files.

Versus...

1) Load R3D files into Premiere and Edit.
2) Export EDL
3) Load EDL to SCRATCH, and load R3D files.

One system, one set of files, no transcoding, no additional storage necessary.

Your workflow works. But, is it really a beautiful thing?



Wouldn't hurt, except that neither FCS, CS4, or Smoke support RED Rocket™™ yet.

I am not putting down Smoke as a tool. It's a great tool and has sold a bunch for a reason. I believe Autodesk will sell a lot of the 15K OSX version!

But I don't see the huge benefits in a RED workflow... and this is REDuser. :

Fine, leave RED Rocket out, and we'll drop it in when it's useful... What... Maybe by NAB. And why is it beautiful, because I cut my piece in FCP and Finish the damn thing in one box. I pull my keys, composite, build, design, etc. etc. in Smoke. If I need CS4, it's there. I'm not editing w/one tool, compositing w/another, color correcting w/another... And if you've been on Smoke, you know the power of the system and what I'm talking about. Even "Smack" w/o Batch. And yes this is REDuser, but everything that passes thru my suite is not RED. Lucky for you that everything running thru your Scratch suite is. And Premier? Really? Again, good for you that you don't have clients breathing down you neck saying WTF? And where in your "beautiful" workflow does finishing come into play? Oh, you're jumping between PS, AE, maybe illustrator... Is that before or after Scratch. And the clients again are saying WTF?

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Keep in mind, I was talking about Rocket Fuel + CS4.

SCRATCH CINE and Smoke are very different tools, and I wasn't comparing SCRATCH-CINE vs. Smoke on overall toolset.

Only on the window that SCRATCH-CINE is targeted at - R3D conversion, dailies correction, conform, video output, etc.

Lucas

You mentioned compositing/finnishing... You'd need a full Scratch for that.
And then you still (AFAIK - correct me if I'm wrong) would be better off with DPXs for compositing, keing and tracking - looks like from the posts here at least. Haven't tried for a while now...

Point is:
DPXs are still quite valid for finnishing, even with Scratch, so it's a bit more apples to apples comparison for finnishing.

For conform/oneligh/playout, dpx-transcoding (hey, did I say that? - ) rocketfuel looks cool - I do agree.

 

[Bruce Allen]

Keep in mind, I was talking about Rocket Fuel + CS4.

SCRATCH CINE and Smoke are very different tools, and I wasn't comparing SCRATCH-CINE vs. Smoke on overall toolset.

Only on the window that SCRATCH-CINE is targeted at - R3D conversion, dailies correction, conform, video output, etc.

Lucas

At the moment we're doing this:

OFFLINE: get med/low-quality R3D files converted into Avid for offline. We use Red Rushes and it's fast enough - at work we have 20 Nehalem Mac Pros, so it's never more than an overnight render. For personal projects that I'm not doing at work, I leave stuff to render at home during the day.

ONLINE: finish great-quality HD from R3D files.

Smoke would REALLY help with this. It's a much better finisher than Media Composer / FCP / Premiere - and cheaper than DS / Quantel / Baselight / a full version of Scratch.

RED Rocket / SCRATCH-CINE falls between the two stools for us - not needed for offline, not powerful enough for online. I can think of plenty of people it'd be PERFECT for. Just not for us.

Maybe this has changed with the latest Builds and Color Sciences, but practically every piece of RED footage I process requires more than primary color correction. If SCRATCH-CINE had great secondaries / color warper & great NR tools it'd be fantastic, of course. Otherwise, for online, we currently either use:

LOW BUDGET / NOT IN A RUSH: After Effects (!) for the final processing (slow, with good plugins and operator the quality is great).

HIGH BUDGET / IN A RUSH: Go out of house (sometimes R3D, sometimes just RedLog tape-to-tape exported straight from RedRushes) to a place like R!OT and use a DaVinci or Pablo or whatever.

For ancilliary tools, I was using RedCine but dropped that because I just hit too many weird bugs. Maybe they're fixed now. Don't know. Don't care. It's simpler to just load the R3Ds right into AE.

We've looked into Premiere as well and used it (with AE) for 2-3 jobs - but it has a way to go still. It failed hard when I gave it my 12 minute short film edit to import from Avid. I don't think Smoke would fail hard if I gave it the same thing.

I'm not saying I'm sold on (or could buy, or convince my company to buy) Smoke now. But a year down the line, when the next gen of graphics cards comes out and they iron out some of the inevitable v1 bugs, I expect it'd be pretty amazing.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Bruce Allen]

BTW, I'd love it if Assimilate, Adobe, Avid and Apple all brought out packages with similar finishing features at a similar or lower price. I imagine Final Cut Studio 4 and Creative Suite 5 might be close. I think Final Cut Studio 5 and Creative Suite 6 could well be the real deal.

It's just that Smoke + Avid looks like it might kinda be there right now, for under $20,000 total price. A year back, the same software would have been $40,000+.

I remember back in 1997 or so when Softimage 3D used to be incredibly expensive. Plus, people had to buy a Mental Ray license FOR EACH CPU. Then in just a few years, prices plummeted.

I am just crossing fingers that the same thing might be happening for 2D finishing, a decade later.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

premiere is useless when it comes down to reading TC, conforming on scratchcine- rocketfuel is useless when vfx shots come into the play, i could be wrong but scratchcine cant load quicktimes or dpx files. scratchprepost can asfaik.


smoke on mac is a one stopp app, you can use it like bruce talked about it. its not perfect, but which app is


but rocketfuel is good for dailies, trannscodings, its pretty much redcine x 2010 but now, pretty cool!and its cheap now

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

I'm not saying I'm sold on (or could buy, or convince my company to buy) Smoke now. But a year down the line, when the next gen of graphics cards comes out and they iron out some of the inevitable v1 bugs, I expect it'd be pretty amazing.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

One year from now you will have a more powerful tool with more features for a FRACTION of the price of Smoke on a MAC. I PROMISE. That's all I can say without getting sued. But that being said, I think there's lots of folks who can make some good ROI right now with the new SMOKE.

 

[Imran Farouk]

sounds good to me...any chance we may hear bits and pieces before that full year?

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

sounds good to me...any chance we may hear bits and pieces before that full year?

You might hear something at NAB 2010.

 

[Bruce Allen]

One year from now you will have a more powerful tool with more features for a FRACTION of the price of Smoke on a MAC. I PROMISE. That's all I can say without getting sued. But that being said, I think there's lots of folks who can make some good ROI right now with the new SMOKE.

Thanks Mark! Hope so!

At the moment the post world kinda feels like back in the old days of 3D when you would model in PowerAnimator, animate in Softimage and render in RenderMan.

Our industry is compartmentalized into offline editors, finishers, colorists, effects people partly because of skill sets but also because of the way software packages work and are priced right now.

The wisdom was that CG artists should specialize - texture OR light OR animate OR become a TD. Now we have tons of generalists!

I think it was the advent of affordable, stable, full-featured 3D (eg when Maya hit $2000 and everyone lowered prices to compete) coupled with stable, full-featured 2D (eg After Effects when it suddenly got good around v4 or 5 but stayed cheap, Shake when it hit $500) that allowed for generalists to flourish.

I was really hoping either Final Cut Studio 3 or CS4 would do it, to be honest. But I fear they need 1 version's worth of features & intra-suite connectivity added, plus another version's worth of the needed bug & workflow gotcha fixes before it all works smoothly. And Discreet will use that time to come up with 2 or 3 more features which I REALLY WANT :rolleyes5:

For me, After Effects has been getting less stable since version 6 (CS4 crashes literally every day - mostly when I drag footage into the project window after waking the Mac from sleep), and FCP was always flaky for me since v1.2. Maybe their 64-bit Cocoa re-write will fix it, since they're taking their sweet time and OUGHT to have it bug-checked, but...

All I need is:

- great, best of breed, Avid-level offline editing OR the ability to conform from an Avid edit without hitches

- real color correction tools (at least Smoke level, preferably lustre level)

- either really good effects tools & plugin support OR the ability to seamlessly work & update from After Effects / Nuke / Fusion / Toxik.

...and for it to actually work smoothly, responsively, without too many showstopper bugs (or with great support).

If the effects module or integration with 3rd party compositors is awesome, I can accept a subpar color corrector, since so much can be done with a good keyer & tracker. But still, some kind of macro-level overview of the color palette, plus 3rd-party control surface support (yeah, I know that's not in Smoke) would be perfect.

Okay, fingers crossed! Again, thanks for the tip, Mark!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Demo of Smoke 2010 for Mac OS X at Interbee:

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3_kTq7DnU8&feature=related

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xR0c1c6lrU&feature=related

------

For people not familiarized with Smoke... is it good to think of it has Shake, Color and FCP all in one program? Editing, Compositing and primary/secondary color grading toolsets all in one application.

 

[Emery Wells]

Keep in mind, I was talking about Rocket Fuel + CS4.

SCRATCH CINE and Smoke are very different tools, and I wasn't comparing SCRATCH-CINE vs. Smoke on overall toolset.

Only on the window that SCRATCH-CINE is targeted at - R3D conversion, dailies correction, conform, video output, etc.

Lucas

The reality Lucas, is that Scratch and Smoke go great together. We will definitely be picking up a seat or 2 of Smack but I would never use it in place of Scratch as our RED workflow and grading toolset. Smoke will replace our hodgepodge of a finishing solution that is currently very similar to what you described... CS4, Final Cut, a lil Nuke.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

You might hear something at NAB 2010.

You've been hinting about this for quite a while...

 

[Emery Wells]

I would guess hes talking about FCS4 which has long been rumored to include a 'super' version with highend finishing capabilities. The thing about Smoke is it has a very long proven track record. The tracker is amazing, the master keyer kicks ass, and the interface/layout allowed you to work very quickly. Apple just hasn't been showing too much interest in the professional market of late so Im still a bit skeptical but I love me some Apple so I hope its true.

 

[MichaelHalsell]

If the new suprise is 'super Finalcut', the price point is so negligible that its not worth the wait and see for the feature set nor worth effecting your current business' revenue model. Buy into the system(s) that yield a known quantity, reap the immediate benefits, purchase five (5) FC4 at a dime a piece if and when it fits the bill.

 

[Ross Vincent]

are we really calling it 'SMACK'?
surely 'iSmoke'.......

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Of all of Autodesk's current media industry products, 3D Studio Max is the most tied to its Windows underpinnings. It has never existed on any other platform, and even with recent rewrites is very much a Windows product. Maya and Softimage have both been multiplatform for some time (both originated on SGI Irix, but Maya was ported to Linux, Windows, and the Mac some time ago, and Softimage was ported to Windows when Microsoft bought the program).

Yeah, I'm aware of all that Mike I. I'm an SGI nut myself, Used to use SoftImage|3D extensively on SGI. And I used 3D Studio from it's very first public release up through MAX v2.5 or so. About the time Discreet changed their licensing and hosed a bunch of their customers, don't know if you remember that one. I was one of the people who got hosed and stuck with two copies of MAX 2 that couldn't be upgraded to 3. I'm all Maya, Lightwave and Modo these days... Actually I've been using Lightwave since v5.5, and I dabbled with XSI for a while, but it just doesn't fit my business model and I have plenty of other tools. Sorry to run off on a tangent there...

That said, I think most likely the reason for Smoke first is as you say, it probably shares a huge portion of code with Flint, Flame, etc.. And this was a logical first step to bringing the entire suite of combustible-named softwares over to the Mac world. I also agree that Lustre would be a great candidate for an OSX port.

I do think plenty of people will be able to leverage the OSX version of Smoke. But at this point in time, if we're talking about setting up a dedicated Smoke system, or at least a system that runs Smoke most of the time, to me the Linux turn-key makes a lot more sense.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I would guess hes talking about FCS4 which has long been rumored to include a 'super' version with highend finishing capabilities.

We can only hope.

Apple just hasn't been showing too much interest in the professional market of late so Im still a bit skeptical but I love me some Apple so I hope its true.

Apple never shows much interest in anything until it happens anyway. They keep things under wraps better than most anyone else.