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Any News on Phenomenon?
- Thread starter fluidedge
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Who knows. Either Apple is super secret on this project or they have abandoned it. I too have been looking forward to news on this for quite some time.
P-Worm
P-Worm
Yea, Apple needs to get on this. Ive been putting off learning a new compositing program, but I cant wait forever.
I think they're probably in serious danger of missing the boat on this. Nuke is supposed to be really good and Fusion is getting recognition on 4K movie projects. And then of course there are products like Flame and Inferno that seem to be the real heavy weights in compositing/particle creation.
Hasn't the guy that was leading the Shake team moved over to another company anyway? I doubt there will be another offering in this area from Apple.
I'm not one of the "apple are selling the pro apps" people - i think they're just slowly abandoning them. They'll keep Final Cut going, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Motion and Color brought into one package (maybe this is what Phenomenon will be) and all the music apps mushed in together one day.
I'm still learning and using Shake, as loads of post production houses use it and hope to get work as a compositor soon but I'm slightly worried i'm using old technology
Should I also abandon shake and pick up another compositing package - Fusion or Combustion perhaps? I'd appreciate thoughts on this from industry professionals!
Hasn't the guy that was leading the Shake team moved over to another company anyway? I doubt there will be another offering in this area from Apple.
I'm not one of the "apple are selling the pro apps" people - i think they're just slowly abandoning them. They'll keep Final Cut going, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Motion and Color brought into one package (maybe this is what Phenomenon will be) and all the music apps mushed in together one day.
I'm still learning and using Shake, as loads of post production houses use it and hope to get work as a compositor soon but I'm slightly worried i'm using old technology
Should I also abandon shake and pick up another compositing package - Fusion or Combustion perhaps? I'd appreciate thoughts on this from industry professionals!
I'm not a professional, and I'm not sure if there are many VFX artists that snoop around these forums. You question would be better placed at vfxtalk.com. I bet if you search, there will be a thread just like this one.
P-Worm
P-Worm
I wouldn't be too concerned. Shake is just a tool, and yes, when you switch to a new tool or a different version of the same tool, there's going to be a learning curve.
But in compositing, what's really more valuable than the tools skills is the creative experience with compositing and special effects in general. Coming up with ways of implementing the director's vision of the final outcome, and you can learn that very well with Shake. And this experience is still going to be valuable with different tools in the future.
With Shake being so cheap right now, I wouldn't wait for whatever new tool may or may not come out from Apple - I'd start learning compositing right now.
- Martin
Cheers guys - i'll take a look over at the all VFX forums (i've been meaning to sign up for while!)
And I agree with you Martin - It's all about the wizard not the wand eh?!
The main reason i'm using Shake is because it is so cheap compared with other compositors. Also i'm a big Peter Jackson fan and i know he and WetaDigital used Shake on the LOTR and King Kong movies and i was blown away by some of the stuff on that!
The trouble with teaching yourself these programs are getting hold of good tutorial assets to work on. I've been using the Lynda.com tutorial with Steve Wright and trying to use a bit of my own footage but it's not great.
I think Phenomenon is a rumor that's never going to appear. Apple has already taken parts of Shake and put them into Motion and FCP. I think Motion is going to inherit even more of Shake in the next revision.
Lethal
Lethal
You might be right, but I hope it isn't true. For a compositing app, I can't imagine working without nodes. Motion gets away with it because it's based around particles and motion graphics.
P-Worm
I'm inclined to agree that the project has changed from being a "shake replacement" to a "shake dissection and implant into motion/color"
I'm not holding out much hope for Phenomenon. Even if it comes out the question remains - will the industry run with it? If everyone has got fed up waiting moved onto Nuke/Fusion then they're unlikely to spend thousands moving back to an Apple product for the sake of it. Unless that is, there is something really good in Phenomenon, but it's difficult to imagine what.
I'm not holding out much hope for Phenomenon. Even if it comes out the question remains - will the industry run with it? If everyone has got fed up waiting moved onto Nuke/Fusion then they're unlikely to spend thousands moving back to an Apple product for the sake of it. Unless that is, there is something really good in Phenomenon, but it's difficult to imagine what.
I really hope that if they are working on Phenomenon, that the interface leans more toward Shake and away from Motion. I don't know about you guys, but I HATE motions interface! The timeline is the worst POS I've ever seen.
I'm a professional compositor and I can assure that shake is still the de facto no. 1, but it won't be for long. I'd expect half the jobs I go for to be nuke-based by the end of the year. In the US, there are lots of competing compositing platforms, in which Shake has longsince had the most marketshare, but here in London there tends to only ever be one, so when nuke takes over, it'll be a more pronounced shift. I'm about to start learning it now on fxphd (the best online place to learn vfx software, if you're that interested - not sure about how much it costs, but it's cheaper and better than the gnomon dvds).
Ron Brinkmann, the guy behind shake, left apple to go to the foundry and work on nuke, and their latest version (v5, out 3 months ago) looks a lot more like shake. All told tho, whilst shake is old and buggy, it's popularity is down to the fact that it's by far and away the easiest software to get your head round. Whether you're an amateur filmographer or vfx hopeful, shake's the best place to start. Then if you want to do all the more intense 2.5D stuff that nuke/fusion offer, you can segue fairly easily into one of those (I'm only paying for the course cos its quicker than bluffing my way through the transition).
My guess is "phenomenon", or whatever they call it, will be a part of fcs3, if it ever sees light at all, and it will be a snappier version of shake with fresher code, but little or no new features. Whilst often used on big features, the fcs family is really geared towards semi-professionals and tv. Apple obviously isn't interested in the low-volume high-margin $2000/licence sector of the market anymore, or else they'd have made more of an effort to maintain their position as market leader. I think Brinkmann intimated as much but I can't remember where I read the quotation.
Ron Brinkmann, the guy behind shake, left apple to go to the foundry and work on nuke, and their latest version (v5, out 3 months ago) looks a lot more like shake. All told tho, whilst shake is old and buggy, it's popularity is down to the fact that it's by far and away the easiest software to get your head round. Whether you're an amateur filmographer or vfx hopeful, shake's the best place to start. Then if you want to do all the more intense 2.5D stuff that nuke/fusion offer, you can segue fairly easily into one of those (I'm only paying for the course cos its quicker than bluffing my way through the transition).
My guess is "phenomenon", or whatever they call it, will be a part of fcs3, if it ever sees light at all, and it will be a snappier version of shake with fresher code, but little or no new features. Whilst often used on big features, the fcs family is really geared towards semi-professionals and tv. Apple obviously isn't interested in the low-volume high-margin $2000/licence sector of the market anymore, or else they'd have made more of an effort to maintain their position as market leader. I think Brinkmann intimated as much but I can't remember where I read the quotation.
Really interesting to hear from a professional compositor in London. Thanks for your comments. I'm about to start a course at Kent Uni, Canterbury in special visual effects and from what i understand we'll be using a mixture of after effects
(), combustion and i think Digital Fusion. Though i know it's really about the skills rather than the software package. Maybe I can persuade them to get on the Nuke bandwagon! They use Windows XP PCs so don't use Shake obviously.I'm teaching myself Shake at the moment and wondered about getting the student version of Nuke to play about with as well. I hear v5 is really good. Hopefully by the end of it all i'll be pretty handy at most of the major packages!
There will also be a lot of maya, i think, which i'm not wild about as i'm not an animation type of guy but i know its well used in VFX too.
tbh i think phenomenon won't turn out to be what we expect it to be (i'm thinking it'll be motion 3 with color mixed in) - i'm not really bothered either way about Phenomenon any more, i think apple have really missed the boat already - it'll be too late if it's released next year. The industry will have moved on.
Happy to help. I know a few 3D ppl who did your course, I think. Sounds like you're gonna be pretty well versed in just about every compositing package by the time you leave, so you're sure to be familiar with whichever one rules the roost in 3 years' time. The more packages you know, the better luck you'll have finding roto jobs over the summer, which I wish I'd known about when I was at uni. Roto pay varies from £60-100/day (bigger companies pay less), and is a good way to get on the job experience (and with a bit of luck, a few composites) whilst you're doing your degree. Roto is dull and easy, so you can figure out how to roto in just about any package you know how to track/stabilize in.
Good luck in your course, and getting into compositing. You will find that most ppl want to be animators, altho very few of them get to be, and they either end up as generalists in a small company or settling for specialising in some other branch of 3D. Compositing is less taxing, and the software is much easier to learn than the 3D packages, but its still not as popular with graduates as 3D work, as most ppl like the idea of building elements from scratch. The best artists, of course, are good at all disciplines.
Good luck in your course, and getting into compositing. You will find that most ppl want to be animators, altho very few of them get to be, and they either end up as generalists in a small company or settling for specialising in some other branch of 3D. Compositing is less taxing, and the software is much easier to learn than the 3D packages, but its still not as popular with graduates as 3D work, as most ppl like the idea of building elements from scratch. The best artists, of course, are good at all disciplines.