Compositing Tool Roundup

Mar 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Frank McMahon

Today’s compositing programs include powerful features that were unheard of on the desktop just a few years ago.

Selecting a compositing program is probably the most important and pivotal choice a design studio can make, and increasingly it is a key choice for editors. The compositing application is the one program where all the elements — video, stills, audio, and more — are brought together.

Boris Blue is the update to Boris Red, and offers a complete revamp of the previous software and realtime features such as ani-mated pixel shaders, 3D objects, warp, extrudes, and particles.

Beyond mere title sequences and bumps, these days composting programs work faster and harder and include workstation-like features that were unheard of on the desktop just a few years ago. Programs such as Adobe After Effects, Discreet Combustion, Apple Motion, Curious gFx, Digital Fusion DFX+ 4, and others are all muscling in on the around-$1,000 price market, because that's the point where you may be able to afford a couple of programs (and won't need to lock into a single, more costly software or dedicated hardware). If you're in the mood for playing the field, the following programs offer quite a lot, with prices that allow you to own more than one package.

Every company is chasing down Adobe After Effects, which is sort of ironic, considering there has not been a substantial update to it since the 6.5 version came out more than a year ago. But that doesn't matter much, considering the program packs such a punch and is so deep with features that it's hard to go wrong with it. After Effects is broken up into regular and pro versions, but even the regular version has enough power to keep you humming for years to come. AE has pushed to be as realtime as possible, and version 6.5 added robust OpenGL support, improved disk caching, a FireWire video out preview, and advanced RAM previews. So more of the program is peppy and realtime.

While we're discussing realtime performance, it's worth noting that no matter what video card you have, it's probably time to upgrade it. Most of the problem with realtime software is that CPU rates have leveled off and most users are not aggressively updating their computers. Since video card prices have actually decreased, upgrading your card is a smarter bet than updating your computer.

Chances are you may not have been monitoring the current video card price war, in which features and speed are increasing and prices are decreasing. Even a $150 card from Nvidia or ATI would have powerful OpenGL pixel pushing and would speed up just about all your desktop compositing work, especially features that take advantage of the video hardware, such as particles.

Enter Apple's graphics creation program Motion, which plays off of these video card advances and promotes this as one of its key benefits. If you look at the minimum requirements of the program, you can slip by with an 867MHz G4; however, the recommended system is actually a dual 2GHz G5 with 2GB of RAM. This allows quick number crunching of computations, but as far as the onscreen realtime-ness, Apple recommends a meaty OpenGL card in the Nvidia or ATI flavor. This is the real power that moves around all the cool particle effects and object animations that Motion encourages.

Even though Motion lacks a lot of the professional features of AE, such as true 3D compositing and 16-bit color space, it's also available for a third of the price. Also, it has a beautiful interface that glides along with you (AE can get windows-heavy very quickly with even basic projects). Dual-platform users and production shops could most likely afford to have both, and they probably should. Motion can be used for quickly conceptualizing and getting graphics and footage up and spinning, and After Effects for higher-end productions.

While the standard-bearing After Effects and the upstart Motion may turn your head, Discreet is still on the dance card with its new Combustion 4. Combustion has one of the best interfaces around, and its OpenGL support and FireWire preview make for amazingly smooth operation. The program is really a joy to use. The price has come down to $995 in recent years, so mere mortals can take advantage of its excellent features.

One feature that has not been excellent in the past is Combustion's keyer. I do a fair share of greenscreen work, and the built-in key just wasn't quite there. Now, Combustion 4 adds the new Diamond Keyer, borrowed from Discreet's Flame system, for much improved keying quality and options. Also new in version 4 is an improved paint system with B-spline paint options, custom brushes, grids, and rules. There is also a new feature called time-warp that allows quick keyframeable time-remapping for slow-motion and speed-up effects.

New features in Discreet’s Combustion 4 include an improved paint system, custom brushes and rules, and time warp for time-based effects.

Other programs rounding out the leading group of compositing programs include Curious gFx Pro, Eyeon's DFX+ 4, and Boris Blue. Boris Blue is the update to Red, and whereas Red bumped up its OpenGL realtime effects, Blue goes all the way. It offers a complete revamp and realtime features such as animated pixel shaders, 3D objects, warp, extrudes, and particles.

DFX+ 4 is a stripped-down version of Eyeon's Fusion compositing software. By leaving some high-end features out of the Digital Fusion flagship program, Eyeon has brought the price and product more in line with After Effects and Motion. Like Motion, the program only chugs at 8 bit, but it does have a wide array of features that will keep most busy, including paint, particles, keying, and 3D. Also, the company offers an impressive library of courseware for learning the program on its website, as well as handy macros and in-depth scripts for those wanting to harness more power through automation. Eyeon will demo DFX+ 5 at NAB.

Curious Software's gFx Pro actually comes in 8-bit and higher-end (and priced) 16-bit versions, so you can purchase just what you need. The software's strengths are painting and rotoscoping up to 6K resolution, and it has great tools for wire and rig removal and animated mattes. The program may be new to those in the United States, but this import has the potential to steadily gain ground if it is developed over the coming few years.

Although Curious will demo gFx Pro 2.6 at NAB, Vizrt has signed a letter of intent to buy the company for its well-regarded World Maps product. At press-time, no information was available about plans for gFx Pro.

Plug-in possibilities

Once you settle into a compositing program, eventually you'll want to expand on it. This where plug-ins come in. Yes, plug-ins are a blast and add value to any program, but some programs have lots of plug-ins where others have a few.

The king is still After Effects. There are lots of plugs for this program, and many other programs, such as Combustion, offer support for the Adobe plug-in format. However, plans are underway by a few companies to develop new open plug-in standards so each plug-in can work with all composting programs.

Open FX is one such concept (http://openfx.sourceforge.net), where the call is a universal standard for 2D visual effects programs. The project has generated participation from companies including Boris and Discreet, so it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. The plug-in company The Foundry has taken the lead with generating support and has begun to introduce plugs in the OFX format.

But for now Adobe plug-ins lead the way, and there are so many great ones that we'll only be able to scratch the surface of some in this article. Search on websites such as pluginz.com, toolfarm.com, and thepluginsite.com, and you'll find a lot more. The plug-ins on the next few pages work in After Effects and most programs that support AE plug-ins. In addition, some of these companies offer separate versions for programs such as Combustion, Premiere Pro, Digital Fusion, Avid applications, and others.

More plug-ins need to directly support OpenGL. Few do now, but one of the ones that does is Darkling Simulations' DIN (Darkling Interactive Noise) plug-in. It includes 13 noise patterns and can literally generate thousands of variations of organic textures with parameters such as sharpness, size, spin, placement, squeeze, and jiggle. There is a control layer option that allows you to directly apply the effect to your source and intermingle it with other After Effects filters. Check out the Darkling Simulations website for movies of fire, water, clouds, and all kinds of dazzling effects.

The CameraPOV plug-in from Profound Effects recreates looking through the viewfinder of various cameras, from nightvision to security cameras.

Conoa 3D is a plug-in that allows quick and easy creation of standard geometric shapes (cone, sphere, cylinder, etc.). It also can map video and stills onto shapes, complete with shadows, reflections, and bump mapping. The results are smooth and professional because the plug-in directly integrates with After Effects' own lights and cameras.

Frischluft.com is a German company that offers Lenscare and Flair. Lenscare recreates lens effects and Flair offers several special effects, including Amiga Rulez (recreates old Commodore demo coder effects), glass sphere, glow, highlight, radial blur, and a very cool effect called volumetrics. The company's Lenscare simulates various lens effects such as depth of field, out of focus, highlights, apertures, and background distortion. It's pretty amazing that lots of these traditional in-camera effects can now be added in postproduction.

Speaking of camera effects, Digital Film Tools offers four plug-ins, including 55mm, Digital Film Lab, zMatte, and Composite Suite. Most of its offerings recreate different lens effects. For example, the 55mm plug-in recreates cross processing, polarizing, Rosco Gels, F-stops, and color temperature.

While we are discussing camera effects, another plug-in I recently discovered is CameraPOV from Profound Effects. It recreates the actual look through the viewfinder. In other words, the effect can look like an old SLR, a nightvision camera, a high-end camcorder, or a security camera. There are lots of parameters to adjust. Also check out Profound Effects' excellent Useful Things, which offers 150 premade effects. You can download lots more effects created by users in the Profound eXchange section of the company's website. Useful Assistants is also available. It comes with more than 100 automated scripts (think AE macros) to keep you from click, click, clicking all the time and doing repetitive tasks.

Digital Element's Aurora Water and Aurora Sky are also worth investigating. These two plugs-ins are some of the best element-creation tools available. The interfaces are intuitive and easy to use, and feature not only gorgeous water reflections and turbulence, but also excellent sunsets and cloud formations. Plus you can use After Effects' own 3D camera to fly through your new creation.

Stagetools offers MovingPicture, a plug-in designed for smooth pans and zooms onto hi-res stills. It can work as a plug-in or as a standalone product. The learning curve is minutes. You can load up and have it figured out in no time.

The Foundry offers three plug-in sets for AE, Tinderbox 1, 2, and 3. This company also developed the excellent Keylight keyer that now ships with After Effects 6.5. Tinderbox has been a staple in most compositors' toolkits for a while now. Although the price on each set is a bit high, these dazzling plug-ins work at 8 or 16 bit and come with many, many parameters to tweak.

ViviClip's Video Filters 3 Pro is a plug-in that does a lot of prep in getting your footage ready for broadcast, including color correction, color matching (one clip to another), skin soften, white balance, noise reduction, and sharpen. The plug-in features a full screen interface that allows access to all of its tools. The interface takes some getting used to, but there is a lot of power here for priming clips for broadcast.

Walker Effects offers a professional suite of its plug-ins, from color effects to channel manipulation to glows and noise. The 18 plug-ins are deep with features and focus on real colorful options for cool effects.

One must-have plug-in for Combustion is Automatic Duck's new Pro Import C3, which allows you to export your timeline from Premiere Pro and import it into Discreet's Combustion. The company has a great track record with export/import plug-ins for different timelines from different edit and composite systems.

Digital Anarchy could be a hidden treasure if you are not familiar with it. This company has a wide range of plug-ins for Discreet and Adobe, and specifically for After Effects. The best of the bunch might be the Anarchy Toolbox, which provides nine plug-ins that do distortions, glows, and other effects at a very reasonable $149. Digital Anarchy also sells the Microcosm codec, which is the first lossless, 64-bit RGBA QuickTime file format. This works with many programs, such as Premiere, Combustion, Final Cut Pro, and After Effects. This is worth checking into if you want to move around lossless QuickTime files, or if you need to archive projects with video.

I saved one of my favorite companies for last in the special effect plug-ins arena: Trapcode. Lots of people love this suite of plug-ins. It includes Particular for dazzling particle effects, Shine for light rays, Starglow for highlights, 3D Stroke for organic shapes, Sound Keys for tracking music to animation, and Lux for rendering visible lights (such as smoky spotlights).

This company really has its act together as far as cutting-edge effects go. Every one of its packages is top notch. Visit trapcode.com and enjoy the demo movies. While the visuals get the most acclaim, don't miss Sound Keys. This plug-in takes a music or audio track and creates keyframes on the beats so you can sync elements to the music. This would take forever to track by hand, but this plug-in makes it oh-so-easy.

There is a range of keying options available in the plug-in world, as some built-in keyers in compositing programs don't always do everything we ask of them. DVMatte Pro from DV Garage is a reasonably priced offering that works with SD, HD, or DV. It offers a lot of fast presets so the knockout occurs quickly with minimal tweaking. The training movie that ships with the product will get you up to speed and using it quickly.

Ultimatte has been a leader in keying for years, and its AdvantEdge plug-in upholds that tradition. It excels at working with compressed video footage formats and has a wealth of tools for spill suppression and cleanup. Red Giant's Primatte Keyer works wonders by removing grain in the alpha channel for cleaner keys and even has the ability to key transparent objects. It also works great on hard areas such as smoke and hair. Digital Anarchy offers Primatte Chromakey 2.0, which excels specifically at working with green- and bluescreen backdrops.

Composting artists always need fresh, ready-made content, and there are certainly a lot of third-party options out there. GrangerFX offers TrinityFX, a package of 3D transition effects that are passed down from Play Inc.'s Trinity video system (remember the demos of that unit way back?). The 500 plus transitions still look awesome, and the pre-rendered 3D wipes come in lots of varieties for every project.

Another unique plug-in package is BroadcastGems. These are collections of background libraries and animated backdrops that are professional and high end. The difference with this package is that the backdrops load into After Effects as a multi-layered project, allowing you to pick them completely apart and tweak, tint, animate, and create something entirely new from the template. This is a great concept, and it works better than more static, unalterable backdrop packages.

Another great package to look into is Editor's Toolkit 1 and 2 by Digital Juice. These work well in any compositing program, and are broken down into animations, lower thirds, and backdrops. The company is always raising the bar for animated elements, and its latest efforts continue that tradition.

A few final tips

Finally, here are a few final compositing suggestions. Look into smaller compositing programs that do one specific thing, such as Imaginate 2.0 from Canopus. This software creates pans and zooms from multiple groups of stills for creating slideshows. And it does it more quickly than After Effects or any other program. And don't forget to get a professional encoder, such as Discreet's Cleaner XL or Sorenson Media's Sorenson Squeeze. Cleaner has been an industry standard for years, and Sorenson will output just about any format around.

Compositing software continues to improve, and some of the tool kits currently available are pretty amazing. Trends include more reliance on video cards (as opposed to CPUs) in the future, with more realtime features integrated for fast, creative brainstorming. Plug-ins will continue to extend current products in amazing ways, and the visual dazzle seems to only be beginning. Prices are coming down, so you or your shop can afford more than one tool.

All around, the ability to do desktop compositing has grown in leaps and bounds in only a few years and shows no signs of slowing as far as features and advances go. It's certainly a good time to be a digital artist.