whats a good post production software e.g after effects?

[Tarik2d]

Hi all,

I wasnt sure what to call the title lol

I am wondering what people feel is a good software to do the post stuff in, like putting all the frames and layers together for examples after effects?

I have about shake and some others but not sure which one to look into

Cheers

Tarik

[Crispy4004]

I've used AE, Fusion, Toxik, and am just now starting with Nuke. Plenty of working professionals use AE, but personally I feel once you go node-based there is no going back, especially for more complex shots. Shake is suppose to be great, but it's also no longer being supported.

Each have their strengths and weaknesses, but those won't become apparent unless you start trying to do some serious VFX stuff. As someone who has only used compositors for putting together 3D elements, if that's all you want to do it really doesn't matter which way you go so long as it's node based. I like Fusions interface the most, but Nuke easily has the best setup for Color space. Toxik is a bit of a pain to manage in that regard, but I do like its EXR integration and it has a great flow chart.

Your call, if you can try them all out and see which one you like most. Nuke is probably your best bet though if you want to follow the industry trend.

[The_Caveman]

Have to agree with Crispy4004 on that one. I tried out several as well, AE, Toxik, the one embedded in XSI and recently Nuke. and my favorite is Nuke. its slowly becoming one of the standards in the industry as well. Its very open to scripting which is nice, easily to incorporate into workflows fast, and rather easy to get started with. and EXR. exr is great. most packages do support it but aren't able to extract the custom passes yet. (combustion being one of those packages)

btw I noticed that AE now has nodes as well. since CS4. not as nicely working yet as nuke but they have nodes ^^.

cheers.

[NitroLiq]

I would say it also depends on your needs. If you're doing motion graphics and incorporating 3D into it, then AE is probably your best bet but for straight up vfx/film work then yeah, nuke, fusion, etc.

[Tarik2d]

Thanks crispy4004, The_Caveman and NitroLiq thats helped a lot, thank you :)