Autograph, a comp/mograph/editing alternative

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French developers have presented Autograph, a piece of software that reminds me of Nuke and After Effects a bit. I don’t know either of those very well, but I was feeling the area was in dire need of competition. It’s built from the ground up to make use of CPUs and GPUs intelligently, apparently. I know some of the GPU additions to historic software often feel a little tacked-on so I think it’s nice they’re embracing the GPU as a main actor. From what they’ve presented, it seems a little light on features for now but the basic needs should be fulfilled. It’s also OpenFX compliant for what it’s worth. It seems to have decent keying tools.

I don’t know, you comp guys judge it !

Cheers,

Hadrien

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This is very interesting indeed! I had heard several years back that the main developer behind Natron, had been working on a commercial compositor. Seems like this is what he has been working on. Alas there are no subtitles for that video, but it looks promising from what I can see.

There is a dire need for an AE alternative, and Hitfilm is definitely not even close. If they do price this correctly it could be a good alternative within a few years. Seems like it will be sold by re:vision effects, and they don’t force subscriptions on their plugins, so I am hopefully that Autograph won’t have forced subs. Subs only on Cavalry really killed my enthusiasm for it, even though they have a decent limited free version of it now.

More info here: https://www.left-angle.com/#page=95

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Upon some further digging, I unfortunately found this snippet :
“the software will be made available to independents and graphic content creation agencies through long-term subscriptions”.

What the hell is wrong with these startups, that they don’t understand the resistance independent artists have to subs. Why can’t they take a leaf out of the Affinity book?

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They said in the stream they offer both subscriptions and perpetual licenses

Yes indeed they’ve mentioned him. Natron never really reached financial stability it seems… even though it’s now being maintained more actively again

For now it seems they’ve gone for a layer-based approach, and are considering basing future effects on nodes, but contained within a given layer. They said geonodes and nuke studio were an inspiration for this (in the sense that each nuke studio strip references an entire comp tree).

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Hi guys, just watched the live, seems very interesting indeed, Linux enthusiast graphists really need some AEFX alternatives, and Adobe really need some direct competitors to break their monopoly !

Here are some pinpoints for non french speaker from the live :

  • Layer based approach, but some nodal editor should be available for shading… (not in the demoed in the live, they just talked about it)
  • Available in Q2 2022 for win mac AND LINUX :slight_smile:
  • Multi resolution/framerate support (change your composition size… on the fly with dynamic rearrangement to keep the framing correct…)
  • Maximum possible hardware acceleration giving near real time results (at least seems to work nice in their demo^^)
  • Concept of procedural generators (noise…) giving some “infinite” results, not defined on a fixed resolution
  • Ability to expose composition’s settings from outside this composition to dynamically render several iterations of it (for example with different languages, scores for a soccer billboard…)
  • Integrated 3d renderer with USD importer
  • Javascript expressions
  • OFX compatibility
  • OTIO compatibility
  • Subscription licencing AND perpetual licensing option

Cheers !

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Ah, thanks that is good to know! Strange that they only mention subs in that article I linked to.

I was pretty blown away by the part of the youtube demo where he imports a USD file from Blender. Then after duplicating the layer containing the USD and offsetting it in time a blur is then added to the whole layer. All playing back in realtime. It clearly has a lot of power under the hood. Also looks like you can drive any parameter with procedural noises or expressions, much like Cavalry can, which would make it awesome for mograph. Hopefully it also has a nice text engine to rival AE.

Will be very interested try a demo when it is released.

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It looks like Autograph has just been launched.

Permanent and subscription licences are available. There’s a 30 day free trial. You need to create a site account.

Permanent - $1795
Yearly - $599
Monthly - $59

LAUNCH OFFER

Permanent license: 20% off permanent Autograph license + get 1 free render-only license.

Yearly license: Those who purchase a yearly Autograph license during the launch offer period will have the option to upgrade to a permanent license for the retail price difference at the end of their subscription term.

*Launch offer valid until March 1st, 2023.

Autograph Trial & Purchase

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saw that, seems a bit high priced for a new software without any beta test and community, but also seems promising
they have a youtube channel when you can have a glimpse of the functionalities https://www.youtube.com/@left-angle

Curious about the first feedbacks about it (and the blenderr/autograph workflow :slight_smile: )
I’ll try to test it when i have some spare time !

Anyway, yay for a native linux professional comp/modesign software

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…aaand the team joined Maxon and Autograph is dead. We really need an alternative to AE in the Open Source world don’t we?

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Yeah ! well let see what they’ll manage to do, at least Autograph looks quite promising and innovative. Now it takes time to build trust within a community.
That’s probably one of the biggest challenge for an emerging software like that.

Now for an OSS alternative to AE, AE is too many different things at the same time that it’s pretty difficult to compete. That’s also because Adobe bought many new techs that they pile together in AE.

I think for many things blender is getting the closest to an alternative , at least to do motion graphics stuff it won’t be exactly the same strength and weakness but there is a lot of potential IMO.

For compositing too we’re getting somewhere, I’d love a dedicated app for both but it looks difficult. I had high hopes on Natron and I’m glad the software is still there and evolving but it also shows how difficult it is to find it’s way.

Blender has something a bit unique that in one hand it’s a free 3D software, in the other it’s capable of natively doing some stuff other can’t … And it’s been there for ages before it really start to be felt as a real alternative. I’m not saying that’s impossible for other software to be the same, it’s just a lot of time and energy …

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Well that’s a bummer

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I already posted my views on this a couple of days ago on the zbrush thread here, so I won’t reiterate that. What has come to light since, is that not only did users get a sudden email about the news, without warning the website was closed and users could no longer open up the software as it has to “call home” to work. Imagine having a client project that you can’t even open up.

A very low act from this company, and makes me very wary of investing any more time and money into these small companies as it just happens too often. Can’t really feel that safe with small vendors like Plasticity, JangaFX, Nomad etc, especially the solo dev ones. Even with a “permanent” license you still have to login to register, so if the company ghosts you, as in the case of Left Angle, you can’t even open your projects.

It is just a matter of time before Adobe or Maxon will wave millions in front of them, and honestly who could blame the devs for cashing in. Especially in light of this shrinking industry and the onslaught of AI slop generator overload.

For many of us that have been in the industry for a long time and have seen all the shifts and takeovers, having these great open source projects like Blender, Godot, Krita etc is very reassuring! Personally, I only use FOSS for my personal work, but will use rent-ware for client work if I have to.

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No way, people are locked out of their project files ??

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Yeah, they basically pulled the website and server access without any warning, so people can’t launch the software any more. The company has totally ghosted people on social media and their emails. Basically took the Maxon money and ran…

I was learning the free version, and was thinking about a license, but very glad I didn’t. I just can’t trust these smaller players any more after being burned dozens of times over the past 25 years. Especially if they use online activation of any sort, which is pretty much all of them…

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On the fateful day of June 5th, we were surprised by the inability to open the software. Five client projects, all in progress, became hostages of a corporate decision about which we had no warning. Work was abruptly halted, and we now face the arduous and costly task of readjusting our entire pipeline, hastily migrating to DaVinci Resolve and Blender to try and reconstruct what was lost.

…and r/LeftAngleAutograph is on fire…

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I just bought a license during the Year End sales. Still learning how to use it but was…am…enjoying the process. It has good basic tutorials. Had a free version that given time may have built a vibrant community like Blender or Resolve. Especially those wanting to escape the Adobe suite. I wish Left-Angle had reached out to the community. Don’t know if the outcome would be any different but there’s nothing like a crisis of favourite promising software to rally a community of creative artists.

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What is strange about this one, is how did Maxon approve of this?

Usually it is the smaller companies who pull these shenanigans.

NewTek - stops dev, goes dark emerges with half baked release then sells to Vzrt. Then goes dark and sells LW to LW Digital.

Messiah Pro runs a big sale, takes the money and runs. It was a hit or miss to get the license working contacting support.

That developer went completely dark.

But most situations where these apps where bought up, especially by large companies, they didn’t just pack up and disappear like this.

Or I have never heard of this.

Large corporations seem to realize the stakes of these kinds of short-sighted moves and give plenty of lead time.

AD giving us more than a year warning about XSI dead.

When they bought Arnold, Solid Angle didn’t just immediately close shop. You could still buy it separately for a long time. Maybe still can? Not sure.

The Foundry and Modo.

Other examples I am missing.

But this is odd. Is Maxon just a larger but still independent company that has no clue about customer service?

Is this the kind of thing you would expect from them?

Because they are half to blame for allowing it, and even they hosted the page that all of the links for Autograph post to.

I am more dismayed over their actions than I am the smaller company who took the deal.

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Yes and yes

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I was just thinking. But really how can a company like Maxon be so bad as to allow this?

Even considering that I have seen other companies do similar.

Then last night I watched the Ocean Gate disaster documentary Titan.

And then I was like, yeah, OK.

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I had great hopes for Autograph and was ready to buy a permanent licence.
This is most unfortunate.
As for customer service, well…

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