This may be too early to start this discussion, but I felt we should document it so that it will be better in the future to refer this thread.
I want to start discussion on added compositing features (of AE or Nuke ) to blender. We could have his as an idea for GSoC 2011. We should pull the dev and start documenting the possible way of implementing this. When I once started aabout this in the forum, Matt was telling about having a new manipulator all together to do these. These are the different dev implementation ideas we need to document and evaluate. And if we start the discuss and create a formal doc of how to go about it, dev can (may after blender2.6 release), create a the basic infra - structure that needs to be in place. And at the time of GSoc 2011, multiple students can work on different compositing effects/features in parallel. If we don’t have a basic infra structure, then we need to dedicate one GSoC to create that foundation.
So, can we(as a community) start the discussion on how to implement awesome cool new features of compositing in blender. Artist can update their feature request, UI, interface things and dev can update the ways to go about it in implementation part. And this way, we can collect all the points and create a proposal for the basically infra-structure need to achieve that.
It is always better to start fresh when trying new things, becos we can get to try implementing/profiling new algorithms for these, instead of picking up the old papers and re-implementing, it will provide the same but in the future we may need to compromise on new feature implementation due the infra-structure created from old papers.
What FreeMind said. This is my guess at the goal of the next open something, just speculation of course: Make Blender a good enough tool that people don’t have to rely on Adobe After Effects for motion tracking, sequencing and whatever else it’s used for (I’ve never used it). For that matter, I’ve never used any commercial compositing software at all, so I don’t know what Blender is lacking.
shake’s move node while holding shift, and move it over a noodle, causes it to connect the noodle to it’s socket. like shisseling in a node in a fast way.
remove completely the settings for the node , from the node it’self into a shelf that’s always visible. I use N-prop panel, but some of the nodes doesn’t display settings there.
phonybone is working on the node editor, one of the biggest task he says, is to get the getter/setter for data. so you can read object data. RNA or what it’s called besides that,
I would like to be able to easier draw mask. masking. maybe be able to take a frame from the node compositor , over to UV imag editor, with layers. and draw mask.
or even better, able to add “mask” node, where you can make a bezier shape in the Image Editor. and keyframe the positions of each anchor point. and animate it over time.
if it’s a node , you can take the alpha image , and blur it etc. to get feathering. and have several “mask” nodes going on at the same time. to rotoscope out stuf.
Maskin’ is one of the “basic” low level tasks in compositing. and doing it in blender atm is one of the hardest. having bezier shapes , with 20+ shape key animations to blend between.
if bezier shapes where able to auto keyframe the anchor points a biiiig problem would get out of the way.
Seems unlikely that it would work just like After Effects since it will probably be node based. Perhaps the devs can make it work just like nuke or shake though :).
This is Great ideas…blender have animation system,graph editor,particle,python etc…, I like layer based in AE it’s easy for 2D artists (PS or Gimp) and mix with 3D objects like mograph in C4D. AE very slow and eat all of RAM. I like AE’s render quality(best in TV).
hell no! no layers, that’s a downgrade. I’ve fought z-sorting bugs impossible to fix in AE comps due to it’s layer structure and fake 3d, 2.5d
no layers please. you can have layers in a UV/Image Editor, but not in a Node Compositor.
I rather see the node system been worked on, becoming stronger. there’s a reason for why post production houses and VFX shops uses Nuke not AE.
one thing not mentioned is the rather slow compositing render engine, as mentioned some dev. sped up the blur node, because it came 4x, 16x slower! on simple blur due to going from 2k, to 4k res.
There’s a point almost any compositing artist points out nuke, it’s extremely fast render engine.
basically applying effects is going pixel by pixel and change, here’s a field where the GPU’s could just brute force through the huge amount of calculations almost instantly/realtime rather than having a CPU thread through it …
so that’s probably one end to start at, speed ups.
I cant remember what program this was in (it may have been nuke) but when you click on a node the controls for the node appeared in a separate tool bar instead of on the node itself. I find that when you have a lot of nodes this would be helpful.
Couldn’t had said it better myself :rolleyes:. AE is horrible even if disregard the fact that it crashes all the time. Espacially when working with 3d content compositor like AE shows it’s weaknesses. Blender already have a decent node based compositor, why not improve it instead of going back a few steps.
Blender already have a decent node based compositor, why not improve it instead of going back a few steps.
I totally agree. I got used to node based compositing now after using blender and some Nuke. But I am bit concerned about the creating space for the preview window (as like AE) and also incase of working with mask’s.
I think that some sort of nodes for the different editors in blender would help - being able to use a sequence cut as the input for a comp layer or texture would push workflow towards a similar but better solution than after effects/NLE style compositing with the benefit of have the visual aid of timeline editing rather than a purely node based setup that can be difficult to read quickly…
also masks, they’ve gotta be key, simple absolute keyframe based layer masks that can be quickly edited and stay live the whole time…
besides that,