Inside Combustion 2
Combustion 2 has been long promoted as the next best compositing tool available for Linux, OS X, and Windows. In a lot of ways it is. But in a numbers of other ways, you shouldn’t stop using your other high end compositors just yet.
Combustion was born from a combination of previous products from discreet – paint* and effect*. These products in themselves were acquired by discreet and brought into its line of products. Paint* provided a vector based paint system, while effect* was the compositing tool. Both were adjusted and developed to work with 3d studio max, and edit* (which came from D-Vision). These products were adequate for what they did. Paint*’s competition would have been Commotion, with the advantage of utilizing vector-based strokes rather than raster. Effect*’s peer at the time was Adobe After Effects. Despite effect*’s 3-D compositing space, which gave it advantages over AE, the lack of high-end keying and color space and correction tools kept it from competing with eyeon Software’s Digital Fusion and Nothing Real’s Shake, which has since been acquired by Apple Computer. [an error occurred while processing this directive] Discreet took paint* and effect* and combined them into one workspace, giving you all the benefits of both programs but without leaving the pipeline. This advancement was nice. But the largest step that discreet took to bring Combustion to a higher plateau was to begin to incorporate the tools that are found in Discreet’s SGI-based Flame, Flint, and Inferno (FFI). Color correction, keying, tracking and color space tools migrated from the very well established high-end compositing systems that are without a doubt the industry standard for compositing. The interface had also made its way over, creating an opening for compositors to train on the lower-priced Combustion, and be qualified to move into a Flame bay without having to invest the money – or certainly a post-house to invest in training an artist on a $600/hr machine.
In the first iteration, discreet managed to bring the level of their compositor up a notch. There were still some items that it was lacking, however. Combustion forced the user to work in its 3D compositing space, which is much more heavy in comparison to the 2D compositors out there. The Color space tool dealing with LookUp Tables (LUTs) as well as management tools for viewing color space beyond 8-bit were missing or not up to par. And it was also missing a schematic view of the composite, which has been the predominant way that high-end compositing systems have handled things since the now-mothballed Cineon stations.
Combustion 2, after what seems like a pretty intense development cycle, has returned with features that fill those previous gaps, as well as expanding and refining the tools that were already there. Other additions include Backburner (the Combustion network manager), a 2D particle system, committing operators to disk, better RAM management, and many more.
When opening Combustion, the first and obvious item is the interface. Discreet markets this as an “artist interface,” designed to focus on the creative process rather than the technical things. I do not really see this quality. But, it does begin to grow on you – after a period of working with it. Discreet certainly doesn’t spend time making the interface look pretty. There are buttons, sliders, and numbers and nothing more. It’s a little intimidating when you first sit at it and try to accomplish any tasks. It becomes more evident as you progress that the interface does indeed allow you to work with more efficiency. Expanding your desktop to multiple monitors gives you even more flexibility.
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