Inside Combustion 2
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I set myself up on a dual monitor system with a Wacom tablet and was able to assign my display and time controls on one monitor while keeping my tools on the other. Keeping everything open like this allowed for immediate and easy access to the entire project. Combustion 2 allows you to customize up to a 4-monitor setup. [an error occurred while processing this directive] Within the display portion of the interface, you can break the scene into multiple views. The advantage of this is that each view can represent a different level of the composite. So, you can be rotoscoping in one view, while seeing the resulting composite in another. Not only this, but depending on RAM, you can cache the result of the composite in one view and actually have the sequence playing while you roto in the other view. The cache will update as you work and you can monitor the roto for edge flutter. This is, of course, based on the power of your system and the amount of RAM you hold. Both factors need to be pretty robust to take advantage of these features.
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| Schematic view |
Along with a standard timeline view for the layers in the composite, you have added control with the ability of changing it to a graph view with bezier controllers for more effective control of the animation between keyframes. You can also view the comp within a schematic view, bringing it up to the level of control to heavier hitting compositing programs like Shake and Digital Fusion. Combustion 2 gives you the same kind of control of the composite from both the schematic and layered workspace. With the ability of linking, unlinking and rerouting flows, you can build your comps with the process that you feel most comfortable with.
Combustion 2 takes advantage of a 3D workspace. The layers of the composite sit in 3D space, giving you control over the distance from the camera. By stacking the layers with distance information, you can create parallaxing when you move and animate the camera. It is really much like a multi-plane camera setup. Combustion also uses this feature to create shadows from one layer to another, adjust lighting, and create other effects such as depth of field. On top of this, Combustion 2 can use the 3D information in RPF and RLA files saved from 3ds max to incorporate other layers amongst the RPF file. The RPF file contains much more information than the color and alpha information.
Items like z-depth, velocity, NodeID, MaterialID, Transparency, etc - -and the file can be saved with 8-bit or 16-bit color depth. Combustion can see this information and use it for compositing and for specialized 3D effects. Z-depth allows Combustion to know how far away objects are in a scene in relationship to one another. Even though the objects are in the same image, you can slide other layers between those objects, creating an easy way to composite multiple CG objects passing in front of and behind other layers – without the necessity of rendering multiple passes.
Velocity information enables you to apply motion blur in the composite based on the vector of the original object. This is essentially what image motion blur does within Max. But rendering without motion blur, and having that data available in the composite gives you far more control than simply applying image motion blur in Max, and much faster than object or scene motion blur.
The benefits of 3D compositing do not necessarily offset the amount of calculation time, especially with straight compositing projects. Combustion 2 has brought in a 2D compositing mode that gives the artist an option of how to put together the comp. The option was sorely lacking in the previous version, and adding this make Combustion a more viable option for post houses, especially smaller ones that may not have the firepower to process the 3D all the time.
The paint features of Combustion bring Photoshop in with the addition of a timeline. You have full control over brush type and size as well as brush application, including cloning and revealing on top of just straight paint. Each paint stroke you create becomes a vector-based spline. This spline can be animated and manipulated. All the other standard drawing tools are also included with circles, rectangles, bezier-handled polygons, etc.
These tools extend into making selections and creating masks for applying effects and including/excluding items from layers of the comp.
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