Combustion 2 for Windows

Discreet's desktop compositing, paint and animation system, Combustion, delivered a powerful and promising solution that seemed poised for excellence if the engineering and vision were maintained for one more major release. Combustion Version 1.0's problems with rendering bugs in intersecting layers (on the Mac) and a not-fully-matured tool set would normally have been a major PR problem for software competing with first-rate products such as After Effects, Digital Fusion, and Commotion. But this is Discreet, the folks that also develop Flame and Inferno, and now in Combustion 2, they have delivered a compositing system for Mac and Windows digital artists that is both complete and reliable.

Combustion was originally positioned to take on Adobe After Effects and peel off a sizable chunk of its enormous user base, but the price performance of AE (and its loyal user base) has made Discreet rethink the strategy. Discreet has raised the price with C2, and the new strategy is to sell this product to postproduction houses that already use Flint, Flame, and Inferno. The original West Coast development team from Denim Software that created Paint and Effect (the genesis of Combustion) has left, and development of Combustion has been moved to Montreal where Discreet's high-end systems engineers reside.

Combustion 2 has added and improved a number of key features within a philosophy that all the major tools and features for compositing are available without plug-ins. Out of the box, C2 is a Flame-inspired application with a comprehensive feature set that covers the main aspects of visual-effects compositing, painting, and animation. For those of you new to the product, C2 provides a vector-based paint system, layer-based compositing, and a 2.5D environment for perspective and camera-based manipulation of layer elements.

The highlights of the new feature set are: resolution independent, 64-bit image-processing; color Look-Up Table (LUT) and advanced film grain management; a fully editable interactive schematic view; fully integrated 2D particle system with OpenGL support; improved text and motion graphics module; enhanced garbage mattes and rotoscoping; and greater compatibility with Flame and Inferno. There are other features and improvements, but these comprise the core system that has elevated this product to star status.

C2 stands apart from Digital Fusion, After Effects, and Commotion with an image-centric user interface. When you open up C2, you are presented with a task-based, clean interface that resembles the dashboard of a sports car. Flame is clearly the inspiration. Combustion 2 puts everything at your fingertips in a very appealing GUI that offers the user four basic multi-pane layouts. The ability to do hotkey zooms into the viewport and the very fast OpenGL support make for a vivid design experience.

On the workflow front, the greatly improved and frankly beautiful schematic view displays each node and effect (operator) in a composite as an image. The flow chart can be viewed full screen or alongside a composite viewport. Naturally, it's fully editable and works simultaneously with the layer and timeline views: changes in any one workspace are reflected in all the workspaces. The schematic view also allows branching to create multiple outputs from the same source at any point along a workflow.

The Flame influence is everywhere, and C2 has also added improved text creation and manipulation. Combustion treats type as vectors, supporting TrueType and Adobe Postscript fonts as well as international characters, such as Asian and Arabic. As vectors, the full range of effects can be applied to text such as cloning, texture mapping, brush sets, and resolution independent scaling. C2 adds to these capabilities with type-on effects and meta-data support such as time code, random numbers, time-date stamps, etc. Procedural text changes are cached in RAM so that you can view changes as you edit them. This includes looping jitter type or flashing phrases or text animated along a path.

Perhaps the most eye-catching feature is integrated 2D particle effects. Historically, the problem with particle generation is the amount of iterations it takes to create usable water, smoke, flame, and other organic effects. Discreet provides something that other software companies should pay attention to: high quality presets. There are dozens of extremely well-designed effects that appear in a preview window that responds to the cursor in real time. Smoke trails, sparkles, and flames appear in real-time WYSIWYG, and unlike most crude presets, the selection of pre-made effects in C2 is excellent. Individual presets are frequently made of combined elements. For instance an explosion has sparks, flames, a fireball, and smoke to provide the overall effect. These can all be edited individually. There are also complete particle behavior controls to further refine effects. Merely as a learning tool, the particle presets are enormously useful. Despite the completeness of the particle system, these are not 3D effects. When introduced into the 2.5D camera space, the effects are seen on flat layers. This limits the amount of camera motion and perspective change that can be used, but with workarounds matching an explosion into a backplate with a dolly shot may be possible. I looked at the particles on a Dual Processor (1.7GHz) Dell with a Wildcat card, but I have also seen excellent C2 performance on a dual 800GHz workstation with an older graphics card.

Version 1.0 of Combustion included a keyer and tracker based on Flame/Inferno technology. C2 adds additional control to the keyer system with vector garbage mattes. In After Effects, there are many third party tools that enhance the edge tweaking necessary for good keys and rotos, but Combustion provides many of these refined tools right out of the box. In fact that's one of the main philosophies of Combustion 2 and the reason this product has come of age: it's a complete solution in every main area of composition and animation design. A good example of that is color correction. There is primary and secondary correction with histograms, editable color curves, and color swatch displays (for matching and grading) that are very easy to learn. The color correct tools can work as a final solution or as an effect within the workflow. Combined with the keyer, the color corrector provides a super precise way to isolate specific colors for protection or elimination. The completeness of the tool is seen in the addition of a color Look-Up Table. This added bit of refinement gives the artist control over how 16-bit files are represented in 8-bit screen display. This is particularly useful when working with film source material.

The rotoscoping tools have also been enhanced in C2. A vector-based selection such as a horse running across a field can be made of independent shapes (legs, torso, head) with each shape given its own color for identification. Several shapes can be hierarchically linked and organized in groups. Each point can have separate inner and outer softness or global softness can be applied to a shape. Even a complex group of shapes can be played in real time to check how the rotoscope is working. All the tools appear when you need them because the interface is task-based and contextual, helping optimize the use of screen space in this repetitive and labor-intensive process. Overall, this is a very complete and well-organized roto system.

Having recently finished a review of the excellent AE and Photoshop plug-in Grain Surgery (see the February issue of Millimeter or millimeter.com), I now find that some of the same tools are available in C2. You can add, match, and remove grain in C2, and this can be done on separate Red, Green, and Blue channels. Presets based on Kodak-supplied granularity “curves” for commonly found film stocks are provided, but you can also build and save custom curves. I found the tools very complete, but not as intuitive as those in Grain Surgery.

While C2 has not made any significant changes to the 2.5D workspace, the overall performance and layout is very enjoyable to work in. The smooth zoom and pan action allows you to sail into the 3D space and navigate with ease, and the OpenGL support greatly improves the work experience. I can't imagine working with particle effects without it. Combustion 2 ships with 100 effects, and while After Effects and Photoshop filters are also supported, not all filters behave properly.

Combustion 2 is a significant upgrade to an ambitious but formerly incomplete product. It is no longer flawed. In fact, C2 has thrown down the gauntlet as far as ease of use and workflow organization. At $5000, it is not going to attract many After Effects users, but it is a better choice for any post house that has Flame or Inferno. C2 supports Flint, Flame, Inferno, Fire, and Smoke systems. For example, garbage mattes, keying, color correction and tracking work can be exchanged between C2 and FFI/FS systems. Effects houses may want to see just a bit more depth and the kind of control, scripting and 2.5D rendering offered by After Effects, but it's doubtful there are many effects projects that C2 can't tackle easily.

C2 is OS X native and there is a network rendering solution for Windows. Shipping now. Discreet also provides one-day intensive training for a fee.