Flame 20th Anniversary

[Anonymous]

Hi Guys,
I'm trying the new version of this amazing software, and I'm very happy with the results and the new look, but in your opinion, what do you think of all this changes, with the appearance and the workflow. Did you believe we had as many improvements as the previous versions.


Ronaldo Pucci

[Anonymous]

I have requested it to be uninstalled as of monday.

It is without doubt the least stable 'release' I have ever encountered from AD. In 2 hours yesterday I had over 15 crashes, with lost media making me reprocess clips and even reimport. Save seems to be ignored in the event of a crash.

I will look again after NAB - at present it is not stable enough for client sessions so all the other comments and opinions I have are irrelevant.

best regards

Mike

[Anonymous]

I see,
But in your opinon all the changes, do you liked it? the library, the enviroment?

Ronaldo

[Anonymous]

I'll be honest there is much to like about timeline based batch, not least the concentration of effects building allowing for much simpler revisions. the new conform is better but in some ways still flawed, its the little stuff like when you export a file it doesn show in the current directory unless you press refresh. Too many areas dont remember where you navigated to popping you back to the root level and irritating stuff like that. I expect 90% of these to be ironed out in the service pac due before the end of the year.

But there is also much to dislike about the new GUI, simple things we do every day like linking reels together and scrolling in sync is all but unuseable in 20. In old flame you just hover the pen and hit L to link clips and press L again to drop a clip from a group. In new flame its another of the now constant claw commands shift command G or something which is tough to press with one hand. But thats ok as you dont hover now you control click on reels to multiple select them. So it has gone from a single key press and pointing to multiple clicks with a modifier key and then a 3 button 'shortcut'. but wait there's more - you can't now drop a single clip from the group as pressing the DIFFERENT keyboard claw command of a;t control G simply cancels the whole group. This is just one example of how obvious functionality has been diminished, I have an ever growing list... I've been pointing this stuff out for months now but AD are locked on a path building what they want to build so I'll just look again after NAB when it might just be finished and see how it washed up.

The sad thing is Flame has been neglected for so long that people are excited just to see it still being developed in any way, so any change is welcome.

Mike

[BKM]

I not sure I agree about Flame being neglected. There have been any features added regularly since 2010. Surely the new 3dtracker, lighting, shadows, flares, multiple outputs in action, substance texturing... Etc.
Just because the changes weren't as radical as this release doesnt mean it was just sitting there idle.

[Anonymous]

Gotta agree with Brian on this one. In the last couple/few years, there have been developments that I now couldn't live without. Action Gmasks, multiple outputs, Pixel Spread (which is simply magic), 3D lens flares, Denoise, etc. I think the new Flame/Smoke interface integration is a good thing, and moving in the right direction. However, I am forever frustrated by lingering bugs that should have been zapped a long time ago. I've been lobbying for just ONE 'stability' release that has no bells and whistles, but takes care of dumb stuff from a decade ago. I know, that doesn't market well, but would make for fewer embarrassing moments with clients, etc.

[Anonymous]

Most of those are several years old - pixel spread excepted 🙂
I'm as happy as anyone with the big push for flame but lets not get complacent - did you see the new feature list in nuke 7?

[Anonymous]

ok, 3d tracker, gmask, pixel spread some greats examples of evolution on Flame, multiple outputs, amazing, but why not work on a big and effective change and don't waste so much time in the new UI. The new UI don't let you work more free (like nuke) or give you all the freedom one a big scene.
I hope don't see another video from autodesk telling about the new batchfx.

[Anonymous]

That was the rebuilds we had on the move to Tezro and again to Linux. Oddly most of the gripes came across, to this day I still get at least one flame crash a day and dont get me started on painting those edge pixels when zoomed in!

I think the new version has a lot of great potential but for me the biggest stumbling block is as simple as sorting out the shortcut key madness, I've never seen so many claw like shift control alt shortcuts in any system ever. I really dont get it. We type in two places - the text tool and the library, capture text input as a special event and free up all the keys. G for group rather than alt shift g whatever it is and so on. Likewise if you turn something on or off make the same shortcut key a toggle, one combination to enable / one to disable means learning twice as many shortcuts for no benefit.

Same with viewer spaces, if i hit a key to go to a view pressing it again should bounce me back where i came from - my finger is already on the damn key! Having to pop into a player then move your hand to exit is not efficient.

Its madness.