Hello all- I've been using Flame on and off for more than 10 years, and have always been a bit frustrated with how Autodesk "thinks" about how compositors work.
I'm a big fan of the new 20th Anniversary edition - while the new UI might be a bit confusing, and the keyboard shortcuts have become very "Mac" like - I'm glad to see all the excellent conform and editing tools finally available with the brilliant Reels and Batch environment - a true merge of Smoke and Flame!
I'm also a long time Nuke user - and frankly, I find the actual COMPOSITING environment in Nuke much more conducive to working on VFX shots. Nuke is completely lacking an integrated contextual timeline and editing environment, as well as a robust video I/O system - it's VERY much designed for working on a single shot or element of a sequence, and can't be easily set up to send playback to an external monitor for client presentation / revision. But all that being said - when I'm working on a shot in Nuke, EVERY element and process that goes into that shot is available to me in the node tree - nothing is "hidden" inside of an Action node, or pre-rendered/comped with a Desktop tool.
Since Batch is now so "immediate" in Flame 2013/20 and CFX existing in Smoke For Mac 2013 (SMAC 2013) - I've been wondering- do we really need Action anymore?
It's a radical concept- Action is the CORE compositing "system" of Flame and Smoke - it's where everything actually happens! I've always seen Batch as more of an image processing environment to feed into Action, or process Action outputs. I've just always been frustrated with the fact that as I work, I'm constantly bouncing between Batch's Schematic, several different Action schematics, perhaps an MK schematic here and there- at least three different "worlds" of node views. But what if all of the functionality of Action was "pulled out" into Batch nodes? You could add Camera, Axis and perhaps "Layer" nodes to Batch (along with all the other Action nodes- lights, particles, surfaces, etc.).
Yes- there would have to be a pretty considerable UI overhaul to handle all the new nodes with their attendant UIs - and I'm sure many Flame ops would be hesitate to tackle such a radical shift in usability - and I won't even begin to assume that this is a "trivial" coding exercise!
I do believe that this would make for a VERY powerful, competitive compositing tool. I have yet to find another VFX tool that combines editing, video I/O, versioning, AND compositing like Flame. But it DOES seem hobbled by a UI and workflow that doesn't fit in today's pipelines. Nuke has rapidly expanded from being a premiere feature film compositing tool into a tool being used by several facilities on commercials and other projects (my company has several licenses of Nuke along with our Autodesk products...) - it would great to see Flame have a radical evolution and compete with the "new guys"!
Comments? I'm fascinated to hear the reactions of this idea from the community!