Discreet combustion 2 for Mac OS 9 and X

When the time comes to get down to brass tacks and write a review I usually stick with a good ol' tried and true formula: I'll settle in with a product, give the tires a good kick, try to get some real-world work done with it, and then write about the hijinks and hilarity that usually ensues. With this product, Discreet's unbelievably outstanding combustion 2, I'm going to do something a little different. First, if you read the last sentence, you'll probably notice that I more or less gave away the rating. Well, besides that, I think a product like combustion represents part of the bigger Mac picture, so I'll be focusing not only on the specifics of what combustion actually does, but also why combustion is so important to the Mac platform, as well as why you should try to scrape up the wad of cash needed to purchase combustion as soon as humanly possible.

What it does

On the surface, combustion seems to have a lot in common with After Effects or Commotion, with the added multiple bonuses of a higher price tag and a non-standard interface thrown in for good measure. combustion has motion graphics; After Effects has motion graphics. combustion has motion tracking; Commotion has motion tracking. combustion lets you mix 2D and 3D assets; ditto for After Effects. And admittedly, Discreet has its work cut out for it in trying to convince users of the aforementioned programs that combustion has more to offer and is worth the extra cost, especially as other solutions may be more entrenched in the smaller studio environment. But once you dive in with combustion (and I strongly encourage you to do so via the free demo version available at discreet.com), it doesn't take long before combustion vaults itself to the front of the pack. There are three main ways that combustion distinguishes itself: the interface (and by extension, productivity), the availability of painting, animation and visual effects in a single package, and the extremely tight integration with Discreet's fleet of high-end SGI-based finishing options (flint, flame, inferno, fire, and smoke).

Interface

I remember my very first "real" compositing session way back in early 1996, I believe. It was to insert bluescreen footage of a host into a virtual set that I had created. I wasn't the compositor; I was just watching. I was amazed by the artist, who strolled up to a SGI Indy and slapped the composite together in this strange (to me, anyway) interface about as fast as it took Data to generate an encryption algorithm for Captain Picard. The stylus was flying, buttons were being clicked left and right, and the shot was coming together lickety-damn-split, including subtle touches like reflections of the real host in the virtual tile floor and in the polished surface of a kiosk. I asked him how long he had been working in that program (which, by the way, was Discreet's flint), and he replied, "Oh, a couple of weeks now."

Inherent talent of that particular artist notwithstanding, the example above illustrates the power of what Discreet calls the "artist user-interface," an interface brought to the mere mortal desktop with combustion 2. It's an interface designed for artists, rather than just designed by artists (like those beautiful but, in my experience, largely unusable interfaces found in Poser or Bryce a while back). A subtle distinction, but an important one. Mac users have come to expect their Mac programs to look and behave a certain way, but with the advent of OS X the Apple interface gods don't reign quite as supreme anymore. And while combustion uses absolutely no standard Mac OS interface guidelines, including but not limited to proprietary open and save dialog boxes (figure 1), all I can say is that it really doesn't matter. In fact, apart from the menu bar at the top, you'd really have no idea you were on a Mac at all. combustion's SGI pedigree shines through in almost every aspect of the program, but I came to realize in working with it that this, in the words of that hottie Martha Stewart, is a very good thing. It only took me messing around with combustion for less than an hour to feel completely comfortable working with it, which is an amazing feat, especially considering that it's organized completely differently than a program like After Effects is. It's best experienced rather than talked about, but I'll give it a shot anyway:

Figure 1: combustion's open workspace dialog. Other than the title bar at the top, this may as well be a SGI workstation.

combustion is centered around the objects in the composition and the individual tasks you can do with them, rather than around the timeline. That's not to say that the timeline isn't an important aspect of combustion, but it's more of a component of each object rather than the primary stage the objects gather on. Each object has specific tasks associated with it, and only those tasks are accessible when you select that object. So, for example, let's take an object called "Truck," which is based upon a piece of footage of a (surprise!) truck (figure 2). Since this particular truck footage happens to be shot against a greenscreen and needs to be stabilized, we've attached a keyer stabilizer operators to the Truck object. The Truck object then has four distinct components: the footage, the stabilizer, the keyer, and the object container that holds everything (figure 3), which could be called a layer in the vernacular of other packages. Now, this set of components called Truck is just one element in our composite, along with the background we're placing the truck on, which also has it's own set of components. Taking it up a step, the truck container and the background container are really just part of a larger composite, and the composite itself can be a container you can use in any other composite, kind of like nested comps in After Effects. But let's get back to our Truck. If you select the Truck container, you get a panel that controls properties such as transform, color controls, output settings, surface attributes, etc. If you click on the stabilizer component, the panel shows you only the tracking controls. If you click on the footage component, you get a set of footage controls. And in each case, the timeline changes to display only what you can animate or change in each component, and so on (figure 4). combustion gives you what you need, when you need it, all in a context-sensitive, centrally located environment. In fact, I found myself hardly ever needing to access the menu controls at the top of the screen, as pretty much everything I needed was instantly presented as I needed it.

Figure 2: One of the frames from the truck footage.

Figure 3: The Truck container or layer includes the container itself as well as a keyer, stabilizer, and the truck footage.

Figure 4: combustion's main panel changes depending on what you select, offering you options only for the selected component.

In a nutshell, the combustion interface itself is a MAJOR selling point, which is extremely rare in these days of feature bloat at the expense of usability. What combustion lacks in purtyness, it more than makes up for in clean overall design, thoughtfulness, and, dare I say, intuitiveness, and is truly an island in the virtual sea of poor product interfaces that has sadly become the norm.

No one-trick pony

Looking past the interface, combustion also happens to boast one of the more integrated environments I've seen, combining animation, visual effects and painting into a single package. And it's no slouch at any of them. Having experience with both After Effects and Commotion, it's not a stretch to say that combustion bests both programs in just about every area, the only possible exception being motion graphics, where Adobe still has the edge. However, since combustion's primary focus isn't straight-up motion graphics anyway, it's impressive that it hangs in there with After Effects as well as it does, which is an added bonus. I would expect that you would want to know what roughly five grand gets you in terms of high-end features, so here's a rundown:

Schematic view (figure 5). This is a really cool feature that lets you see how your project is set up as a flowchart. You can even interactively connect branches of the tree and see the results in real time.

Figure 5: The schematic view offers a bird's eye view of how your project is shaping up, and lets you interactively add to or remove branches from the schematic on the fly.

Filmstrip mode (figure 6). A handy little feature that shows your entire project frame by frame in a scrollable preview window. You can set the frame interval, and once the frames are cached, it's often quicker to scrub through the filmstrip to get an idea of how a shot is shaping up.

Figure 6: combustion's filmstrip view allows for quick scrubbing through frames without the need for potentially lengthy RAM renders.

RAM usage feedback. Like other programs, combustion can preview to RAM. Unlike other programs, how much of it you're using and how much you have left are always visible (figure 7).

Figure 7: How's my RAM? Still doing OK.

Particles (figure 8). A full and complex particle generator is included with combustion that can handle all sorts of particle effects, from smoke and fire to dust and snow.

Figure 8: The particle engine in action.

Vector painting. The paint engine can handle tasks ranging from wire removal to traditional cel animation, and all paint strokes are vector-based, meaning that they're resolution-independent and scalable.

Keying. combustion borrows its very powerful keying system from its big brothers, making it pretty easy to pull great keys from even the nastiest footage. The advanced garbage masking helps tremendously in this area as well.

Color correction and film tools. More stuff from inferno and flint. Color correction is really easy and intuitive (figure 9), while combustion ships with a bunch of settings to emulate the grain from various common film stocks.

Figure 9: With combustion's color correction tools, tweaking the color of your footage is really easy, yet yields powerful results.

Documentation. It's also worth a mention that combustion has, hands down, the best tutorial book and user manual I've ever seen, including a tutorial for every major feature as well as specific exercises geared towards After Effects users. It's really refreshing to see documentation that's more than an afterthought.

Integration with a whole bunch of those other lower-case pyro-themed products Discreet makes

I'll admit that I'm not entirely straight on what inferno specifically offers over flame or fire or smoke and so on, but that comes from the fact that I haven't spent my professional life around studios that have invested in those high-end (and expensive) products. It is easy to see, however, where combustion fits into the lineup. There has been many a time that stuff I've output will end up getting finished on one of those fancier Discreet systems at a post house, and having access to combustion would have been a great help in those situations. That's because combustion borrows a ton from its big siblings and can prove to be a valuable offline tool for projects that will eventually end up on one of Discreet's big boys. combustion shares a common file format, and properties such as keys, garbage mattes and color correction information can seamlessly be brought into one of Discreet's online solutions for finishing, meaning that you can start jobs offline if need be. Conversely, parts of an online job can be brought offline to combustion if you need more time to perform potentially tedious tasks such as rotoscoping. Finally, each combustion seat effectively serves as a training station for Discreet's higher-level tools, meaning staff can be trained gradually on a common interface without the need to start learning an entirely new way of working when they're ready to move up.

Limitations

Ah, what would a review be without a list of limitations? It took me some time, but I was actually able to come across a couple of minor chinks in the armor, neither of which is a huge deal. First up is the learning curve. While combustion's interface is nothing short of brilliant, and it can be picked up rather quickly, there is still a lot to get used to, especially when coming from After Effects or another similar program. The conventions are markedly different, and each program requires a distinct way of thinking in order to make it do what you want. Additionally, there's just a lot of there there, so it takes a significant time investment to really get a lot out of combustion, but that's true for almost any program worth learning well. However, some Mac users may have a hard time making the switch because the interface is completely non-standard and, by extension, potentially frustrating.

The second drawback is the price. At just a hair under $5000, combustion is cheap only by the standards of some of the larger creative shops. Small studios and individuals may find the price out of reach, especially as you can pick up a copy of the After Effects production bundle and Commotion Pro for a combined cost of $2500, and end up not lacking too much in terms of overall features. However, if you already have a significant investment in Discreet products, $5000 may be a pittance to expand your capabilities to any number of desktops, Mac or PC, you may have in your organization. It's just a matter of perspective, but something worth mentioning nonetheless. In any event, it don't cost nothin' to give combustion a spin so you can find out its worth for yourself.

The Bottom Line

Yes, combustion is a completely cool product, used by cool companies and a lot of cool people in the production of a lot of cool stuff, and in the normal course of events I would rate it a very Strong Buy. However, now comes the part where I'm going to attempt to put combustion into the overall Mac perspective, which will change the final rating a bit. Bear with me here.

Not so long ago, the Mac didn't have a lot going for it in the high-end area. Bill G. and his Minions of Gozer had somehow cornered the high-end desktop production software market with NT, and with the exception of Electric Image, us Mac users didn't have a whole lot to boast about. The whole situation even caused your humble (and presently ashamed) reviewer to jump ship for a while. But Mac OS X is turning a lot of things around, and therefore this is a very important and crucial time for Mac development. First came Maya. Now comes combustion. Who knows what else is around the corner, but this is our chance. Remember all those Windows people who gave you the same old schpiel that the Mac is nothing more than a toy? Now's the opportunity to shut them up once and for all. Apple makes good to decent workstations. They now make a great OS. And developers are starting to take notice and bring some really great high-end packages over to Mac OS X. It's up to us now, the creative Mac community, to support the developers who choose to expend considerable time and resources to bring high-end products to the Mac. After all these years, it's finally happening. But these salad days could turn into brown lettuce real quick if we don't take the bait, because developers may have no qualms about abandoning Mac versions if the market they thought was there doesn't step up to the plate. In light of this fact, we're giving combustion 2 our highest rating: a Must Buy. combustion is a terrific product with at terrific interface, full of terrific features that even a high price tag can't diminish, so if you have the means at all to pick up a copy, you simply must! Chances are you won't be disappointed.

combustion 2 at a glance

Maker: Discreet
Price: $4995 for full version, $795 for version 1 upgrade until May 2002, $1495 for version 1 upgrade after May 2002.
Platforms: Macintosh OS 9/X 10.1, Windows NT4 SP 5 or later or Windows 2000
URL: http://www.discreet.com/
Overall Impression: Incredible effects suite boasts a bevy of high-end features just about everywhere you look.
Key Benefits: Outstanding interface, tight integration with other Discreet products.
Disappointments: None significant.
Recommendation: Must Buy

Filed under: Review on March 27th, 2002

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