Moving to Combustion 2 from After Effects, Part 1

As some of you may be aware, Combustion 2 was awarded a rare Creative Mac "Must Buy" rating in a review we did of Discreet's desktop compositing/effects/painting suite a while ago, and that was when the software would have set you back a cool five grand. These days, Combustion 2 can be had for just under a thousand dollars, and while the new price point would, in theory, merit a "Double Secret Must Buy" rating (if we had one), the lower cost probably means that there will be quite a few new Combustion users out there. And since it's probably not a stretch to assume that some of these users are coming to Combustion with some level of After Effects expertise, we thought it might be a nice gesture to offer a few tidbits to help out with the transition.

Now, it quickly became clear as I was working with Combustion that a single article probably wouldn't be enough to cram everything into, so the plan is to offer a few tutorials that deal with how an After Effects workflow translates to the Combustion environment. And since the first thing many of us do when we start a new compositing project is to import footage to work with, a natural place to start would be with getting Adobe files into Combustion. However, right off the bat, don't expect Combustion to work as seamlessly with other Adobe products as After Effects does. Indeed, interoperability with programs like Premiere, Illustrator, and Photoshop is one of After Effects' strong selling points, but once you get an idea of how Combustion interfaces with native Adobe formats, you might be surprised as to just how nicely Combustion plays with these "alien" files. And first up on the list is Illustrator.

Before we begin, a couple of quick notes. One, in this exercise I'm going to be working with the OrbitMonkey.ai file, which can be found in the "Combustion for AE Users" directory (located with the rest of the Combustion tutorials that ship with the product). So if you'd like to follow along, you can grab this file and jump right in. Two, after you've worked in Combustion a bit you'll realize that there are many, many ways to do the same thing, so if you find yourself cursing my name because, for example, I'm creating a new Composite operator when you just would have skipped ahead to directly opening footage, all I can say is please feel free to do things how you're comfortable. One of the great things about Combustion is that the workflow is very customizable, so there really isn't any one right way to work. So, without further ado...

Vectors: crisp, clean, and refreshing

We're going to start from a blank Workspace here, so fire up Combustion, and once everything is ready to roll, go to the File menu and select New. You'll be presented with a dialog box like the one shown in figure 1. The only things that really matter for our purposes are that the type is set to Composite and the name is set to Illustrator; you can either copy the other parameters from what I did or make up your own. Go ahead and click OK, and then glance at the Workspace tab. You should see that you've created a new branch that contains a Composite operator named Illustrator (fig. 2), and in the Viewpoint you should see a big empty box set to the size and color you specified. So far, so good. Now to import the Illustrator file itself.

Figure 1: Go ahead. Copy these settings. I don't mind.

Figure 2: A Composite branch in the Combustion Workspace panel.

Go to the File menu and select Import Footage, which will bring up, surprisingly, the Import Footage dialog. Drill down to where you stashed the OrbitMonkey.ai file I spoke of earlier, click once on it, and then click OK. If you entered the same parameters into the New Composite dialog that I did, your Viewpoint should look very much like figure 3 (I have the Filmstrip on, incidentally). Now, at first glance, it might seem that Combustion's Illustrator import function, for lack of a better word, sucks. Sure, you can get the file in, but it appears that Combustion turns your nice vector-based artwork into a bitmap, and if you try to scale the image up, the jaggies set in big time (fig. 4). But that's only at first glance. What's actually happening is that any Illustrator files you import are converted to a Combustion Paint operator, which in your composite appear to be just bitmaps. Rest assured, your Illustrator drawing is there and is still fully vector-based and editable; it's just a little bit buried. So let's take a closer look at what's going on.

Figure 3: My Viewport looks like this after importing the Illustrator artwork.

Figure 4: The Orbit Monkey's looking a little rough around the edges (Get it? Ha!)

When you import an Illustrator file, Combustion creates a new Composite operator consisting of a transparent Solid layer based on the bounding box size of your Illustrator artwork, and then places the contents of the Illustrator file into a new Paint operator attached to the Solid. As that last sentence probably didn't make a whole lot of sense, a quick glance at either the Workspace (fig. 5) or the Schematic view (fig. 6) visualizes the hierarchy I just tried to explain. If you twirl down the arrow on the Paint operator in the Workspace, you'll see a bunch of paths and groups that represent the somewhat arbitrary way Combustion organizes and renames the various elements of your Illustrator artwork during the conversion process (fig. 7). If you were to twirl down any of the various groups there, you'll find a veritable mess of subgroups, filled paths, and stroked paths. It's enough to make you sick, but don't get too discouraged. If you just want to tackle our original problem of scaling the artwork up and eliminating the jaggies, it's pretty easy. Here's what you do:

Figure 5: A Paint operator in the Workspace view.

Figure 6: The same Paint operator in the Schematic view.

Figure 7: Combustion really couldn't be any more helpful in how it renames all your Illustrator layers. I'm kidding, of course.

To keep the numbers relatively neat, we want to make Mr. Orbit Monkey twice as big as he is now and still have those nice crisp edges associated with Mr. Orbit Monkey's status as a vector-based life form. The first thing to do is to increase the size of the Solid the Paint operator is sitting on. Think of this as nesting a comp inside of another comp in After Effects: if the size of the nested comp is smaller than the layers contained in that comp, the layers are going to appear cropped in the parent comp unless you make the nested comp bigger. In the Workspace, click once on the Footage-OrbitMonkey layer to select it, then click the Footage Controls tab in the operator controls area (if it's not already selected). Then select the Output control tab, which should show you some options like those pictured in figure 8. Now, if you've been following along with me, you'll see that the size of the Solid object is 623 pixels wide and 405 pixels high. Since it was my understanding that there would be no math in this tutorial, I'll take the path of least resistance, as I can multiply 405 by 2 in my head much easier than 623. I'm dumb like that. Making sure the Proportional check box is selected (below the Target Width and Target Height boxes), change the Target Height to 810 (405 x 2 = 810. Damn, I'm good). Back in the Viewport, you should see that the white space surrounding the Orbit Monkey artwork is a lot bigger now, giving us a canvas that will accommodate the soon-to-be-larger artwork without cropping it in the containing Composite operator.

Figure 8: Footage - Orbit Monkey was clicked first, then the Footage Controls tab was clicked, and finally the Output tab was clicked to show these controls here.

The next step is head back to the Workspace and twirl down the Paint operator arrow to reveal its sub-layers, which, for the record, are called FilledPath 1085, Group (1013), Group (1007), and Group (1000) (fig. 9). These are not particularly useful names, but for this exercise it doesn't matter. Now, if you were to select each layer individually and scale them up to 200%, they'd all be nice and crisp like we want them to be, but we'd have a little overlap problem (fig. 10). We're going to need to group everything together to avoid this, so click once on the FilledPath 1085 layer to select it, then shift+click on the Group (1000) layer to select all four layers simultaneously. Then go to the Object menu and select Group to create the new group, which for me was automagically named Group 4. Again, this name is not particularly helpful, so right click (Windows) or control+click (Mac) on the Group 4 group, choose Rename, and then type OrbitMonkeyPaintGroup as the new group name. So now that you have a single group, make sure that the Paint Controls tab is selected, and then click the Transform tab. Under Scale, click the Proportional button, and then scrub either the X or Y scale up to 200% (fig. 11). I also had to move the X position to 622 and the Y position to 404 to make the artwork fit the resized Solid object.

Figure 9: See, I told you my Illustrator layers got renamed like this. You should have trusted me.

Figure 10: Whoops.

Figure 11: Just put the numbers you see here into your project and no one gets hurt.

The last thing we'll do in this exercise is go back to the containing Composite operator and see what happened. Double click on the Composite - Illustrator layer, and your Viewport should show part of the orange cape and part of the text. If you click once on the OrbitMonkey layer (directly below the Composite - Illustrator layer), make sure the Composite Controls tab is active, select the Transform tab, and then set the X position to -313 and the Y position to 180, you'll see how crisp the artwork is (fig. 12) at what is (in relative terms) double the size when compared to our earlier image.

Figure 12: Orbit Monkey's looking much better now. He's still angry, for some reason.

More Illustrator fun

Now, if you want to get your hands really dirty here, you could go about the task of reorganizing and renaming large numbers of paint layers like the ones you saw earlier in the imported Orbit Monkey Illustrator artwork. And the reason you may want to undertake such an, ahem, uh, undertaking is that once your vector art is in Combustion's Paint format, you then can animate any part of the Paint object. And I'm not just talking about resizing, rotating, or whatever else falls into the general transform category, I'm talking about animating individual vertices in a vector shape over time. Let's go back to our good buddy the Orbit Monkey and do a quick exercise on his cape in order to better illustrate (no pun intended) this concept. To keep things simple, we're going to pick up right where the last exercise left off.

Let's do us some twirlin'. In the Workspace, twirl down the arrow next to the Composite - Illustrator layer, then the arrow next to the OrbitMonkey layer, then the Paint Layer, then the OrbitMonkeyPaintGroup layer, which will reveal a hierarchy that looks like figure 13. Of course, if you've prematurely twirled, you're one step ahead of me here. Anyway, double-click on the FilledPath 1085 layer, which will in one swift stroke switch the Viewport to Paint edit mode and select the orange cape in the Workspace. Now click on the Toolbar tab right next to the Workspace tab, which, in a surprising turn of events, will display Combustion's Toolbar. Since we're working on a Paint operator here, the Toolbar will have a whole bunch of icons in it that may bear a passing resemblance to some of the tools in the Illustrator toolbar. We're concerned with animating individual vertices here, so we want to change the bounding box that's currently surrounding the cape into something that will let us mess with the points. To do that, we're going to change from the Edit Object mode the Paint operator is currently in to the Edit Control Points mode by clicking on the Edit Control Points icon (which is shown selected in figure 14). Presto! No more bounding box around the cape; instead, we've got the cape outlined and its control points are nice 'n visible. OK - now comes the fun part.

Figure 13: Here's what you should see in the Workspace after all the twirling.

Figure 14: The Edit Control Points tool is selected here.

In the Timeline, click the Animate button, which will turn it an angry red. If you've been following from the beginning, you've got 120 total frames to work with, so move the current frame to frame 30 by doing any of the following:

• scrubbing the yellow marker in the timeline to frame 30
• clicking in the blue frame indicator space and manually entering 30
• clicking frame 30 in the Filmstrip
• some other method of advancing to frame 30 that I somehow missed

Yes indeedy, Combustion sure has a lot of ways to do the same thing. Anyway, now that you're at frame 30, click on a few of the cape's control points and, for lack of a better term, mess with 'em. Repeat this process at frames 60, 90, and 120, and then click the Animate button to turn it off. Double-click on the Composite - Illustrator layer to bring you back up to the overall composite level, and then press the Play button (or the spacebar) on the timeline to see your masterpiece. Mine is shown here as a QuickTime clip, and if you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're probably wondering if it's too late to submit an entry for the Best Animated Film Oscar.

Damn, this is some outstanding work, if I do say so myself.

Warts and all

Ah, but it's not all milk and honey in the land of plenty. Remember, Combustion isn't made by Adobe, so there are some frustrations associated with bringing Illustrator files into Combustion. In the interest of full disclosure, here's a rundown of a few things I came across that may anger, frustrate, or otherwise stymie After Effects users:

No drag and drop. You can't import assets, Illustrator or otherwise, by dragging them from the Mac Finder or the Windows Explorer directly into Combustion's workspace.

No shape pasting. Forget about copying Illustrator shapes and pasting them directly into Combustion like you can in After Effects.

Mucho reorganization. As I said earlier, "you'll find a veritable mess of subgroups, filled paths, and stroked paths." Be prepared for a lot of trial error, and renaming in order to figure out what's what once Combustion converts your Illustrator artwork. Of course, the simpler the artwork, the less of an issue this becomes.

No continuous rasterize. I rarely use this feature in After Effects anyway, since I almost always end up adding some filter to my Illustrator files, which takes that option off the table anyway. Just make your artwork much bigger than you'll need (either in Illustrator first, or in Combustion with the technique we used in the first exercise here) and scale down.

Illustrator 8 or lower. Seriously. Combustion will only take files in Illustrator 8 format, which becomes a real bummer if you've used features from Illustrator 9 or 10 that don't take very nicely to being "version-ed" down.

Complex artwork need not apply. Just open any of the samples that ship with Illustrator 9 or 10, try to save them as Illustrator 8, and watch the carnage ensue in Combustion.

Don't screw up. There's no equivalent of the Reload/Replace Footage function with Paint operators (though, of course, there is for other footage types in Combustion), so if you somehow destroy your artwork beyond recognition once it's in Combustion you're pretty much hosed and will have to start fresh at the import stage.

My general advice with Illustrator files is that if you don't really need to edit your artwork in Combustion directly, you may be much happier exporting images out of Illustrator as a bitmapped file type and then importing the image into Combustion from there. That way, you still can edit your source Illustrator file if you need to and re-export. More importantly, you can reload or replace the source footage if and when the file needs changing.

The final word

While the exercises done here are somewhat crude examples of how Combustion handles Illustrator artwork, hopefully you now have a better general idea of how to approach using Illustrator files in Combustion. In upcoming tutorials we're going to explore some other issues facing After Effects converts, such as an overview of Photoshop files, translating the Combustion interface, and probably some others I haven't even thought of yet. So, until next time, kids.

Filed under: Tutorial on January 23rd, 2003

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