Home
Subscribe
KSDD.com
CS3 Production Premium for Motion Graphics and Interactive Enthusiasts, Part 2
Rounding third and heading for home with After Effects, Encore, Photoshop, and the rest
Like the weekly serials of old, we left off last time with a cliffhanger. What treats were there to be found in the rest of the CS3 Production Premium bundle? Which goodies in After Effects, Encore, Photoshop Extended, and even OnLocation and Ultra would appeal to motion graphics and interactive folk? Well, you didn't have to wait too long to find out, so let's get this sucka done.
Note for those who actually care: Part one of this two-part series can be found by following this link.
After Effects
I know I'm really going out on a limb by saying that AE will, in fact, be of interest to motion graphics pros. Yes, I'm full of these types of daring, radical pronouncements and controversial views. Anyway, it's no secret what AECS3 will feature; after all, you can grab the public beta right now and see for yourself. So in the spirit of self-discovery, and with full knowledge that you can get plenty of in-depth information on what AECS3 brings to the table from numerous other sources, allow me to simply disseminate a few perhaps not-so-obvious tidbits about some peripheral items of note.
First, let's talk about a seemingly innocuous switch buried in AE's preferences panel (fig. 1). By checking the "Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously" box, AE will actually spawn copies of itself and pass off rendering chores to the clone instances. Now, how many times it does this depends on available processors/cores and memory, but provided you have enough of both, previews and renders will be dramatically sped up. The one other caveat is that individual plug-ins have to be updated to take advantage of the multiprocessing advances, so beware add-ons that may drag you down. But overall, you finally have a reason to justify picking up an OctoMac, right? I'm sure you can dig up a few quarters in the couch to take care of that particular purchase.
Figure 1
Moving on, I know I promised in the last installment that I'd mention AE being much more agile when working with SWF files, and as I take great pride in following through on nearly half of the promises I make, chalk this one up in the "kept" column. The bottom line is that if you work with SWF files, you're going to have a much easier time of it this go-round. AECS3 will now continuously rasterize SWF files the way it has historically done with Illustrator files, which not only opens up the possibility of very sharp scaling, but also means that alpha channels will now be respected (fig. 2). Any filters you have placed on your objects in Flash will also make the journey, though blend modes don't seem to be supported (you can always apply one in AE if you need to). The big caveat is that you can't use any of that fancy-schmancy ActionScript 3-based motion; only good, old-fashioned keyframing need apply if you're counting on using an animated SWF file. All in all, though, the situation is much better than in previous versions.
Figure 2: Here's a simple SWF file imported into AECS3 with continuous rasterization turned on and the size bumped up to 782%. The drop shadow filter applied in Flash is reflected in AE's rendering, and the alpha channel allows the purple background color (set in AE) to show through.
Lastly, I'll briefly reiterate what I mentioned in the Flash portion of Part 1: I'm a tad disappointed that there wasn't more crossover between AECS3 and Flash CS3 Professional. Flash would benefit greatly from an After Effects-like timeline mode (there should even be some old LiveMotion code floating around Adobe that could probably work here), and at the very least there should be some level of Dynamic Link-esque back-and-forth between the two programs. Live updates of SWF files. Copy and paste motion between the two programs. Stuff like that. While what we got is pretty good, I'm expecting stuff like this for the CS4 versions of both programs. End of rant; onward and upward.
Photoshop Extended
Photoshop CS3 is already out in final release, and one of the big additions to the new Photoshop Extended product is the ability to manipulate video files and image sequences. While I'm going to focus my energies here on just a couple of features as they relate to how Photoshop specifically plays with some of the other products in the Production Premium bundle, here is a quick rundown of video-related features:
- You can do the full range of Photoshop-related magic to video files: blend modes, masks, painting, filters, you name it
- The Animation palette lets you perform rudimentary animation via After Effects-style keyframing (fig. 3)
- You can create multiple new layers around imported video clips
- Anything you create is non-destructive to the original video or image sequence
- Video is actually stored as a PSD file, but (of course) you can render out a QuickTime or image sequence when you're ready (strangely, FLV export is not natively supported for some reason, though you can open and manipulate FLV files)
- While not technically video-related, Photoshop makes its first foray into 3D with the ability to import 3D models and apply image-based textures which can be updated in real-time
Figure 3
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. As for the Production Premium side of Photoshop Extended, there's another 3D (rather, 2.5D) component worth talking about. I'm referring, of course, to the Vanishing Point Exchange (vpe) format, which allows you to create 2.5D models and textures for After Effects directly from within Photoshop's Vanishing Point interface. It's actually a pretty simple process: draw out planes in Vanishing Point, tweak until it looks right, and then export out to VPE format (fig. 4). Then it's just a matter of importing the VPE file into After Effects, which then builds several 3D planes with the photographs mapped onto them. You're then free to do whatever you would normally do to objects in AE's 3D space: add lights, cameras, action, and whatever else floats your boat. Adobe's Bob Donlon has a pretty cool example of this on his blog, which I highly recommend checking out.
Figure 4
To briefly wrap up Photoshop, there were a couple of other demos I saw that showed some of the extreme usefulness of a few of Photoshop CS3 Extended's video features. For example, you can clean up grainy footage into a clean still plate from a locked-down source shot by importing selected frames as layers, converting it to a smart object, and then applying a stack mode to composite the images into a single, clean still. You can even remove objects from video this way as well. Photoshop CS3 Extended also lets you string images together into sequences, which is useful for things like time lapse shots. Still with me? Good. Moving on...
Encore
Encore DVD is now simply Encore, and with the shorter name comes new status: it's no longer available as a standalone product. You have to buy Premiere (either separately or as part of the Production Premium bundle) to get a hold of Encore, and while that policy might prove a tad irksome, that's just the way it is now. I had only played a bit with earlier versions of Encore DVD, and not being a huge producer of DVDs myself, feel free to take my pronouncement of Encore as a perfectly passable DVD authoring environment with a grain (or three, or an entire mine's worth) of salt. At any rate, Encore CS3 doesn't appear to be a drastically changed product over earlier versions, but there are two huge features which definitely merit mention:
- Encore will now author Blu-ray discs
- Encore can export DVD projects as SWF files for Web deployment
That's right: Blu-ray, regular DVD, and Flash authoring from the same package. Flash authoring seems to be a particularly compelling feature (fig. 5), if for no other reason than Flash CS3 itself presents a fairly steep learning curve. Encore's drag-and-drop approach represents an easier way to get video-based Flash projects up and running, even though you obviously don't get the full range of what Flash itself can offer. I'd love to eventually see Encore output editable FLA (Flash's file format) documents instead of "end-product" SWF files, but this is an excellent step in the right direction.
Figure 5
I'd be remiss if I didn't also discuss how Encore fits in with everything else in terms of integration, and on that front, there's very little to be disappointed about. Encore's menus are straight-up PSD files, meaning that you can simply open a template in Photoshop (fig. 6), have your way with it, save, and it gets automatically updated in Encore. You can also drag and drop comps from After Effects into Encore, where they can be used as moving backgrounds or motion menus. Basically, you've got full Dynamic Link action here, which should help make whatever type of project you author in Encore go a little easier.
Figure 6
OnLocation/Ultra
Honestly, when I saw these two former Serious Magic products demoed I thought they were neat, but I'm not sure what the value of these two programs are to our target audience here. For the unfamiliar, the products can be described thusly:
- OnLocation (formerly DVRack), which is only available with Premiere, is a tool geared towards capturing live camera footage directly to disk, with a slew of built-in utilities to help optimize the capture process while shooting is going on (fig. 7)
- Ultra is a dedicated keyer program with built-in virtual set technology (fig. 8)
Figure 7
Figure 8
Now, I can see Ultra working its way into the mix at least a little bit, especially for those who are tasked with compositing bluescreen or greenscreen elements (mainly because it gives you really nice results, even with difficult footage, with a minimum of hassle). I don't have much to say about either one, but there are a couple of tidbits I found interesting. For one, I was intrigued with Ultra being able to take a standard DV clip (720x480) and turn it into a HD clip if you shoot your subject sideways. That's not a tall order (no pun intended) when dealing with a standup shot, and the thought of HD resolution from regular ol' DV footage is kind of cool.
Also, there has been a lot of chatter/griping over why OnLocation and Ultra aren't integrated into the suite better. Same goes for questions of the two products' lack of Mac-ness (they're both still Windows-only). The answer isn't some big conspiracy or slap in the face to Mac users, and the truth is actually pretty simple: the deal to acquire Serious Magic happened too late in the CS3 development cycle to get those products into the mix any better than this. That's all. And while Adobe has some tricks up their collective sleeves over what happens next, they felt it better to get the products into the bundle as they were rather than leave them out. Adobe won't officially comment on what specific features will be in the CS4 version of Production Premium, but they have mentioned that they are committed to porting both programs to the Mac platform. Let me also jump into speculation mode here by saying that you can bet on both OnLocation and Ultra to be a much more integrated part of future bundles (Ultra as AE/Premiere plug-in, OnLocation as the capture interface for Premiere, etc.), despite no definitive comment out of Adobe yet. Another stretch, I know, but I'm all about controversial predictions.
That's all folks
There you have it: a whirlwind tour of Adobe's CS3 Production Premium bundle as it pertains to motion graphics and interactive folks. The inclusion of Flash CS3—as well as a multitude of Flash-related integration features—makes Production Premium an excellent bundle for Flash users who are looking to integrate motion graphics and video into their projects. Plus, the way the video products (as well as Photoshop) seamlessly work towards the benefit of After Effects is (frankly) a very nice surprise. By the way, don't forget about Illustrator—just because its new features didn't make it into the roundup here doesn't mean that it won't be a solid part of the bundle. At any rate, you'll have to wait a bit yet for Production Premium to ship, as the suite isn't slated for release until sometime in Q3 of this year. In the meantime, however, there's no reason not to avail yourself of the Premiere, After Effects, and SoundBooth betas on the Adobe Labs site, and Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash are already shipping with trial versions awaiting your download. If you have any specific questions, feel free to shoot me an email at the link below and I'll give it my best shot.
Got Feedback? to send an email. I'll do my best to answer. Really.