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One of the things that differentiate Combustion from some of the other desktop compositing packages is the fact that it features a comprehensive paint toolset. This makes life a lot easier as apposed to having to switch back and forth between applications. In addition, because Paint is part of Combustion you can manipulate and animate your paint strokes, masks and objects over time.
All paint operations in Combustion are vector-based, even though they look just like bitmaps. This gives you the extra advantage of resolution independency and lets you apply all kinds of changes without losing resolution or introducing artifacts. Because of Combustion’s history structure and vector architecture, a paint stroke is treated like an individual object and most attributes can be changed at any given time. For instance, you may drag a paint stroke to a different screen location, change its color and even its transfer mode from paint to erase (or any of the many other available modes). The paint tools also make it very easy to create garbage mattes, masks and roto-splines. The brushes are pressure-sensitive and beg you for a nice tablet.
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| Realtime Open GL particles preview. |
Text tools were vastly improved in Combustion 2, turning the program into possibly the best CG (Character Generator) for the Mac. You can create awesome looking text with more available controls than those found in the cockpit of a small airplane. The resulting text is very clean and sharp, yet completely free of jaggies. Font faces, outlines and shadows each have individual controls. Faces and outlines may be made from solid colors, custom gradients (with a virtually unlimited range of colors) or textures. The latter can be obtained from any part of the current layer or a separate image. Word wrap is supported and a “Write On” tool creates those typewriter effects for you. There is also a number generator and a timecode generator in addition to all kinds of other tools. And because any group of objects in Combustion may be aligned in many ways, aligning text objects in vertical an horizontal variations becomes a very easy task, avoiding the traditional (and sometimes annoying) grids.
The motion trackers in Combustion are, of course, top notch. I have tested them with interlaced footage using low contrast pixels as tracking sources and they worked flawlessly. Because of sub-pixel sampling, the motion is very accurate. The process of attaching objects to trackers is also very intuitive. All you have to do is select the object you want to lock to a tracker and then select the appropriate tracker (position, scale, rotation or any combination). Position your tracker(s), hit one of the Analize buttons and the object will be locked. The program calculates the tracking very quickly and, in case your tracked pixels move off screen, you can use a roaming box to extrapolate their location for you. If any weird tracking pints are created, they can be deleted and the new curve re-plotted. Tracking positions can also be manually re-adjusted at any time.
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Also new in Combustion 2 is an amazing toolset for the creation of particle effects. The program ships with a library of very realistic effects such as explosions, smoke, sparkles, flashing lights, water, foliage, fires (a must for a package named Combustion), clouds, tunnels and a lot more. You can use these affects as a starting point for your own or you can create them from scratch. All of the traditional particle controls are present and any image may be used as a particle shape, including 32-bit ones with full color and transparency, logos and text.
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| Getting stupid with particles, tracking (makeup), glow and paint. Click image to watch movie. |
I have yet to meet a person who can resist playing with particles in Combustion 2. The realtime preview is extremely entertaining and can suck hours off your workday if you are not careful. I wouldn’t be surprised if a “Particles Anonymous” group is formed anytime soon.
So far I haven’t mentioned that Combustion 2 works both in 2D and 3D spaces. Being a true 3D compositor allows you to create some interesting effects. Thanks to the friendly interface it is very easy to position layers in three-dimensional space. Creating automated multi-plane effects is just a matter of properly spacing layers apart in Z and then moving your camera in X. And you can use the available light sources to selective illuminate objects in your workspace. Lights look very natural and I have successfully used them to tweak the lighting on imported footage to better match the lighting present on other layers.
The ability to work in 2D has the advantage of considerably speeding up the rendering process because it bypasses all the complex calculations required for 3D. Having this option available allows you to select the most productive method, according to your needs.
Combustion 2 is a very complex package, which makes it very hard to go over every single feature in a review like this. Operators such as Grain Management and other filters are excellent and the results are always above average. In addition to the supplied operators you can use many plug-ins designed for Photoshop and Adobe After Effects. And speaking of Photoshop, when you import files created with that program all the individual layers are maintained.
Users of Discreet’s Max 3D program will find lots of other powerful features and a high degree of integration between the two packages. Feats such as changing a reflection map after a render are made possible with this combination.
I recommend that you visit Discreet’s web site for a detailed list of Combustion tools and features. The address is http://www.discreet.com/products/combustion/
Combustion 2 is a truly outstanding program that I can’t recommend enough. It is extremely powerful, yet very easy to use. Best of all, it connects directly to the artistic side of your brain, unleashing your creativity through excellent tools and a wonderful interface.
Discreet deserves a lot of praise for bringing the power of their high-end tools to the desktop for a very reasonable $4,995 list price. It may appear to be a steep price when compared to a few other applications but, believe me, it’s definitely worth it!
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