In another life I used to be a Senior Fusion Artist. My Nuke coworkers complain all the time about my horizontal node script (flow) style. I have also used Flame (not much). All have strengths over each other. The big factor for Nuke in how complex the shot is. Also Nuke is way easier to customize than the competition.
3 Likes
The license savings from Nuke to Fusion are substantial. Not so much with Flame, not sure what a Flare license costs?
On the flip side, itās not just the core tool or even deep, but the wealth of gizmos that exist that make shots a lot easier. Donāt know how comparable python customization is, and how well Fusion holds up at scale or in collaborative environments (e.g. live groups), or pipelines, integration into workflow tools.
For the savings you can plug some of these holes. But then there is a massive productivity hit while everyone gets back up to speed and re-learns all the tricks. Also rebuilding existing setups everyone re-uses.
Just seems like one of these things that sounds like a fantastic idea in the board room, but once you get boots on the ground the reality is utterly ridiculous.
Seems to make more sense in small shops where budgets/margins are tighter, things simpler, and maybe a bit of extra time on hand.
1 Like
A Flare annual subscription is slightly less than half that of a Nuke X subscription. So itās not small change.
Whilst I agree in the majority of cases the status quo whilst being the most expensive, makes the most sense. However, on the flip side it would be nice for Flare to be in the picture at the very least.
Fusion seems to have its own fair share of Fuses (I think thatās what theyāre called) and a lot of devs have basically recreated the Nuke tools for Fusion.
Iām sure some much cleverer people on here could do something similar to Flame but then again, maybe not. To be honest, the only tool Iād like that is missing for me would be a UV unwrap tool but there are workarounds for that.
1 Like
One thing to account for, is large shops will want to have a large render farm to make those Flare compers productive. We have large farm for a small company, and Burn is so un-reliable that we have to constantly render watch and manage stuck Burn jobs. We render Nuke and Maya on the same farm, literally using the same render manager (Backburner), and have zero issues. That also does not take into account the multiple this renders valid locally but broken on Burn, or the vice versa, this renders valid on Burn, but is broken locally. No way Weta/ILM/whatever massive 2000 person place is going to deal with that shit.
Also, with many resource in-effecient aspects of Flame/Flare, you basically need to give it a top kit machine to be useable. Nuke can run on a much larger range of configuration and still be 100% usable. I donāt think these large shops are going to replace all their existing comp machines with $20K workstations with A6000 gpus.
Nuke it is.
4 Likes
There is also that issue of finding the talent to use anything but Nuke. There are hardly any Flame/Fusion artists, and Flame Artists are significantly more expensive for a similar level of talent (comparing a senior to a senior, a midweight to a midweight, etc;). I guess supply and demand is a factor in that.
It would be much easier to train a Nuke Artist on Fusion than it would Flame/Flare I guess, and the ongoing costs would then need to be factored in. So I guess if one of the VFX houses were to switch, it would likely be to Fusion over Flame anyway. This is all if Autodesk maintained the Status Quo of course. If Autodesk were serious about Flare as a product then more time would be spent fixing the issues such as Burn, and you could get away with a less powerful base workstation (How they originally marketed Flare as well from memory). All of that argument is mute of course in the current state of affairs.
@ALan Burn sounds like it is being a complete PITA for you?!! I havenāt got it set up now but have in the past and I never found it to be any worse than any other rendering system. Is it just the last few versions that have been problematic?
1 Like
Sorry guy, that is 2 decade old thinking.
1 Like
@ALan - remember that your professional technological advantage is not what most flame artists ever experience.
hey @philm ,
Was a comment on the flame/flare productivity vs. Nuke, not related to Burn.
@ALan - absolutely brother - Iām in agreement with you - in some instances, nuke/flare is not more productive.
Projekts certainly dictate the successful balance of ingredients.
I maintain that some people will never be exposed to a workflow so sophisticated that they will ever be able to gauge productivity on a fair scale.
Your technological advantage does not exist outside of instinctual, so itās hard for some people to understand your perspective.
I have to agree with @ALan here. I can say that working with talented Nuke and Flame Artists. For the quick bash them out quickly shots then yes, Flame has an advantage in terms of speed (maybe twice as efficient at best). But once you are beyond those simple, quick shots then I really donāt find that to be the case. Iāve seen both sets of Artists churn out work in a similar amount of time with a similar amount of quality. Some Nuke Artists prefer more regular direction/feedback because that is what they are used to. Once they realise I like to give VFX Artists their own creative freedom then those same Nuke Artists are just as efficient as the similar level Flame Artists. Then it boils down to the talent of the individual, not the speed of the software.
Having used both, I canāt say I found a noticeable time overhead in using Nuke over Flame for pure compositing work. For client attended sessions where people wanted to see things in context then that was the main advantage of Flame over Nuke (because Nuke Studio really isnāt in the same league).
We have good reasons for utilising Flame/Flare as part of our VFX offering but efficiency isnāt a major factor in that at all.
1 Like
I would agree with this if you insert one word āI believe Flame still has the edge when it comes to turning something simple over quicklā
But in the large Feature Film studios that @AdamArcher originally mentioned, that commercial style lookdev, is not happening with a client in a room. The immediately back and forth feedback doesnāt matter as the lookdev is taking place over weeks/months in conjunction with CG. It is a much more methodical process, than ājam it out in a couple days plugin magic will only be on the air for a few weeksā style commercial work.
1 Like
errrā¦ says who? Considering Iāve been working on quite a few features that have these big VFX studios proving a huge number of shots and it is definitely post-COVIDā¦
And can you please explain what your idea of what look development is? I know quite a few look dev artists and I can assure you that none of them are using Flame.
Interesting. Look Dev can be used as a pretty broad term. You and I may have very different ideas of what constitutes as Look Dev and the processes involved.
1 Like
I work almost exclusively on tv shows. There are quite a few shows that are a very fast paced environment. In terms of 2d work (talking blue screens, driving comps, 2d matte painting work), deadlines are very tight even when the show is not premiering for months. When EPs have notes (no matter how broad in scale) they want to see something the next day a lot of times. I find flame to be ideal for that environment. But to each their own and everyone is going to have their own pipeline and means of navigating that landscape.
2 Likes
āJust seems like one of these things that sounds like a fantastic idea in the board room, but once you get boots on the ground the reality is utterly ridiculous.ā
Spot-on.
Donāt get me wrong @BrittCiampa, I love Flame in the mix for both the episodic and feature VFX work we do (longform is all I have done for the past decade) but I still think that there is a misconception with a lot of people on here that Nuke is a lot slower than Flame. I get revisions on Nuke shots in a similar timeframe to those in Flame.
I wouldnāt be agitating for Flare if I didnāt see the advantages of it for certain types of shots. and speed for those shots is definitely part of the equation. However, there are plenty of shots where Nuke has been considerably faster due to its toolset too. And there are a plethora of shots where speed between Nuke and Flame are similar so it is more down to which artist is best for the shot. Some Flame Artists are better and faster at certain things than the Nuke Artists we use, but the opposite is also true for others. I find that the artist is a much, much bigger factor in speed than the toolset.
Everyone has their own experience though and is entitled to their own opinion based on that.
1 Like
While my use cases are on a much smaller scale, I find that there isnāt a clear winner and I flip back forth frequently, and sometimes use both on the same project, just because one has a better tool for something than the other. I rather mix and match rather muddle my way through some convoluted setup to stay on one.
In some ways weāre spoiled to have so many great tools at our disposal at very affordable prices.
1 Like
100%. Thereās absolutely no denying that the artist is always gonna be the biggest factor. And Nuke is rad. I donāt know if this is tacky to say, but it is what it is: If it werenāt for the unfortunate pay disparity Iād be much more willing to spend time in Nukeā¦
3 Likes
That is closing.