I’ve referenced Traffic so many times and I’ve looked for screenshots literally forever. I guess I’m too old to understand the internets. Thank you so much for finding the pdf and posting it @mattriley.
If I had a top 3 of Flame features I would like to see implemented, coming in third place would be Traffic implemented in its own tab.
First and second would be Nuke style multi-channel enabled throughout the software (Single-pipe in batch, shuffle, copy, etc, etc). I could write a book about that implementation.
To add, we used to have the RTD tab in the player. It was limited to a handful of deliverables but even back then it served a purpose and it really saved me a boat load of time. The Output tab that @mattriley is advocating for is the natural progression of RTDs. They had a purpose back then and that need has only ballooned exponentially with the adverse number of deliverables the content we create is required to ship in.
Without a redesigned 3d viewer akin to Blender, Houdini or any other decent 3d DCC, a USD or VDB implementation would be severely crippled in my mind. I hate to say it but structural changes are required for action if any changes of merit would be made there. It’s truly the worst implementation out there.
What I’d give for a redesign of action’s viewer! It’s ridiculous that objects/axis aren’t omni-visable, there’s no grid/origin, there’s a clipping plane and you can’t move around the scene like you can in any 3D application or Nuke.
We’ve mentioned this to the dev team multiple times but it doesn’t seem like it ever clicks.
Please create a Feature Request via the Flame Feedback portal. I’ll definitely vote for it but I’ve already written a couple of feature requests myself today. I think this is important though.
At least Primatte is available via Silhoutte with many workflow caveats. But it really feels like there should be some advancement in this field during the past 20 years of no improvements.
I would prefer to see new tools for warping, tracking, and keying over anything 3d or text. Other apps do 3d and text very well, so having flame play catch up isn’t where I’d like to see resources spent.
I somewhat agree with this notion. However, I’d still like to see improved compositing tools that can better utilise the 3D space (i.e. depth based tools for compositing tasks) but definitely not wasting dev time on creating CGI tools, possibly bar an improved particle system to create simple particles. I’d be stoked to have something at the level of Combustion’s particle system or Particle Illusion, with more complex particles left to a CG team. Sometimes you just want to quickly add some steam/smoke/rain/snow to a VFX shot without having to do any kind of time-consuming roundtripping. If there needs to be anything but a simple level of interaction with the environment, then that should be left to a CG FX specialist to do in Houdini/EmberGen/Whatever.
In regards to Text, if there was some hybrid between text and the 3D text tools in Action, then that would almost be enough. But there have been plenty of times where I’ve been asked by a client in a session to add some kind of animated graphic (usually a on-screen representation of a SMS) and it would be nice to be able to create that easily, without having to rely on a motion graphics person, once again to save the time and hassle of a roundtrip. It would be nice to be able to create some quick text animation easily. 3D text is close, but there a few limitations.
Essentially, I feel that Flame should focus on tools that would benefit a single person compositing &/or finishing environment.
I mean we’re pretty well down that road already, and I don’t disagree that might be a wise business strategy, but good grief does that makes me depressed.
I say this which is detrimental to my own circumstances, where I am trying to build a compositing team based around Flame. However, I would like to see dev team focussed on what is best for the largest market of Flame Artists & license owners, and the majority seem to be either individuals or in teams of only a handful of artists that almost act like individuals. I know that is not the use case of Flame everywhere, but if that is the majority of cases then Flame should further play to its strengths. Trying to compete with Nuke in a VFX pipeline isn’t going to happen, and if I was to go down a non-Nuke version of that, Fusion would fit that use case better than Flame to be completely honest. Flame just seems to attract artists that take and own the entirety of a shot so should have the tools that focus on that IMHO
I bet something like this will be useful as a native tool.
On the same note… The current ML Matte tools could definitely be updated with some current tech that will make them 500% better.
Flame does seem fairly closed when it come to build custom tools. Aside form Matchbox shaders, it can probably afford to have a more open environment for building custom tools, similar to Fusion and Nuke.
Maya-Lite in Flame (Like Cinema 4D-Lite in After Effects) and ray traced renderer. (Like vray in Nuke).
New gen particele system. (That can handle millions of particles realtime like Unreal engine, Embergen).
New matchboxes. (With lots of parameters like Saphire plugins)
Honestly, rather than all those things that we won’t have, I would prefer that the things that have to work well, just work. For example, being able to export a damn compatible xml.
