I typed out a response to this way back and never actually published it since I find the topic rather tiring, but since this thread keeps getting bumped and its also germane to the other topic going around about this Who is the person in charge of Flame marketing and promotion right now?, I guess I’ll just come out and say it.
I am drastically missing the point whatever it is. I thought it was that Flame is really only for a very small specific subset of people.
Thats why my initial response was to the idea that Flame is only for 1% of people out there. For me, that just isn’t borne out by my experience. Way more than 1% of the artists I’ve worked with over the years have been Flame artists and even more would have benefited from knowing Flame.
I probably shouldn’t have brought Nuke into it since my original question would have been better worded as
Given that the 1% almost certainly doesn’t include your average compositor(since more than 1% of people in our field are compositors), why is Flame not the right tool for the average compositor?
It just happens that the average compositor is most likely a Nuke artist and so inevitably it becomes a comparison. I reckon I’m probably not the first to compare them.
I agree that Flame and Nuke each have their strengths, but just because each program has its strengths doesn’t mean that they don’t have a significant amount of overlap. The differences between the two programs are exactly why Nuke artists could benefit from learning Flame. The same way that Flame artists benefit greatly from using Nuke. There’s a reason that a recent logik live featured Nuke tools in one of the segments. Conversely, it kills me to see a Nuke artist painting a clean plate up when if they could only chum through all the rushes they would find that little bit at the end of the take where everyone clears frame.
I’m not shortchanging either program, but I’ve spent most of my career working alongside Nuke artists often doing the same work. We can wax poetic about all the differences between the two, but when there are companies consistently hiring Flame and Nuke artists for the same work then I don’t think its missing the point to make a comparison between them.
There is always the right tool for the job, and I’ll admit that Nuke and Flame are often suited to different kinds of work. It is to everyone’s advantage to have that “discerning eye” separating out where each program can play to its strengths. In practice I find that this is an admirable yet often unachievable goal, the circumstances of which are more often dictated by scheduling and artist availability. I said this in the other thread, but it bears repeating. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen a commercial bid out as Flame hours only to have the producer turn around and outsource half the work to Nuke artists in India because the timeline is too tight to do it all in house. It all comes out the same in the end.
I think most producers don’t care to understand the “architectural differences” between Flame and Nuke. You may not like the viewpoint “they’re both compositing systems therefore largely interchangeable,” but every day there are producers who are just trying to staff their jobs with whichever compositor they can find. And for the most part why shouldn’t they? The jobs that pay the bills are, by and large, relatively simple mundane work that can be done effectively in either program.
I think my experience has probably colored my perception of the issue. In the past I’ve worked at two large companies with teams of 30+ Flame artists. I’ve seen people go years on Flame without touching the timeline, doing conforms, pulling rushes, etc. They were just compositors and some of them were the best I’ve seen. Given that Flame is now cheaper to rent than NukeX, why shouldn’t there be a new generation of artists learning Flame purely as a compositing tool?
At the end of the day, I think Flame is a tool for a lot of different people doing different things. After all it does 95% of the things.