There is also SideFX COPS slowley creeping into the scene.
I really think the comp market is due for another shake-up. Havent seen any massive improvement to how I work in comp from when I started around nuke 8 or so…
Nukes become a monopoly, complacent , between nuke 9 and nuke 15 the changelog is minimal at best, none of the core tools have gotten much love, sure they bought pgbokeh and… well thats mainly
it,
I’m not sure I see the revolution here. Node-based compositing. Timeline. Some AI to pull mattes.
Seems the biggest selling point is to be more affordable.
competition is good. modern interface, maybe he can pull off more speed or whatever.
Yea so far nothing revolutionary, but i think thats fine…
Imagine a nuke that runs as fast as flame 
thats all we need right?
I’m wondering if we won’t see UE5 gain some better compositing tools. It already has the live comp tools which are decent and they obviously have the 3D engine sussed. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to see that evolve into a compositing tool that could genuinely be a real time preview.
The other tool that might evolve the way we go about compositing would be Comfy UI. Very different things right now but it’s only a matter of time until someone a lot smarter than me works out how to use it to composite in a different way to how we currently do it.
I think maintenance and support of software is the heavy lift, not inventing it. I agree a SideEffects / Houdini compositor would be a welcome addition. they have a good track record of innovation and seem to be a bit more insulated or even immune (cant remember if they are a private company) from the scourge of the 90 day earnings sprint which i think drives a lot of the calcification of the industry…
This just became alot easier and better too.
Or a flame with multichannel and a scan line render 
Oh and metadata preservation oh and deep oh and neverfuckingmind nothing will ever cover everything
We’ve been playing with this. Used it on a job. It’s interesting. But not a panacea. That said, it’s still fun.
As for nuke vs flame. I like flame. After much bashing my head against a brick wall, it became intuitive. However, it’s really difficult to teach. It’s just so unintuitive to a newbie.
Low key would love to see this eat Nuke’s lunch. So unlikely but super stripped down license of Houdini that still has a 3d environment, a super small subset of modeling and texturing tools along with a beefed up version of COPS and including PDG would be kinda dope.
And project level compatibility… so you can open somone’s hip, grab their ROPs and scenes as setup and then just bang on.
man COPS is the dream, every sidefx meeting i had thats what i asked them for.
No i BEGGED them <3
also Flame artist? cool, Nuke artist ? nice
Copernicus artist?
Now THATS baller
Is interesting how in different forums artists are having very similar conversations on the current Comp software options.
The irony that Nuke exists to fill the gap initially between Flame and Houdini…
Didn’t a couple of Eyeon Fusion developers go to SideFX to work on this very thing?
But this:
The following are Copernicus’ limitations:
Mac
The Vulkan viewport isn’t supported on macOS. MacOS uses the OpenGL viewport renderer.
Some further thoughts though:
Thinking about all the above though, some problems could be solved with open FX.
Unfortunately the development on Natron seems to have stalled in November 2022…
yeah that is exactly the challenge. i’m sure there will be individuals who will use some of these new comp applications but no shop is going to integrate something into their pipeline if there is not a proper support staff or company backing it… obv there are no guarantees of anything (hello Cyborg) but too painful to retrofit, train up people, etc etc
Which is ironic, because there are plenty of companies limping old hardware and software along.
I know of at least one company that are beholden to shotgun, but they choose to host on premises, so they get no support - at all.
I know of other companies that bought compute, networking and storage hardware from companies that no longer exist.
Even more bizarre is the number of companies who previously employed dev teams to make bespoke software, and none of those devs work at that firm any more.
Nothing is certain.
Due diligence is best guess at best.
coughfndrycough
it’s easy to fire teams of 80 people or to make them quit.
especially if your main financial vehicle got underbid and parted out to smaller firms.
the technical debt of that bespoke software doesn’t survive operating system upgrades, security compliance or hardware refresh.
so your big movie making sausage machine is now garbage.
Stalled or was legally beaten into submission.