Here are some tools that might be interesting for some of us here:
Artisan and Autograph are by the same developer, Left Angle. With all the discussions around approval tools like RV, Artisan can be interesting for some.
Autograph is for motion graphic designers. Maybe those who don’t want to meddle with Adobe. It seems to be a mix of AE and some live-action graphics platforms rolled into one.
Teya Conceptor is from a lone developer/artist and is
a “simple software for 3d kitbashing and procedural generating”. It has a free version.
Not really ‘VFX’ software, but still useful in this context.
Mistika has a companion tool called Workflows. It’s a node based batch processor with watch folders and whatnot. Great for transcoding, dailies, etc. It has has some bugs and as the rest of Mistika could benefit from more dev resources. But it may still be useful for some use cases. I think they primarily developed it for one of their big customers SkyTV but made it available for other users:
I mentioned it in another thread a few days go, as AE alternatives go particular for motion graphics, there’s an interesting tool called Cavalry. It popped up two years ago and has matured. It is a lot more concise and has some nice features like effectors and animators if you need to design mograph, and are tired of AE, don’t to want quite take on the other big apps like Cine4D
I fully welcome the competition for Flame, and as pointed at in another thread, for myself also.
But Autograph look very much like AE in a browser. The choice not to be node/schematic based seems fatal to me. It is a non-starter.
Layers make a lot of sense for design and motion graphics.
I haven’t dug into Autograph (but the intersection of USD and mograph is interesting to me!). I have played with Cavalry a bit, and it’s got a lot of new ideas, like a procedural modifier for the timeline (called a Scheduling Group). I don’t know how much traction they’ll get in motion graphics, and I doubt they’ll influence the compositing market, but I don’t think these are just Ae clones.
It’s $2K and their website has basically zero compelling examples of why you’d want to use it over AE. USD integration, maybe, but that’s a really big leap. I suspect it’s DOA. They should have hired some hotshot mograph talent to make content with it and plug for them, because their demos look like the devs made them.
I have been using Gaffer for the last little while. Is free and open source. Node based. Mainly a scene assembly and lighting tool, but its has a wider variety of tools and uses. It has an image module with simple compositing tools and a task based approach to processes. It has a really clever way of triggering processes (similar to M Workflows) including python and bash scripts. Really ideal for shot based environments. Highly customizable. Think of it like if Katana and Mistika Workflows had a baby.
I use it as an alternative to Nuke to automatically generate movies with slates and burn-ins out of EXR sequences.
As a lighting tool it comes by default with 3DElight, Cycles and Appleseed render engines, but Arnold is its main focus.
One note of interest for Flame users is that is the only other tool (IFAIK) that supports Deep EXRs apart form Nuke and Houdini COPs. If you are tasked with inserting your FG element in a field of CG flowers for example, you could have your FG pre-comped, bring it into Gaffer, use it to generate hold-outs using the deep render of the flowers. I can put out and example if you are interested.
