Whoa! Two posts in one day! Someone slow me down!
Upon finishing my previous post covering Zaxwerks' upcoming warp plugin for After Effects, I got to thinking about Adobe and 3d applications. The gist of it is this: Adobe has applications that create content for pretty much every conceivable medium, but they do not have a 3d application (After Effects notwithstanding, and Dimensions RIP). Why might this be, I wonder?
If you're a user of the Adobe Creative Suite, you've probably taken advantage of the very powerful opportunities offered by Dynamic Linking... You can create a clip in After Effects and have it linked directly to a Premiere Pro video project. Change the AE project, and it's updated in PPro. Oh, that I could have this capability between After Effects and a 3d application!
Granted, there are ways to see that the twain shall meet: Maxon Cinema 4d seems to be makingC4d/AE interoperability a priority and the most recent Max2AE release from Boomerlabs takes it even further, allowing you to go from After Effects to 3dsMax, and back again if you wish (I'll be covering this capability in a blog entry very soon). You've got 3d file formats such as RLA/RPF that contains 3d data that After Effects can (usually imperfectly) use to match up world spaces, and you can import Maya camera data in After Effects.
Is it a case of there not being a suitable 'mature' application on the market, ready to be purchased and brought into the Adobe fold? Why does Autodesk have not one, but TWO 3d apps (3dsMax and Maya)? Is Adobe waiting for Apple to create/buy an application before they decide to play catch-up? Or perhaps Google is threatening to make it all moot by releasing a web-based application as good or better than all the others?
Monday, April 02, 2007
3d and Adobe
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5 comments:
I was thinking the same thing myself about Apple 'needing' a 3D app to complete their video tools. What would Adobe or Apple buy though? Lightwave? Electric Image? Truespace?
Well, Lightwave is owned by Newtek and they'd be unlikely to part with it, I should think. EI is a possibility, I guess, but from what I've heard, it's getting a bit err... long in the tooth. Personally, my thinking would be Cinema 4d. The only big-ish issue with that is that they'd have to buy Maxon, which is (from what I understand) a publicly traded company. That'd make it a bit tricky and expensive. And then there's Maya and 3dsMax, both owned by Autodesk. That makes me nervous, because why would they continue to support two competing applications? And if one goes, I sure wouldn't want it to be 3dsMax, which I spent years learning :) I wish Adobe had bought Alias (Maya) when they were on the block.
Since products that have been on the market for a long time are probably out, what is needed is something that's relatively new to market, has an interface that can be customized [making it Adobe like] and powerful. My suggestion: Modo from Luxology (www.luxology.com). This would be an excellent choice for Adobe to buy.
It does seem pretty strange that Autodesk own those two, and I can't see them either 'converging' or becoming attuned to different 3D roles. The modo idea makes sense I guess
Oh great... like I need ANOTHER application to learn. Looks nice, and I confess I've never heard of it before.
Re: anonymous, one could certainly make the case that Maya & Max already have two different positions in the market... Maya for "film" and Max for "broadcast". But I still worry that one might dodo-ize.
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