in cfx, there should be a hotkey to access the most common used nodes. Generally nodes such as gmask, color correct, action, blend&comp, blur should be able to be loaded using hotkey without have to open the cfx nodes bin.

Andi
FreeNukerz

It’s a good request.

“B” in Nuke makes a Blur node, for example. I’ve always been jealous of that.

;-) Hi Brian,

Don’t get me wrong. I like Smoke and i’m just trying to suggest things that can make it better. Honestly if i don’t like it, i won’t waste my time here :-). Along with my experience with other compositing apps, i just want to pick up what best from every land and try to pull it here. Just for make Smoke to have more muscles.

I know 2013 is a huge leap but still there’s a lot of thing that has been changed since i was using flame 7-8 years ago. I don’t know why.. maybe in that time, this app had not many users ( back to era of sillicon graphics, The expensive machine and software making this tool become exclusive so only limited users can get access). With not so many users, then i believe there were no such huge pressure from users that time… i guess :-) . For example : the contextual menu (right click menu), this should really has been done a long time ago. Tracking - it should be made simpler, need to be redesigned, it was 8 years ago i was having problem to do backward offset tracking and i still have the same problem today! There’s been 3d compositing inside the action for a long time, but why we don’t have decent 3d control to navigate the 3d space ? you have engineers doing some cool stuff in max/maya, why can’t you make it in flame/smoke ? change cursor to orbit/zoom/pan etc for navigating 3d.. it has been like this for ages and no improvement. Some of old users may already adapt and ‘accept’ the way to do it. But as new users, i don’t do it that way. If you can do it with single click , why need 3 clicks. If you can do it faster , why not ?

There are a lot of thing i like in Smoke but still there are many thing need to be enhanced.

Cheers.

Andi
FreeNukerz

Mike makes a good point… I used Flint for 7 years at Disney Asia and could have been considered a fanboy. However, having been away from the AD environment for a few years and then come back with smoke 2012, there are some features I feel that AD need to revolutionalise in order to keep pace with the industry as a whole (i.e. the tracking).

That said, I’m of the camp that thinks that Smoke 2013 is a huge leap forward. CFX gives us back so much that I’d missed from Batch and the interface makes for a smoother transition from other software. That’s important these days when suites (and editors) are becoming less dedicated and are more likely to retask depending on bookings. These days I switch between editing, Resolve and Smoke depending on what’s booked and I think more and more post staff are going to work this way in the future. From the business perspective of a post house, 2013 is a huge step in keeping Smoke relevant.

//even if I also carry some outdated expectations of where things should be and occasionally get a little lost in the new interface. I guess that’s normal. ;)

Hi Metaclay,

You do have an orbit function. It’s labelled as Shift-O however, because I must have chosen a different keyboard layout when I created the user, the key shortcuts listed on the menu don’t work. Actually, they should update depending upon which (AD created) keyboard layout you choose for your user as it’s confusing if the shortcuts shown in the menus aren’t for your chosen keyboard layout.