Focal Easy Guide to Discreet combustion 3

Book description

If you are new to Discreet combustion, or moving over to use this powerful animation and effects software from another effects package, then this is the book for you. It gives you all you need to know to get up and running with combustion, fast! It includes an overview of all the key features you need when starting out with simple and concise details on how to use them and how best to integrate the power of combustion into your workflow.

An ideal Discreet combustion primer for computer graphics students or professionals with some prior experience in the field of computer graphics. Learn how to do many familiar concepts such as animating with paint and layers of video specifically in combustion. This guide will provide a jump-start into the major features of the software without going too in-depth about every single button in the program. Through the use of various samples and screen captures, you will learn why an artist would use one tool over another in addition to just what the different buttons do.

Topics covered would include disciplines for motion graphics artists, broadcast designers, 3d animators, web artists, compositors and visual effects artists working for video and film based productions. People within the computer graphics industry of all sorts can take advantage of combustion because it is both a stand-alone application and also a bridge to several different disciplines including video editing, 3d animation, matte painting, 2d illustration and web design.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. About this Book
  7. Platforms
  8. About the Footage
  9. About the Author
  10. A Few Thanks
  11. 1. Preferences, UI and Key Terms
    1. And So it Begins. . .
    2. Quick Visit to the Preferences
    3. Major Project Components
    4. Main Interface Explained Graphically
    5. Data Entry Conventions
  12. 2. Workflow Basics, Footage and Viewports
    1. RAM Cache and Caching
    2. The Cache Meter
    3. Display Quality and Caching
    4. File Menu Options
    5. The Thumbnail Browser
    6. Working with Footage
    7. Footage Controls (Source and Output Settings)
    8. Working with Proxies
    9. Missing Footage
    10. The Workspace Panel
    11. Working with Viewports
    12. View Modes
  13. 3. Paint and Text Operators
    1. A Bit of Background. . .
    2. Applying a Paint Operator
    3. Non-Destructive Paint
    4. The Paint Toolbar
    5. Pivot Points
    6. Control Points
    7. Paint Groups
    8. Categories of the Paint Controls
    9. Vector Paint, Raster Output
    10. Working with Adobe Illustrator Files
    11. Text and Character Generation
    12. Paint Preferences
  14. 4. Compositing in 2D and 3D
    1. 2D Composites
    2. Manipulating Layers
    3. Transformations
    4. Transfer Modes
    5. Layer View
    6. Effect Operators
    7. 3D Compositing
    8. Additional Notes about 3D Composites
    9. . . . and Finally, Nested Composites
  15. 5. The Schematic View (Go with the Flow)
    1. Accessing the Schematic View
    2. Applying Operators
    3. Notes on Nodes
    4. Further Points on Schematic View
    5. Schematic Hotkeys
    6. Duplicating (Creating Instances)
    7. Schematic Preferences
  16. 6. Selections and Masks
    1. Shared Terminology
    2. Selections
    3. Selection Operators
    4. Mask Operators and Alpha Channels
    5. Stencil Layer
    6. Preserve Alpha
    7. Preferences
  17. 7. Working with Color
    1. Color Spaces
    2. Color Channels and Bit Depth
    3. Color Correction
    4. The Discreet Color Corrector
    5. Color Matching
    6. The Store and Compare Features
  18. 8. Keying and the Discreet Keyer
    1. Keyer Types in Discreet combustion
    2. More than Just Making the Blue or Green Vanish. . .
    3. The Discreet Keyer Operator
    4. Additional Keying Operators
    5. One Keying Workflow
    6. On-Set Tips for Chroma Key Shoots
    7. Additional Resources for Chroma Keying
  19. 9. The Tracker
    1. The Enigma Unveiled
    2. Two Questions to Consider
    3. Applications for the Tracker
    4. Let’s Make Tracks, Already!
    5. Trackers
    6. Picking an Element to Track
    7. The Tracker Interface in Depth
    8. Image Stabilizing
    9. Closing Tips
  20. 10. Animation and the Timeline
    1. When and How Much?
    2. Methods of Animating in combustion
    3. Creating Simple Keyframe Animations
    4. The Timeline
    5. Animation Channels and Filtering
    6. Ease Curves
    7. Extrapolation
    8. Math Operations
    9. Markers
  21. 11. A/V Editing
    1. Audio
    2. The Filmstrip
    3. The Edit Operator
    4. Trimming Heads, Middles and Tails
    5. Simple Editing
    6. Transitions
    7. One- and Two-Point Editing
    8. Edit Markers
    9. Split Layer
  22. 12. Expressions
    1. Quick Pick
    2. Editing an Expression
    3. Expression Browser
    4. Converting Expressions to Keyframes
    5. Ideas for Further Exploration
  23. 13. Integrated Particle System
    1. OpenGL
    2. Components of the Particle Operator
    3. The Preview Window
    4. Categories of the Particle Operator
    5. Library Presets as Starting Points
    6. Closing Tips for Particles
  24. 14. Rendering and Output
    1. Output Format Considerations
    2. Render Dialog Window
    3. Output Settings
    4. Render to RAM
    5. Commit to Disk
    6. Network Rendering with RenderQueue
    7. Discreet Backburner
  25. Appendix I: File Sizes and Formats
  26. Appendix II: Glossary/Index of combustion Terminology
  27. Index

Product information

  • Title: Focal Easy Guide to Discreet combustion 3
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: September 2012
  • Publisher(s): Focal Press
  • ISBN: 9781136144776