Quick curious questions, would Silhouette Standalone be liable for composite work? Has anyone used it mostly for composite.
For example I work with Fusion and prior to that AE. I haven’t used enough Silhouette yet, but based on the composite abilities would it replace something like fusion or AE or it isn’t that good yet?
Based on my little experience I would think maybe for some basic composites but not for advance workflows.
I would just like to know what people’s views are.
Hi, the definition of composite is ‘made up of several parts or elements’ so when in Silhouette you add something essentially you are compositing, so I guess it’s what do you mean when you say ‘composite’?
Extra clips can be added in silhouette & the project length can be altered but it doesn’t exactly have a timeline like an editor,
There’s no sound, that has to be added with another program,
I think you’ve already got - > I would think maybe for some basic composites but not for advance workflows. haven’t you? but it’d be interesting to hear what Boris says.
Here for instance ‘Text Peel’ was the orig project file, but the timeline had to be made longer to fit the ‘End’ clip that’s why the bar at the bottom is red, .
PS I changed Session setting so now the bar is grey all the way across
It’s just for curiosity really, whether some people use it more often then other software.
It’s something that has been growing more with silhouette, maybe is something that the team will be aiming for future.
Silhouette is designed to work on individual shots. Think of it more like Nuke or Flame.
It should have most if not all of the tools you might need to do some arbitrarily complex composites.
Here’s an older video from @Ben_Brownlee showing some of Silhouette’s compositing nodes and workflow. I know he’s got some newer more complex shots but I can’t find them on YouTube.
Hi,
I’ve done a lot of full compositing shots with Silhouette. I’ll say if you need to incorporate 3D models or 3D camera tracking, then you’ll want to look elsewhere. But for the 2D stuff I do, I can rock Silhouette from start to finish.
Here’s an example of a complex wire remove shot done in Silhouette : Boris FX | Training Series
And here’s a sneak peek of a project coming out soon:
Finally, there’s a compositing course just around the corner, which takes a shot from start to finish, which should be interesting for you.
If you have any specific questions then please ask,
Ben
I use only Silhouette and Blender (just started with Embergen) now… I’ve used Shake and After Effects for many years.
I now do mostly invisible FX, inserts, removals and compositing Particles or other FX.
If I was doing Motion Graphics I’d stick with AE.
For difficult fx shots I think Silhouette/Mocha is unbeatable.
Hi,
I have been using Silhouette for just few weeks for now, but I really like it for cleanup work. Paint and Roto with Mocha just works. Much easier and faster than Nuke or Fusion for those tasks.
I should try advanced comp work with Silhouette before I can say anything, but I have feelings that when you are doing more complex comp work with multiple keys and elements it can get messy and hard to read.
One issue might be caused simply because of how node ports are done in Silhouette. Those are good indicators for Silhouette beginners what kind of options nodes are providing, but there are drawbacks.
Here you have examples from Fusion, Nuke and Silhouette.
FUSION
Fusion ports are jumping depending of where line comes from. Background and foreground can switch places and you need to identify by color in that case. All vertical lines are drawn diagonal if there is more than one in or out options which makes reading nodes confusing. It is striking how such a small thing can confuse sometimes when you are dealing with big node flow.
NUKE
I have to admit, this is my favorite kind of node flow. Straight lines with centered ports with option to rearrange how you like if needed, but generally in node world, you should keep main stream going top to bottom with straight flow. (Fusion can also go left to right) Scene and other multiple input options can get messy, but this is the nature of multiple inputs.
SILHOUETTE
Here we have static ports. You can compare left and right node arrangement options and tell what is issue here. I have marked with red arrows where you cannot tell where are lines connected. On the right flow, you have to make additional elbows to redirect line to right place. Not big deal when there are only few nodes, but you can tell it will go messy sooner or later.
Maybe this all confusion comes because of my Nuke background, but I thought its better to writeup here and discuss what other Silhouette user might think of.
Best,
Juha
