Combustion 3 review

Combustion is an animation, compositing and colour-correcting application that has rapidly evolved from being £3800 worth of dongle-locked software to a robust affordable program that continues to inherit features from its Academy Award-winning siblings Flint, Flame and Inferno.

With version 3, Combustion's feature set has been expanded to include a previously standalone plug-in suite for morphing, has full support for Mac OS X on a Power Mac G5 and a modified workflow with some clever time-saving attributes.

Combustion's GUI lays all its features on an immutable screen with action-specific tool sets appearing and disappearing based on the items needed for each task via tabbed menus. This gives the user everything at once. The approach does take some time to get used to, and for After Effects users it's a bit of hurdle to translate the same functionality across applications. Once mastered, though, you realise how much more productive it is compared with dragging windows around the screen to find what you're looking for.

The main new feature in version 3 is that the RE:Flex pair of plug-ins is now embedded in combustion. This comprises warping and morphing effects and is used through the standard rotoscoping tools. Some features are common to both plug-ins - geometrics don't need to be closed shapes, there is interactive real-time warping and both eight and 16-bit channel support.

Warping is directed using sets of 'from' and 'to' geometries at each frame in colour-coded lines drawn from the shape's start to its end point. The amount of warping can be animated like anything else on the timeline.

Morphing is similar but works with two sources rather than one - either still or video. The handy colour-coded lines make life easier, and complex meshes are not needed. It has an automatic alignment feature that can be used alone or in conjunction with hand-specified correspondences. Linear cross-dissolves can also be finely adjusted on the timeline.

The plug-ins are very demanding, and even a dual 867MHz G4 was sluggish when morphing. Oddly, RE:Flex is not covered in the manual or in the online help but HTML help is secreted away in the Help data folder, but with no hint that it's there. The remainder of Combustion's improvements focus on workflow: Edit operators, expressions, custom brushes, markers, stained glass effects and output to Flash.

The inclusion of editing functions in an animation program may not make immediate sense, but it does make for tighter integration with sound or effect timings. It's a simple idea but allows corrections to be made, and audio or effects to be synchronised by shuffling around work before rendering.

Expressions, another addition, is a browser tool that uses Java for coding aspects of animation. It works by clicking the pre-made illustrated icons, which can be updated in real time by sliding parameters. Once you're satisfied, these can be converted into hard key frames available for further editing and tweaking. Unfortunately, you can't create and save your own expressions in the browser.

The way Combustion handles work is illustrated in two new features: customisable paintbrushes and Flash output. At the root of Combustion's functioning is a 2D particle - be it text, image or even imported Illustrator files. These elements can be animated to a minute degree, including the spaces between words. Creating a new paintbrush can be done from any visual, whether imported or originating from within Combustion. Since everything is a particle it's easy to import Illustrator files and animate any aspect of an image. The ability to output flash files gives Discreet a whole new market.