The definitive creative solution for desktop paint, color correction, compositing, and visual effects. Autodesk® Combustion® software is the all-in-one professional compositing application designed to enable the full creative potential of digital video artists. With its easy-to-use interface, nondestructive workflow, and extensive toolset, Combustion delivers incredible power at an economical price and instantly augments the creative potential of any serious desktop video artist.
Key Combustion Features
- Single integrated application for vector paint, motion graphics design, animation, and compositing
- Full 3D compositing environment
- Advanced visual effects tools—keying, color correction, tracking, grain management, and masking tools inherited from the Flame visual effects system
- Edit Operator—break free from your NLE and assemble clips complete with transitions right in Combustion
- Rich set of effects tools, including a fully integrated, interactive particle system, warping and morphing, and 3D Post filters
- Comprehensive paint and rotoscoping tools, including fully customizable brushes
- Comprehensive animation tools, animation curve editor, keyframing, and expressions
- Intuitive schematic view to simplify visualization and organization of complex effects
- OpenGL® application programming interface acceleration, multiprocessor support, and extensive caching for improved system performance
- Multiple simultaneous viewports with real-time RAM looped playback
- Resolution-independence with 8-, 10-, 12-, 16-, and 32-bit (float) per component image processing
Composite
- Merge operator to quickly composite two inputs using any one of a variety of transfer modes
- True 3D perspective positioning and animation
- True 3D animatable camera with real-world camera attributes
- Unlimited color light sources, with attributes like spot, point, and distant light
- Realistic ray-traced shadows and reflections
- Layer projection to create stained glass–type lighting effects
- High-quality motion blur with multiple transfer modes
- Multiple object parenting, hinging, and path alignment for advanced motion path hierarchies
- Unlimited layers per composite—nest multiple layers inside a composite for greater efficiency
- Ability to import Adobe® Photoshop® and Adobe® Illustrator® files
Colour Warper™ (NEW)
- Performs primary and selective color correction allowing for precise fine-tuning with multiple levels of adjustment in a single pass
- Interactive adjustment of gamma, gain, offset, hue, saturation, and contrast; apply animatable settings to all channels or independently to R, G, and B
- Intuitive hue shift and tint color wheel for fast, accurate color balancing; visual color sampling palette for precise color matching
- Interactive Histogram and Curves editing modes for subtle, precision tweaking of color components
- Independent controls for color correcting shadow, midtone, and highlight regions—features user-definable luminance ranges
- “Match” feature for fast scene-to-scene color correction
- “Selective” feature for sampling up to three different color regions for isolated correction
- User interface features a high-quality RGB vector scope, and a 3D histogram for precise color monitoring
Color Correction
- Comprehensive color correction tools, including Color Balance, Brightness/Contrast, Levels, Gamma, Equalize, Tint, Curves, Shadow/Midtone/Highlight adjustment, and more
- NTSC and PAL color limiting and RGB and HSV color space models
- Precise and automatic color matching of footage from different sources
Paint
- B-splines with edge softness for greater control when defining shapes
- Control point grouping to facilitate roto work and shape animation
- Blend colors in the color mixer using an image as a source
- Corner Radius specifies corner curvature when creating rectangles
- Integrated pivot point adjustment and rotation directly in vector object
- Real-Time Roto™—paint in one viewport while watching the result loop playback in another
- Vector-based—all paint strokes and objects are resolution-independent vectors and fully editable
- Pressure-sensitive painting and drawing tools
- 30+ real-time draw modes, including smooth, brightness, blur, emboss, and more
- Cloning and reveal controls for interactive painting between video clips and frames
- Custom brushes help you create unique tools for advanced effects and textures
- Flash .swf output offers expanded web design capabilities
Capsules
- Create custom Capsule operators by combining multiple operators in the schematic
- Configurable user interface exposes only the operator parameters you require
- Accepts multiple inputs for quickly creating frequently used effects; inputs can be named to clearly define source elements expected by the Capsule
- Capsule Notes enable you to explain Capsule functions to facilitate collaboration
- Save Capsules to import them as operators in other workspaces
Edit Operator
- Simultaneously trim head and tail (maintains duration)
- Current and total duration displayed in the timeline segment
- Create duplicate segments in the timeline
- Assemble clips, and render them or use them as layers in a composite
- Trim, slip, slide, and ripple clips with transitions
- In-context editing between the edit operator and your composites
- Use multiple edit operators to easily create complex effects
- Full support for multiple resolutions—mix and match clips as needed
Character Generation and Text Effects
- Fast, interactive text editor for resolution-independent, nondestructive text animation
- Direct WYSIWYG manipulation of text within the context of the overall composite
- Font attributes (face, outline, shadow) have individual color, gradient, and texture controls
- Individual control of phrases, words, and even single characters for precise editing and animation
- Animate text along a path, with full onscreen editing of path control points
- Edit and animate vector outlines of text characters
- Support for Adobe® PostScript® and TrueType® fonts; international right-left, vertical text entry; double-byte (Asian, Arabic fonts)
- Generators for creating frame counters, timecode burn-in, sequential and random numbers
Particle System
- Real-time particle system for creating smoke, fire, explosions, water, and other effects
- Includes a library of hundreds of preset effects, each one fully customizable
- Create your own particle effects using sprites created from custom bitmaps, or use any element in the Combustion workspace—such as text or paint objects—as a particle
- Use deflectors to bounce particles during animations
- Motion-track emitters to lock particle effects to moving objects in an image sequence
- Control the color, emission, and behavior properties of the particles, including direction, life, number, spin, bounce, velocity, randomness, and more
Timewarp
- Time-remapping operator for creating slow-motion and speed-up effects
- Timing, speed, and duration controls for advanced manipulation of speed changes
- User-definable between-frame interpolation to create smooth blends or trails
Expressions
- Quick Pick for specifying relative paths when linking expressions
- Use JavaScript™ expressions to create complex animations without keyframing each value
- Expression Browser makes it easy to visualize, explore, and modify expressions from more than 30 preset expression classes
- Quick Pick functions to easily link behavior of different parameters together
- Convert expressions to keyframes for fine-tuning your animations
Selections and Masks
- B-spline shapes for smoother control of edges when creating masks
- Create animatable, trackable shapes using Bézier, B-Spline, Freehand, Rectangle, and Ellipse tools
- Animatable magic wand—keyframe or track the magic wand selection point
- Keyer-based selection for advanced color-based extraction and rotoscoping
- Edge gradient—a powerful three-spline rotoscoping technology for variable-edge softness; inner and outer mask or selection softness for motion blur compensation
- Boolean operations for combining masks and selections, including add, subtract, intersect, and replace
- Create multiple and articulated shapes in a single pass for faster rotoscoping
Keying
- Diamond Keyer—an advanced proprietary keying algorithm for pulling precise keys fast
- High-quality, professional bluescreen/greenscreen keying with advanced matte control tools
- Intuitive Keyer—RGB, YUV, HLS, Channel, Luminance, RGB-CMYL, and custom
- Matte edge and softness controls, including levels, shrink and erode, and Gaussian blur
- Advanced spill and color-suppression controls
Motion Tracking
- High-performance, high-precision tracking technology
- Four-corner pinning and image stabilization to remove unwanted camera roll, shake, and jitter
- Unlimited number of track points for complex changes in position, scale, and rotation
- Animate any keyframeable parameter using the tracker in context
- Export tracking data to other compositing systems as ASCII data
Advanced Film Tools
- Export OpenEXR file sequences for easy integration into film pipelines
- Look-up Tables (LUTs) enable artists to accurately display digital film scans on computer monitors
- Add Grain and Remove Grain filters include automatic grain matching with presets for popular film stocks
- Native 10-bit Cineon™ support—paint or rotoscope directly in 10-bit log without conversion
- Supports 32-bit (float) per component for full floating-point accuracy
Audio
- Supports Apple® QuickTime®, AVI, WAV, and AIFF files
- Synchronize audio to any operator in the process tree, or use as a global reference track
- Display the audio waveform over the timeline for accurate synchronization
- Simultaneously play audio in real time with cached animation
- Volume controls and VU/Peak meters
Filters and Plug-Ins
- Fast GBlur, an optimized, high-quality blur filter with constant-speed rendering independent of blur radius
- GBuffer Builder can custom-combine your image bitmaps into RPF files for use with Combustion software’s 3D Post operators
- RE:Vision Effects’ RE:Flex plug-in fully integrated for superior warping and morphing capabilities
- 3D Post effects for RPF/RLA images, including 3D depth of field, 3D fog, 3D glow, 3D lens flare, and 3D motion blur
- De- and re-interlace, 3:2 pull-down removal/addition, reverse dominance, and broadcast-safe
- Save effect operator presets to create a library and share effects
- Compatible with most Adobe® Photoshop® and Adobe After Effects® plug-ins
Keyframe and Timeline Controls
- Customizable channel filtering in the timeline
- Layer-based timeline and animation curve editor
- Markers provide ability to add notes and visual cues to your timeline
- Clip trimming, advanced keyframe, and object control
- Perform copy/paste and math operations on channels or groups of keyframes
- Automatic ease in/out control over single or multiple keyframes
- Define curve interpolation per keyframe, and define extrapolation per channel
Schematic View
- Interactive representation of the entire process/workflow used to create a composite
- Work simultaneously within the schematic, timeline, or workspace view
- Flowchart is automatically constructed as you build a composition
- Add, delete, move, cut/copy/paste, or add operators
- Fast navigation with pan, zoom, and center functions