In conjunction with several of their other top-of-the-line software application upgrades, discreet have released the long-awaited combustion 3. Unique in some of its features and price point, combustion seems to have been searching for its market-place slot. Sharing the code, tools and quality of its bigger siblings, flame, inferno and smoke, combustion has, in the last two years, pulled its price down from 10 thousand dollars to around two thousand.

Obviously, for the artists in the industry this is good news, and according to discreet, is part of its mid-to-long term efforts to bring broadcast and film quality visual effects to the desktop. However, with its 'unique' features and target clientele, has discreet (vector) painted themselves into a corner by touching both the high-end visuals market, where typical software/hardware solutions easily run to the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the smaller-scale visual effects studios primarily in the broadcast and video industry?
Competing (although according to discreet, not) with products like Adobe After Effects and Eyeon Digital Fusion, combustion 3 has received even more unique feature upgrades, adding to what has to be recognised as a very professional and superb feature-set of tools.

Combustion is a vector paint, animation, 3D compositing and visual effects application, which can be used to put quality-looking finishing touches and visual effects to broadcast, film and video projects. However, combustion is capable of far more than this. From adding graphics, real-time 2D particle effects (smoke, fire, sparkles, text), animated text effects and very powerful masking, keying and colour correction features through to layered video effects, excellent tracking tools, 3D lighting and camera functions, as well as image distortion tools, combustion 3 now aims at even more convenience and output formats for artists.

With its high-speed real-time RAM player and its close integration with 3ds max via the RPF and RLA file formats, combustion has always been very handy for splitting up 3D projects into its constituent render elements enabling lights, cameras, raytraced shadows and reflections, specular layers, textures and even z-buffer 3D depth information to be worked on in the combustion workspace.

With combustion 3, discreet has introduced the concept of non-linear editing (NLE) within the timeline, via the Edit Operator. Though simple compared to full professional NLE packages, such as Premier Pro, this handy addition is aimed at making transitions, cuts and dissolves between video tracks without having to go into another application, and then re-import the footage. Being embedded within the combustion workspace the video tracks can also be easily dragged around to edit in/out cut points and the track order as well as being affected by all of combustions tools and operators, such as masks, colour corrections, blurs and distortions. Users shouldn't expect to do complex NLE transitions, however with the new ability to capture and output DV (via FireWire) this can prove a real time saver.

Used professionally throughout the visual effects and media industry to output film, broadcast and DVD projects and graphics, combustion 3 can now output directly to Flash format for the web or file-size-critical interactive projects. This is in response to users wishes to be able to satisfy an extra group of clients within web development. Most of the vector graphics, text and effects tools, layers and animation features can be used to create SWF and supporting HTML code web-content that can be tested for browser and Flash Player compatibility right inside the combustion 3 user interface.

Handy, though not major new features, are the ability to save custom effect operator presets and customised paintbrushes. You can tweak your operators, such as masks, blurs and distortions on graphics or video layers for one part of a broadcast project, saving out all those effects. Then next week when the TV show comes round again, you can easily create the same effects and grading, but on different footage and elements, maintaining the overall look for that client. The brushes now not only have various vector shapes, styles and sizes but can also be created using graphic images or footage. You can draw directly with an image, repeating it as you go, but also can create fully editable spline-based vector shapes composed of that image, such as circles or lines which then, via tangent handles, can be animated. The footage colour, alpha or luminance can be used to create these brushes.

As a bonus discreet have bundled RE:Flex warping and morphing tools by RE:Vision Effects. These are valuable when you have specific need for them, since precise control over morphing footage cannot be substituted by any other technique. However, their inclusion might seem a bit of an oddity, until you need to use them to distort and alter footage within the 3D environment. This is useful when different footage layers have differing perspectives, and to fit one to the other within a moving 3D situation can necessitate their use.

JavaScript has been enabled in combustion 3 to produce animation controllers. These can be visually assessed in the Expression Browser then linked to parameters, and the keyframes tweaked later if necessary.