I/O:How well does LW work with the 3 Kings? Photoshop/ AE/ Illustrator

[robertoortiz]

One of the most common toolsets in the Graphics Industry are the Adobe set of tools. Bar none. Here in the Washington DC area no matter the size of the studio, and NOMATTER WHAT THEY DO (Animation, Arch Viz, VR, Motion Graphics, Forensic Animation, Illustration and Games) these are the common tools found in all these studios.

And in the Adobe suite there are 3 Kings. They are:
* Photoshop
* Illustrator
* After Effects

So tell us?
* Is this your experience? What do you do with these tools?
* For you how well Does LW work with Photoshop/Illustrator/After Effects?
* Where does excel? What areas does it lack? What would you do to improve your experience?
* How is your experience in terms of INPUT/OUTPUT between the apps and LW?

Looking forward to your comments/opinions/stories.

_R

[Nicolas Jordan]

I personally use GIMP and Inkscape. For what I do they are adequate free alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator. Just another way to keep overhead costs down.

[lertola2]

I think all three of these are amazingly good pieces of software. I use them all the time. I started with Illustrator version 1.1 in 1987! I do think the creative cloud subscription price is steep though.

[Ma3rk]

One of the most common toolsets in the Graphics Industry are the Adobe set of tools. Bar none. Here in the Washington DC area no matter the size of the studio, and NOMATTER WHAT THEY DO (Animation, Arch Viz, VR, Motion Graphics, Forensic Animation, Illustration and Games) these are the common tools found in all these studios.

And in the Adobe suite there are 3 Kings. They are:
* Photoshop
* Illustrator
* After Effects

So tell us?
* Is this your experience? What do you do with these tools?
* For you how well Does LW work with Photoshop/Illustrator/After Effects?
* Where does excel? What areas does it lack? What would you do to improve your experience?
* How is your experience in terms of INPUT/OUTPUT between the apps and LW?

Looking forward to your comments/opinions/stories.

_R

I'm still using the CS6 versions of all these primarily 'cuz they still do all still do what I really need to do. I'm still on a Win7 system so not wanting to poke at what works. I want a separate system for exploring new. Starting to get strife about that with some tools now, but all depends on what you need at the moment. If what you don't already have & know, start looking around for what will. I might add MochaPro to your list though.

Not CG related particularly, but had a personal thing wip where I wanted to create a specific audio effect: A ticking clock that very gradually accelerates over about 2-2.5 mins but w/o changing pitch of course, just tempo of the tick tocks.

Seemingly simple, but had a number of folk proficient in ProTools baffled, (although I think that was mostly due to available time), but it wasn't something that they could just say, "Oh, ya just do this or use that". I finally came across a newly released tool that Dan Ebert's is part of for AE that allowed me to do the trick in AE very quiickly, predicably, & hyper easy to use.

Hoping to do a major system upgrade in (semi)near future so will explore options then of course.

[squarewulf]

I do think the creative cloud subscription price is steep though.

It is. It comes out to $2,800 a year for all the apps whereas before you could buy CS Master Suite for around $2,600 and have it forever.

EDIT: $600 a year, not 2800

[jeric_synergy]

I think all three of these are amazingly good pieces of software. I use them all the time. I started with Illustrator version 1.1 in 1987! I do think the creative cloud subscription price is steep though.

$40/month? Including all the other stuff they throw in (which, btb, I can't find a simple list of)?

I suggest you (not lertola) google "how much does creative cloud cost" if you are paying $2800 a year.

[squarewulf]

Had the wrong number in copy and paste. meant to say $600, my mistake.

[jeric_synergy]

Yeah, but I'm paying $480/year, which is even less.

I >>>REALLY<<< don't think CC is overpriced, if you use multiple apps. Maybe if everything you do is accomplished by the shareware folk (and peeps better be donating), to be up to speed on three main apps (PShop, Premiere, AE) at that price? C'mon. I was disappointed they ended the website hosting, but c'est la travaille.

[BigHache]

There's no doubt PS, AI, and AE are the de facto applications for their purposes. I've been jumping around industries a bit and my usage for PS and AI has been dwindling. They've become supporting programs rather than primary heavy lifters.

While PS and AI are, and have been, at each place I work, I dumped Adobe altogether at home. I don't do creative consulting work at home so it makes no sense to pay monthly for software I don't earn money with. Plus, their main usage for me at home has been to aid in texture creation for 3D work. Again, no real heavy lifting.

AE is another story. This is where I believe Adobe has not had a lot of competition and is their standout application, though technology always changes so this could too.

LightWave works just fine with these three programs. It would be a boon for LightWave if it could read AI or PDF files natively as texture maps.
I have even used LightWave with After Effects via the Element 3D plugin and it's great.

I'm a little hard pressed to point at I/O compatibility with Adobe products and say something needs to be changed/improved. With advancement of Substance Painter and PBR workflows to the forefront of surfacing, Photoshop has become rather irrelevant for the 3D industry. I find myself really only using Illustrator to make Color ID maps for Substance Painter. So while a nice discussion I don't personally feel this is an area LightWave needs to focus on. Better UV tools are at the top of the list, because if you're bringing models into Substance Painter you have to UV everything first.

[RPSchmidt]

I use AE CC and Photoshop CC daily with Lightwave at work. Much like BigHache, I use it in combination with Element 3d for motion graphics and animations.

I prefer the workflow from Lightwave animation to OBJ/OBJ sequence to Element 3d because Element is particle-based; so you can create some very complex scenes and animations that look sharp and then go straight to end product complete with lens blurs, particle effects (Trapcode), color grading, etc. from AE while maintaining an extremely low rendering overhead.

I would love to have 3d Coat or Substance Painter at work, but getting new software at work is a battle of epic proportions. It took me a little over three years to get our Lightwave upgraded; I'm just not ready for another software battle campaign right now. So I use Photoshop for all of my texturing. Specular maps are easy enough to make, textures themselves are easy to lay out in Photoshop using my UV as a guide, and Photoshop generates great normal maps.

I've had a mixed bag of results using the AE to LW plugin. It works well for what it does, but I wish there was a better resolution for the spatial relationships between AE and LW. In other words, AE's 2.5d space can translate into some weird camera angles and positioning in LW when you are transferring 3d motion tracking data and nulls to LW. It works, but sometimes it takes a bit to find the camera, light, etc. I put that AE because it's not true 3d.

I also agree with BigHache that this isn't an area that necessarily requires improvement, or more specifically, improvement on LW's part.

[RPSchmidt]

$40/month? Including all the other stuff they throw in (which, btb, I can't find a simple list of)?

I suggest you (not lertola) google "how much does creative cloud cost" if you are paying $2800 a year.

Well, not a simple list, but here is a list; https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/...g/desktop.html

I think for the price, constant upgrades/support, and new tools and content, it's fair. Your average cable customer pays twice that for service and that's just for entertainment.

[rustythe1]

is Nuke not the new AE?

[jeric_synergy]

Well, not a simple list, but here is a list; https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/...g/desktop.html

Yes, exactly: not simple, but a big full of white space design-gasm.

Frankly, anytime I see a g.d. boatload of white space, it makes me thing "Mac designers", and not in a complimentary way. Adobe seems to be going to a lot of trouble to make it particularly inconvenient to determine the current features of CC: for instance, they recently discontinued their MUSE website hosting offer.

I don't mind the actual withdrawel so much as the massive BOTHER of trying to find out what is currently included. I think the Wikipedia entry may be the most convenient, but is it the most current and accurate.

Thanks for the link, nonetheless.

[RPSchmidt]

Yes, exactly: not simple, but a big full of white space design-gasm.

Frankly, anytime I see a g.d. boatload of white space, it makes me thing "Mac designers", and not in a complimentary way. Adobe seems to be going to a lot of trouble to make it particularly inconvenient to determine the current features of CC: for instance, they recently discontinued their MUSE website hosting offer.

I don't mind the actual withdrawel so much as the massive BOTHER of trying to find out what is currently included. I think the Wikipedia entry may be the most convenient, but is it the most current and accurate.

Thanks for the link, nonetheless.

Yup, I'm not a fan of the page layout; a simple left-aligned menu of the products that would show the product data in the main div of the page would be much better.

And it is true that for the visitor, they don't really keep an easy-access list of the feature set of each application. Subscribers, of course, get the notes on all updates and first crack at all beta applications, etc.

I was personally bummed that they bailed on Muse, but while they aren't going to continue support and development for it (a rather big mistake in my opinion) it's still part of CC, i.e., it's still a functioning application that you can use to develop web pages. They did announce to subscribers that they were discontinuing development and support, though.

[jeric_synergy]

Yup, I'm not a fan of the page layout; a simple left-aligned menu of the products that would show the product data in the main div of the page would be much better.

Abso-frigging-lutely.

The APPS aren't that hard to find, it's the ancillirary stuff, addons and services: like, I'm pretty sure I have access to a boatload of fonts included, but I'm not sure....