merge the Video Sequencer inside the 3D interface
I was trying to imagine a better VSE to make it as practical as After Effects, fully integrated with 3D and Greace Pencil…
VSE strip are standard 3D objects like Greace Pencil objects
The VSE panel is just a panel, but what’s in it are standard objects like empties or grease pencil objects : All VSE strip and masks are now an 3D object, like any other image empty… Empties can be movie, image, mask, sound, adjustement layer it can be converted to a 3D object with a texture.
Video Strip properties
Basically like a grease pencil object with some extra empty options
visibility (a mix of 3D depth + order in its collection (same as grease pencil ?) in-out point opacity (for fade in out) position relation : attached to camera (witch one) + align switch parent (to the camera/world)
They are visible in the outliner, collections, so we can parent them. Video Strips, like Greace Pencil objects, can have layers, with edits, blend mod.
They use the same GP Effects (drop shadow for any element)
Render settings enable motion blur (enabled through the VSE render-EEVEE checkbox + per strip at the end of the transform list.)
Camera
Background images include 2D objects like Greace Pencil, empties or VSE Strip that are aligned. They are separated in 2 categories : Foregrounds and Backgrounds
EDITING
Sequencer is becoming a mix of dopesheet and VSE sequencer, any VSE object can be seen like the dope sheet, the eye/camera icon can be animated in the outliner to become a in/out range.
collections can be visible in the DopeSheet list, merged like a summary line to visualise your edit of several movie empties.
Sound
Sound is an extra property for VSE object, with a Volume property. Display Waveform is an option to see it overlayed in the sequencer.
Sound effects are a new category in the ‘Effects panel’ Sound can be separated to be unsynched and edited separately.
Compositing
At last Compositing is possible for VSE, visible in the 3D viewport (in addition to Effects like Greace Pencil)
Texts
VSE texts are dead, 3D texts get an outline option (geometry node preset ?, along with typewriter animation), Shadow and box need to become effects or geometry nodes preset.
Extra Notes
coordinates can be are meters or pixels (relative to camera resolution) VSE elements can be put in passes like Greace Pencil for easier compositing Compatibility with Story Tools ?
4 Comments
Blender would be a great AE replacement that A LOT of industries currently need.
I talk to so many 2D animation people who composit everything in AE because there is no other software for it. Blender would be really great for it, if it was able to do quick compositing on multiple layered sequences with a decent timeline like in AE.
However, I am not sure if your proposal would actually do the trick for most AE users as the important thing is "nested compositing" - precomps . I think the current pipeline which is 3D->Compositing->VSE is not great either but it could work if we did some changes. IMO Compositing and VSE could potentially be considered a singular thing - it is the Postprocessing where Compositor acts like a node view and VSE like a timeline view.
So hear my alternative propsal:
-> This way, we can have nested Compositors which can allow for complex compositing scenarios
Let me show you the advantage on your example with Text
What do you think? Would it make sense for your usecase?
I completely disagree that Blender would be a great replacement for AE.
AE uses layers, Blender uses Nodes. Both are valid workflows, but each has specific pros and cons.
Resolve is closer to Blender, in terms of using nodes for compositing. But given that Resolve is free and very full-featured already, I don't see many giving up Resolve for Blender.
Blender actually can be both Node and Timeline based - it already is! I think this disagreement on nodes vs layers is a thing of the past, changing the workflow is not an issue for studios.
What bugs the whole 2D animation industry is that there is no alternative for Compositing outside AE. Resolve and Nuke just arent cutting it for most of 2D productions that need good support for custom stackable effects and keyframe animation at the same time. I cant even tell you how many times have we tried to switch to one of these just to find out there is no way to make the Roughen Edges or Posterize Time effect in these softwares.
Every production I worked on would tell you that changing workflow is fine - I know a lot of shows that went to Blender to do 2D animation and they just taught all their animators Blender instead of Toon Boom.
What is harder is the feature set - Nuke and Resolve make a lot of small tasks really tedious. What Blender does really well is modularity. It can display all information either as Nodes or as Layers or just as a Stack!
And for it to be AE competitor, it just needs a few adjustments that would make its data structure IMO even more logical.
actually making VSE editing accessible in the 3D interface like a greace pencil object would allow compositing... and that is one of the important point of this proposition. I think I need to make a screenshot to explain it better.