Ramen is a FREE node based compositor being developed and tested on Linux (ubuntu 8.10) and Mac OSX by Esteban Tovagliari. It is still under heavy development with lots of features missing and not working, so it will not replace applications like After Effects anytime soon, however I think this represents the fundamental shift or a kick in the pants for larger and bloated software companies like Adobe… and After Effects specifically.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like After Effects, I have been using it since it was COSA After Effects, so I can say that not much has really changed since then, and truthfully the things that have changed have been half-baked implementations. You might think that statement is a bit general and a little harsh, however I can offer up an example – Digieffects recently provides a fall off lighting plugin for After Effects, which is extremely useful…but how can AE not accommodate fall off in a 3d scene on its own? -Impractical. The same way that particles natively produced AE are impractical, the same way that true 3D environments in AE are impractical in comparison to modern compositors.
I am in no way suggesting that an application should be able to do anything and everything right out of the box, there is logical niche for plugins and third party development for sure, however, when the third party developers are sighting over your application’s shortcomings rather than adding value to your application, well then thats something entirely different.
This is why I love this type of development that forces the larger software makers into rethinking their software functionality strategies. So thank you for Ramen and Esteban Tovagliari – This looks promising and this is how innovation is spawned!
