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When I started pre-production on the movie that served as the inspiration
for this book, I was, like you, vaguely familiar with Smoke and curious about
what its integrated capabilities could bring to my workfl ow. And like you, I was
new to its ways — just a raw recruit. Over the course of editing my fi lm and
participating in its compositing (alongside vastly more experienced Smoke
artists than myself), and within the span of three versions of the software, I was
in a position to know which aspects of Smoke were easy to pick up and which
would require more in-depth explanation. In essence, I was the very fi rst student
of this book.
Autodesk has been making huge strides in making Smoke friendlier
application than previous versions. It’s no secret that Smoke has a unique
interface; reworking it for wider accessibility is a challenge in that the very
power that Smoke brings to the post-production experience is what makes it
more complex to learn. Fortunately, Autodesk has done a great job of moving
the user interface forward in a way that enhances usability without sacrifi cing
functionality.
This book distills my experiences editing and compositing my movie using
Smoke, providing you with a fun series of real-world lessons that teach you
this application’s many layers as an editor, a compositing environment, and a
fi nishing tool that let you incorporate sophisticated effects at the very earliest
stages of your edit. It also extends your workfl ow by adding high-quality
greenscreen keying, 3D compositing, color correction, and text effects to
help you complete even the most sophisticated of projects in one integrated
application.
It’s often said, but truly I hope this book is as fun to read as it was to write. |