There's a reason no studio adds stock elements inside the 3D software... 3D engines are bad at loading image sequences. Load 40 of them and watch what happens. Changing the timing of these elements in 3D is also impractical. That's why 3D compositing exists. Render the CG. Bring the... camera into Nuke. Build the atmosphere there: same 3D space, no re-render, works with every 3D package.show more

Please elaborate that part 3D engines are bad at loading image sequences.

Scrubbing the timeline with multiple image sequences to direct timing. Collapsing numerous elements into precomps VS trying to load tons of 2d video elements (with playback) in realtime from your disk. Unreal does sprites / atlases fast, but those don’t have the same resolution or frame count. A few other fundamental reasons I believe why a 2D layer over the top isn’t going away soon, but too detailed for a post.

@arvidschneider Inaccurate. irrelevant to "3D Engine", more about SWEs. in a 3D DCC, poly viz&efficiency is the top priority, not 2d IO. tools like nuke are incredible inefficient (in terms of rendering) since they're built with "mostly" scanline, a deprecated tech by 3d DCC decades ago.

@arvidschneider in reality one can build a new comp env that brings the 3d engine power to post comp but it's not a good business idea in general for startups for obvious reasons. there are actually great hybrid grounds like copernicus in Houdini but it's too hardcore for most.

I think we would mostly agree then. I never said it wasn't possible if someone built a new toolset, but the 2D IO with many elements in 3D packages isn't practical as they are currently built. I've used 2d elements before in 3d for certain interactive effects, but in general you lose a lot of flexiblity iterating on timing and driving the look, like you can in comp. And it slows down your playback dramatically over a few elements being used. Additionally, if you're using 2D elements in the first place it's to reduce cost and increase reusability, so those elements most likely have to be composited within a 2d framework in the first place to integrate well - so this is probably why nobody has gone out and built that hybrid toolset to cache them faster in 3d. I have a proxy system for pre-vising elements in 3D for this reason actually which speeds things up for previs when planning element heavy shots. Would be great if nuke was faster at rendering and playback though which is the real answer.

Nuke is also bad at loading image sequences