DAW software lags behind other creative software like 3D animation packages

[whyterabbyt]

I personally fail to see the logic in comparing 3d graphics software with audio software.

Both are editors/arrangers on a timeline. They're pretty much identical.

3D software is not an editor/arranger on a timeline. You could go your whole career in a 3D package without seeing a timeline.

Feel free to post a screengrab of the default UI of any name 3D package showing a DAW-style timeline, though.

I do 3D and video editing as well as music production and because of my DAW background it was easy to pick up video.

And yet we're talking about 3D, not video.

[whyterabbyt]

As i always read, for people who are more into those things, Blender is rather a jack of all trades, and does a little of everything, while it's not specialized, and feature rich in a specific area, which is the case with the usual suspect industry standard tools.

Actually most of the major 3D content tools are jack-of-all-trade tools as well. There are some notable specific-niche tools like ZBrush and Substance Painter these days, but almost all the 'big name' tools do all the major tasks; modelling, rigging, animation, rendering, simulations.

[chk071]

Alright, fair enough.

[CasualHobbyist]

GIMP, Photoshop, Maya, Blender, etc. In the end they are all great tools that on the right hands can produce awesome results on the right hands. Seen quite a lot of impressive stuff out there.

So, to the topic of 3D animation. I sometimes hear from people that making 3D models, animation and the like is usually easier, cheaper and faster than 2D, and therefore isn't considered as "cool" in opposition to traditional hand-drawing animation. I wonder how much of that is true.

[whyterabbyt]

So, to the topic of 3D animation. I sometimes hear from people that making 3D models, animation and the like is usually easier, cheaper and faster than 2D, and therefore isn't considered as "cool" in opposition to traditional hand-drawing animation. I wonder how much of that is true.

Clearly that'd be from people who know nothing about 3D or 2D animation. Self-aggrandisement of the 'Im saying X is cooler because its what I prefer because I want to be seen as cool' variety.

[InLight-Tone]

I personally fail to see the logic in comparing 3d graphics software with audio software.

It's yet another KVR topic (it's specialty) that distracts you from actually making music...

[v1o]

I think the nature of 3d/Computer Graphics are to create and use the latest greatest tools. And usability, workflow, and production pipeline are important for big studios. If you can save 1 minute/day on a task, multiple by a team of 100 for a year or two of production then that can save some money and time. Major industry standard 3d software tends to focus on open ended with many different type of user in mind (from technical to artist). So everyone one can use the same tools in different ways according to their focus.

The Production Pipelines used by major VFX and animation studios are a very efficient way of producing artistic goals. Some of those processes could be useful in music if they had native support in all DAW software. The current workflow of drop boxing each other stereo stems isn't very efficient. Music nowadays is a highly collaborative process with many people working remotely often in different countries.

DAW for some reason are more niche where each one trying to do their own thing and if you like their ride or not. For example: node editor is a standard in most 3d software and no one care if it unique or not. Hopefully software like Bitwig can make node base/modular editor a normal thing for DAW.

Bitwig is the most innovative sequencer in years.

I hope that non-destructive audio editing and node editors become the standard in all DAWs in future.

people doing video expect to be rendering for hours at a time.
i doubt musicians would do that for a reverb?

We used to. I remember going for a walk while Acid Pro rendered final mixes (about 15 years back).

Honestly I would prefer if DAWs took a long time to render out tracks if the quality was better. Most modern music which is mixed ITB sounds artificial because of the cumulative effects of many steps of editing operations that are done at a low quality.

I'll expand a bit so that I'm a bit more clear. Realtime DSP is about realtime applications with minimum latency. So everything has to be done at a good speed at the expense of quality. What currently happens when you bounce a project in a DAW is equal in quality to the world of 3D rendering when you have a realtime preview of your scene, but no one seriously expects this to be what you see at the movies! Why should this be any different in the audio world? Wouldn't you like to be able to print your stems through the worlds best analogue equipment if it took a few hours of waiting for the advanced rendering? Who cares if it takes a bit longer, just print the song overnight and come back to the most gorgeous sounding non-linear analogue modelled processing possible without aliasing or any digital artefacts.

So how should operations be handled at mixdown? Well with current DSP, Analogue modelling is still pretty basic in terms of the detail possible to make things easy on the CPU. I suggest that at mixdown, analogous to a final 3D render, that everything should be done at the greatest detail possible, at highest quality oversampling, where every transistor in every op-amp is modelled in great detail, including non-linear capacitance effects and this could possibly take overnight to render a song.

[jah77]

Very interesting thoughts. Although, for the sake of creating music for a few weeks or so, I currently want to suppress the ideas in my head about new methods of input and music making. Finding new wishes and new and old bugs has been my procrastination reason for a long time.

If I understand it correctly, you're interested in new input methods and a feature rich setup. This would be very nice to have. I fear the bugs, the technical deficit, a bit, when it should have too much helpers and inspiration. All I can say is that I'm in love with the idea to trust in a set up and stop my wishing for changes, at least today. My hobby music has gotten inconsistent and short although I would have plenty of time.

As input devices I prefer the computer keyboard and the master keyboard without any encoders. That is hard enough if not impossible to get today if you want somehow the same feature set sound wise as mouse and touch driven DAWs. I have just read that Auria (or so, a DAW) for touch devices exists and wondered why the vendor stated that a finger swipe (touch gesture) would be very easy. I'm very into "tap only", like input is for playing the piano and typing on a computer keyboard. Maybe with a different music making background, swipes are super easy. And in my opionion, because everyone finds something different the easiest input method or part of workflow, many people want different things. DAW software seemingly fragments and stagnates.

[inkwarp]

Photoshop is the most common denominator in the world of graphical artists, and that's what the "professionals" use. Photoshop is far from being a perfect program (lots of people bringing up how the older versions were better, how the subscription service is awful for their needs, etc.) and no amount of "big professional companies who hire the best" can solve all the problems it has.

What problems are you talking about?
as a longtime Photoshop user this statement is nonsense.
sometimes you reach a plateau with something. there is no point in innovation for it's own sake. Photoshop has been refined and developed over many years and is as close to "perfect" in the sense that it does what i want and does it extremely well. the issue of subscription rates is not releveant to this thread. all good software is developed over time. you can't expect to buy a DAW with a totally radical approach , that would be totally ignoring a user base who are buying the software for what it CAN do and not what it MIGHT do. comparing 3D to DAWs is simply a false equivalence.

[LawrenceF]

As relates to the freeware vs. commercial software debate, I agree with Chk01 that the best commercial programs are almost always better than the best open source or freeware programs. That doesn't mean that many freeware or shareware apps aren't great and that there aren't some exceptions to that, there are, but I do find that to be mostly true in my experience. It's perfectly ok to disagree with that opinion, it's not that important and the world won't end.

I love Inkscape for example but I found Corel Draw better overall and it was more feature rich, even years ago in the version I had, but Inkscape is good enough for what I need and it's free so I stopped buying Corel Draw. That's the main thing, why spend $200 for hobby software when the free thing does what you actually need and more.

I have Inkscape, Gimp and few other free things because I don't need more than that and I like keeping my money whenever possible.

[whyterabbyt]

What currently happens when you bounce a project in a DAW is equal in quality to the world of 3D rendering when you have a realtime preview of your scene, but no one seriously expects this to be what you see at the movies!

For photorealistic CG mixed in with live action, maybe, but actually its not going to be long before you start to see realtime rendering on TV shows etc, especially pure-animation projects. We're already well past the quality required.

2015:


2016 :


2018:


2019:

[whyterabbyt]

Photoshop is the most common denominator in the world of graphical artists, and that's what the "professionals" use. Photoshop is far from being a perfect program (lots of people bringing up how the older versions were better, how the subscription service is awful for their needs, etc.) and no amount of "big professional companies who hire the best" can solve all the problems it has.

What problems are you talking about?

Main problem is Adobe themselves, mostly. New enterprise licensing system is f**ked, will f**k you too.

As an actual software package, yeah, what problems?

(Though if someone is doing 3D, then why they're still thinking 'Photoshop' rather than 'Substance Painter' is beyond me)

[mgw38]

Speaking as somebody who started his career in Computer Graphics research and is now overseeing an internationally recognized animation and game design program, this boost in development on the 3d production side is not completely unexpected. Real time graphics is still a very active academic research area. Computer graphics technology is still a hot computer engineering field. Just as an example, real time ray tracing on consumer level computers was completely unthinkable just a few years ago. Now it is more or less almost standard. The software world needs to innovate at the same rate in order to stay competitive. You simply don't have that on the audio side.

[Bombadil]

Forgive the pedantry, but the actual translation of the Latin is 'the exception tests the rule,' not proves the rule. In fact, an exception would invalidate the rule, wouldn't it?

Carry on...

[chk071]

I don't know... the German equivalent is "the exception proves the rule", and, it's also translated like that in several online dictionaries.

You know what i mean anyway.