Shake is now ONLY $499

Shake 4.1 was released today and it's now ONLY $499! That's pretty damned cool... now any FCS user can get Shake and start using it with their projects!!!

[www.apple.com]

Paul from Apple

I think we're going to need a Shake forum, Mike! Sounds like it's going to get rather popular, rather quickly......

This is good news Paul - thanks for telling us.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

That's quite a price drop...what brings this on? Why doesn't Apple just add it to the Final Cut Studio package? All they would need is a high-end 3D package and you would have a true studio in a box.



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Yes, ever since FCP launched, we've been waiting on a high end 3d package from Apple 3d Render Pro .... It's the one thing they don't have - that, and i3d of course....

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

I found this quote you might all be interested in

Derek


New Mac OS X seats can now be purchased via the Retail box for a modest
price of $499 with unlimited render licenses. Shake 4.1 Linux licenses
remain available directly through .

Apple will no longer be selling maintenance for Shake and no further
software updates are planned as we begin work on the next generation of
Shake compositing software. While we're excited about the innovations we can
bring in the future, we understand you have a business to run today that
requires Shake. To that end, we will provide all Maintenance customers with
the following three options:

A. Customers can continue with end-user e-mail support, as well as SDK
support for the duration of their Maintenance contract.

B. Customers may elect to cancel their Maintenance and receive a pro-rated
refund for the unused portion. Existing software licenses would continue to
function according to the Software License Agreement. Maintenance customers
that wish to cancel their contract must do so by July 23, 2006.

C. Additionally, Maintenance customers may choose to license the Shake 4.1
Source Code for $50,000. The Source Code license includes a 5,000 seat
volume license of Shake 4.1. This offer is designed to help facilities with
significant Shake investments maintain a reliable and controllable visual
effects pipeline. Maintenance customers that wish to license the Shake 4.1
Source Code must do so by July 23, 2006. Apple reserves the right to refuse
any maintenance customer source Code access.
------------------------------------------

so it looks like apple are working on a next generation compositing system (still shake though) but they are allowing big companies like Weta and ILM complete access to the source code so they are not inconvenienced by the transition.

Absolutely fascinating..........

That puts things into a completely new perspective.....

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

Oh happy day! ;-)

I thought you guys would be receptive to the news...

Cheers,
Paul from Apple

Receptive? I nearly had a heart attack! - Good timing to ask this... What's your fav 3 button mouse?

Frank

In some other forums Shake is being said to be (EOL) End Of Life . New Products to come possibly a Motion/Shake hybrid? and it being rolled into Final Cut Studio. We'll see.

Would love to have a Shake forum but can't find Shake Gurus to mod it. If anyone reading this feels confident or semi confident with Shake, let me know. If I can find 4 of you, we will put up a Shake forum.

Thanks for that Derek.

FYI. Someone from Apple will be at the next lafcpug meeting June 28 to give a brief demo of Shake 4.1 and take questions. Graeme Natress will be there too asking the questions and demoing his own film look techniques.

I'll finally get my own copy of Shake now, (demos begone!) so if you're lacking the 4th guy that'd be me.

I think my credit card's gonna take a $499 hit shortly,
Great news but...

Some other professional forums are viewing this as a "fire sale".
Apple is stopping development.
The Shake development team has been laid off.

There is a mysterious new app in 2008 to replace it but 2008 is a long ways away.

Who said the Shake Dev team had been laid off?

Sprocketz,

Please post a link to that info. Where did you read that the dev team has been laid off??

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Looks like I may have started something without meaning to so I will just repeat what I read. However, I will not say what forums the info was from but they are the usual suspects in the professional 3D/Compositing world. They did not come from Apple or FCP forums.

What I read.

Shake "Team" given "walking papers" and some of them thinking about forming an independent Shake support group.

One poster reported that a friend who worked for Apple on the Shake "team" was laid off and all development was stopped.

At NAB employees of Digital Fusion were commenting about Apple laying off the development team but were not taken seriously at the time for obvious reasons.

Other general comments confirming Shake layoffs at Apple but without specific
indications about what Apple plans to do with Shake.

Perhaps "Team" means support people and not developers, I don't know.

You can take it all with a grain of salt and search out this stuff on your own if you desire.

At $499 Shake is a bargain. You will get no support from Apple and will just run this version until whatever is next becomes a real product.



Post Edited (06-20-06 15:12)

hmm... as far as I know Nothing Reel never left LA and continued to work as a group just under the Apple name. So maybe it's just like with Aperture where people from other pro apps were "borrowed" and then sent back when the running team was formed.

Since Shake never really matched the Pro apps look it could be that interface people came in, fixed stuff and left. From the current screens at apple.com I don't see that though.

guesses, guesses...

Maybe apple figures Shake is not "user friendly" enough for the regular mac user so now they want to dumb it down a bit and start using layers and nice graphical interfaces and other crap? (Just kiddin)

However I am worried that Apple will go and do something stupid like that though.
Shake is a really good cheap compositing app.
It is a professional compositing app compared to amateur After Effects.
It works with nodes.
Nodes are good.
Layers suck ass when it comes to compositing especially .

Not many industry people think apple are capable of developing a software like that. Just look at the useless 3D space they put into Shake. And motion...Come on. its even worse than after effects.

I'd really like to know where Shake is heading...



Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

I actually happen to like the way shake looks right now BUT the menu flicker is annoying, could be my hardware though. Just playing with the demo.

3D space was necessary to help AE users make the switch. Also not everyone will use Shake to work with film plates but use it to enhance their Motion footage.

With this pricing a lot will change.

" actually happen to like the way shake looks right now"
-Agreed. Its great. Thats why I'm worried.


Regarding the 3D space...Thats exactly the problem. If you are used to the 3D space in After Effects then the one in Shake sucks. Its just not that usable.

After effects is a great design tool but a crap compositing tool. Shake is the other way around. I'm really worried that Apple will make shake like After Effects. (Layers, user friendly, dumbed down)

Shake is a really good tool because you have an incredible ammount of flexibility and it is node based. With layers like after effects you face problems when using many layers with different effects that all relate to eachother. Even with scripting its basically impossible or a royal pain in the ass to do anything advanced in AE.

If Shake dissapears or gets dumbed down by Apple for a wider market appeal, then there will be no high-end compositing tool that is available for a low price and we're back to Flame, inferno and toxic suites only.



Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

Wow... lots of conjectures and rumors abound here.

We are committed to video professionals and effects, and have publicly stated that we will begin work on the next generation of Shake compositing software. While we're excited about the innovations we can bring in the future, pricing Shake at $499 makes it available to the widest possible audience of Final Cut editors today.

-Paul from Apple

Paul.

-Yes you are right.

Thanks. Its absolutely f******g great!



Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

Paul is being politically correct...not confirming or denying derek's wild "layoff" rumors. Paul (who works for Apple) mentions they are working on "the next generation of Shake Software". That doesn't sound to me like ANYONE is getting laid off.

I can't stand rumors...how about some FACTS to back up these statements???

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Here's what's interesting about this move.

We do reality TV. Not exactly the sweet spot for compositing, right? Wrong! We've been using SHAKE just for doing our green screen interviews. The keying tools included in this program are awesome! Sure the learning curve is steep, but I'm guessing that at $499. alot of people are going to take the plunge and find ways to use this program in ways that they never imagined.

This is a very aggressive move by Apple and opens up SHAKE to a whole new catagory of users at an incomparable price point. Anyway you look at it, this is a good thing. I only wonder why they didn't do it at NAB.... now that would have made a splash!

mark

mark,

Did you read this whole thread? If these "rumors" about "end of life" are true, how can it be a good thing to purchase ANYTHING if there are no more updates being developed for it? How does anyone know that Shake will run on future OS X versions??

Not me...will wait for "the next generation of Shake", which will probably be incorporated into my Final Cut Studio (knock wood) :-)

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I forgot to take my meds today and my bipolar disorder has been creeping up on me all day. I was feeling pretty high this morning about buying Shake but as the day wore on this was starting to smell fishy and I was feeling pretty down until I realized there was reason to CELEBRATE!

Apple has created what no other software maker has done in the entire history of computing, including Apple itself.

Perfection.

Apple, with the new Intel version of Shake has created the Perfect App.
There will be no need for support, no need to squash bugs...
Because there are no bugs!!! It's perfect. Beautiful. The Holy Grail.
Shake 4.1 (MacIntel v1.0) is the work of God himself (or herself).
Don't worry about a new version of the MacOS breaking Shake. Shake can't be broken!
Worried about Shake not working with a future OpenGL cards yet to exist?
Don't be worried, Shake is perfect.
It has achievedOne-ness with the great code-writer in the sky.
If your worried about future versions of Quicktime breaking Shake you just don't have the faith.

Shake is unshakeable.

Uh oh, wait, damn, my bipol-arity is rearing it's ugly head...

What would you call it when you tell all those companies and artists that have huge investments in software/hardware and training for Shake that you are dumping them with no notice, no support, no future except for some mysterious future app?

They're giving their pro Shake users the finger, big time.

From Apple to all it's current pro Shake users: Take a hike!!! (G rated version)

As noted in the a previous post, Apple has priced Shake so that FCP users can PLAY with it. They're trying to put a little lipstick on it. But it is what it is.

Apple, the company that has so played up it's Pro Apps has left a bunch of it's Pro Users high and dry.

I am sure that today was a black day at alot of FX houses. It's not the price drop that hurts. It's the fact that their entire FX pipelines may have to be rethought for any projects coming before the next Apple Mystery Application is brought down from heaven above by angels. There is no guarantee that Digital Fusion or any other serious compositing app is going to run on an Intel Mac, is going to have OpenGL support, etc. That could mean dumping their Macs and going PC, retraining.

Of course I am sure it makes them all happy that they can pay $50,000 to fix the problems themselves. It probably comes with the phone numbers of former Shake engineers that can be hired to help out. I am sure they're handing out whatever OS code or tools would be needed to deal with future Shake/OS problems and special discount coupons needed to pay ATI or other video card makers to keep updating drivers.

I'll probably buy it because it will probably pay for itself before it breaks.

Of course I blame all these negative thoughts on my missing meds.

So Paul - if we buy and learn Shake today, will the knowledge translate to the next generation of Shake, or will the new app be significatnly different, workflow wise? I would LOVE to commit time to learning Shake, and at this price I can and will, but my fear is that it will actually be a waste of time given the new application coming.

Whaddya say?

While Shake is a very good compositing app, it's so very 90's! Flip Books for preview and no realtime? (Ram based is not real time)

Just imagine a Shake like app that works like Motion????????

Apple obviously has the synthesis technologies to make it happen.


Same thing with Logic (you audio folks) Logic is very old technology. Some day it needs a complete revamp and Soundtrack is just the beginning ( if, I were Apple)

""So Paul - if we buy and learn Shake today,"" Jude, 2008 is like 5 technology years away. We may be using holography by then?????

Well, Shake is THE node based compositing program. If you learn it, you will learn the tru nature of compositing and image processing, and thus you will UNDERSTAND compositing, and that skill will be useful in every compositing app you ever use.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

Joe,

I guess I live more "in the moment" than others. If Shake can solve a problem for us TODAY, then why should I care whether it's EOL or not. Frankly, every program, piece of hardware I've ever used eventually is EOL! So, for us, for now, this is a GOOD THING! And, we've spent more on plug ins than $499 for an entire program.

I'm actually surprised by all of the negativity on this board and elsewhere about this move by Apple. Call me an optimist, but I don't see the downside to this.
Sure, it may be a move to "clear out" the pipeline for the next incarnation, but what's so bad about that? And... do you see AVID offering a "software only" version of DS? Come on. Why look a "gift horse" in the mouth?

mark