[mathnode]

What? Shake was THE node based compositing app!

There is a massive difference to Motion and the highend compositing apps like Shake, Nuke, Fusion, Softimage(Illusion+Matador=FXTree), Houdini(COPS), Flame, Toxik(Autodesk Composite). After Effects and Combustion are time-line based like Motion, but Motion doesn't begin to compare to them. Even Blender has fantastic compositing tools.

Shake was serious business. It's last well known big project was 'The Dark Knight' which Framestore CFC mangled a 64bit wrapper around it to better manage the 8k-frame workload. Shake was ported to Intel, then killed off, with no intention to take it to 64bit. I don't think you can buy the source code anymore.

[aschwo]

The Foundry is absolutely kicking everyone else's ass with Nuke. They have an interesting business model as well: don't do much research in house, instead work with studios with big R&D budgets and license their tools when they're mature, bringing it to a wider audience.

They've done it with Digital Domain and Nuke (compositing), Weta and Mari (3d paint), and now Sony and Katana (lighting).