I too would suggest AE for the fact that it's a similar workflow to PS if you're familiar with that at all, and because there are a LOT of great resources for it, where-as Not nearly so many for Boris.

Dave

Having extensively used both, my opinion is that Red is much more user-friendly for beginners, and AE is better for power users. Both programs have a moderate initial learning curve, but I think it's much easier to learn Red than AE. Unfortunately, the reason for this is because AE offers a lot more tools and options than Red, so if you're looking for something that will let you create more complex projects, AE would be better for you in the long run.

The question is kind of skewed. Everything that Boris has runs in AE.
Some of it sort of works in Vegas.
So you buy AE, you get a lot of plugins in the box. You can add all of Boris's plugins plus a very large selection from other vendors to AE. In AE the plugins are not having to fight the framework in which they're running. AE brings a lot more capability to what a plugin can do and how you can control it. Yes it can be quite a learning curve but once you get a few concepts and the keyboard shortcuts under your belt it's a more rewarding experience than trying to do things inside a package never written to support complex compositing tasks.

Bob.

"In AE the plugins are not having to fight the framework in which they're running." "...more rewarding...than trying to do things inside a package never written to support complex compositing tasks."

In an NLE like Vegas?

Interesting point about the Boris programs being able to run inside AE as plugins. I didn't know that. So AE sounds like the best way to go and then add Boris later if I feel I need it.

Thank you Bob and everyone else for your insight on this.

Steve

Boris suites my mindset so I prefer it to AE as Vegas suites my mindset over FCP and Avid….its not that one is better than the other

Steve explore them both download both trials and see which one suites you, you will soon find yourself leaning more to one side I have both and hardly ever use AE because I can get what I need done in Boris

I love Boris ….Boris Red and Boris Blue are different

The upside of Boris Red
1.Extrudes Bmp and alpha channels so you can have 3d text and logo’s in Vegas on Vegas timeline generated from empty event within Vegas…this alone. bang .sold…finish

2.it has a Control window which makes keyframing parameters easier and quicker to set. The viewing window also has a copy of the keyframes which can be manipulated for more precise timing
By sliding key left or right visually while looking at the composite window

3. each track has its own composite window so I have a lot of stuff happening I can work from the track comp window which only shows what’s up on that track with both track and project comp windows open
So you can see the overall comp at the same time.

Blue is slightly different with settings scenes instead of 3d container tracks as in Red. it can also import 3d objects obj or 3ds, the particles are in 3d or 2d in 3d space proper which is very cool
Boris Blue is amazingly easy to use you can import 3d scenes or dds files for backgrounds and has 3d cam cut backs templates, select , insert clips ,done, render sold .2 days latter you will still be messing with AE on the same project

AE filters also work in Blue


The dll to operate blue within Vegas is not available yet. Still waiting any …….day now ……Boris if you ever read this….you are the man….please send me a Blue dll for Vegas.

Just to add Boris has 2 toolboxes the main toolbox and also the set toolbox they are different although having the same icon
You use the set toolbox to accomplish tasks within the main toolbox like you have in a 3d app, also use W E R on keyboard for rotate, size, position like you would for 3d apps
Blue doesn’t have the Rotate,size,position tools in the toolset box.

Thank you Rory for the additional info, that's very helpful. I haven't downloaded any trials yet because I wanted to see what people had to say about them first, plus downloading/installing/getting it to work/uninstalling can be a pain sometimes. But it's kind of sounding like it would be best for me to download the trials and go through the process so I can be sure, which is always the best way to do it I suppose.

Steve

A comment.
I seriously don't think 30 days is anything like enough time to evaluate either product. Perhaps if you allocated 30 days of your life to the task it'd be enough. The problem is you end up spending most of your time learning rather than evaluating.
Another problem is you're very likely to favor the product you evaluated last. The first product you try you learn a lot and many of the skills you learn you bring to your evaluation of the second product so you can make the mistake of thinking its better. Having over a few years forced myself to come to grips with AE I've found my understanding of compositing in general has improved a lot. As a result many of the tasks I thought Vegas incapable of I now realise it can do. Vegas didn't get any better, I just learned one of the basic skills of compositing, breaking down complex problems into simple components and tackling each one in turn. Vegas doesn't make this quite as obvious as AE does, Multiple comps in the one project is very obvious in AE, nesting in Vegas is not so obviousbut once you realise Vegas can do it and learning how to use it opens a new door.


Something I learned.
Both Vegas and AE are what's known as 2.5D compositors. Neither are 3D applications. Everything is presented as a 2D planar surface That 2D image may contain the results of a 3D engine at work but the output is strictly 2D. You can move a 3D camera around in that world of 2D images but that's all. It can be enough but it can force you to do a lot of manual work or you can get lazy and put up with substandard results.

I have Zaxworks ProAnimator. It can run as a standalone 3D text generator with textures and lighting. One can easily take the output from it into Vegas, AE or any NLE. Great product and it works well.
It can also run as a pluin with AE, does exactly the same task with one big exception.
Its still only feeding a flat 2D view of what it produces into the layer / track. Move a 3D camera around and it doesn't track, change a light, best it can do is light the flat surface not the objects inside that flat surface. You can of course go back into the plugin and animate the light or move its own 3D camera. Bit of a pain really getting it all to track properly and one might just think 'meh, that's good enough'
Enter Expressions. They look daunting but simple ones AE will create for you, no coding skills needed. How this helps is you can link controls inside the plugin to the 2.5D world that the output is going into. Move a camera, change a texture or a light and it all hangs together.
One of the tricks I only recently learned is the 'face camera' trick. Take a flat 2D image and move a camera around in 3D and its very soon obvious that its only a 2D image. If by good luck though the image is of something fairly symetric, a flower for example, then by making it face the camera you can pull off some impressive tricks that create the illusion that it really is something done in a full 3D application. In all fairness you can do this in Vegas, its just a lot of work manually keyframing all the elements.

One final thought. How far have you really delved into what Vegas is capable of. I think a large percentage of Vegas users are fooled by the simple looking GUI, it sure lacks the gravitas of AE but that doesn't mean its not capable of doing many quite complex compositing tasks.

Bob.

Thanks Bob, you make some good points. Yes, 30 days isn't a lot of time to evaluate those products which is why I'm supplementing this with various free tutorials on the Internet (even before downloadingany trials), some of them quite good and others, well, not so much. But even the poorly made ones do manage to convey some useful information it seems.

One thing I like to do to help me compare similar competing products is to pick several tasks/end results I'd like to accomplish and then do them in each app. That helps me get a better comparison by seeing how many steps each one requires, the degree of difficulty in each app, the quality of the end result, how well it runs on my system, any crashing problems, and so on. I won't be able to learn everything about them but I'll be able to try out some things that are important to me and supplement that with online videos of what others can do and what I learn from their forums in the way of complaints and praise (after weeding out the knuckleheads).

I have used Vegas for some compositing using the 2D and 3D track motion, multiple layers, masks, and parent-child tracks. I've also gotten some good info about compositing in Vegas off the Internet, including Eric Franks' excellent video I downloaded from Digital Juice in which he created a composited motion graphic for the Lotus Fire yoga company. Some good stuff there. Has anyone ever written a script to harness Vegas' compositing capabilty to make it easier to use? A "Vegas Compositor" interface? Maybe it would take more than a script or even multiple scripts to do that, I don't know.

I checked out the Zaxwerks Proanimator you mentioned. Looks like a very nice program. They have some great sample videos of it in action on their site. Definitely another option/tool worth considering.

Steve