Hmm I think parts of particle illusion are in Combustion.

Combustion is good at generating particles.

Like Buster said, these are two very different tools.

Do you have examples of what you'd like to do with your titles / animations? Perhaps that will help someone point you in the right direction.

Combustion is a great program.. different workflow so I prefer After Effects especially with how it integrates into Photoshop now.

Particle Illusion is pretty much just particles. It's not an editor or compositing program, it's designed to create particle based effects to add to your NLE.

If you're using ProAnimator, there's quite a bit you can do with just that. If you're looking for something with all of the bells and whistles, I'd start looking at After Effects and suitable plug-ins for that to work along with ProAnimator.

-cheno

For basic logo animations (and more) Proanimator will do the job. On special at half price at Digital Juice.
However to animate the logo it needs to an illustrator file .i.e. vectors. And the file must contain only vectors. Other vector based files can also be used but only face type vectors. Realistically only vector based graphics can be used in 3D animations, so I'd guess Combustion would have the same limitation.
Regardless of anything I've said above you really need to work out precisely what you want to achieve and what you will be starting from and then decide what if anything will meet your needs. Although your needs seem much simpler than full on CGI you still really need to dig deep.
Also don't overlook AE, not a 3D app but again your request isn't very specific, it might fill your needs plus some, or be largely useless.

Bob.

I am a licensed user of Comnustion 4 and I am pretty sure the particle engine IS Particle Illusion, so no reason to buy particle illusion

Maybe some one here kill me after this ......
If you use it for very occasional sfx type renders... why AE or Combustion they cost toooo much, Simple 3d in vegas for logo animation is great, then consider BLUFFTITLER

http://www.outerspace-software.com/blufftitler.html

very low cost for logo type animations and much more, great result

CIAO

Thanks everyone for the quick replies; appreciate it...

Good to know they're very different; I've been playing around w/the trial Particle Illusion, it has some great effects capabilities...

Installed the trial of Combustion and didn't find any samples or templates even, so I'll have to hunt those up; I didnt' know it's more closely a competitor of AE than of PI .. thx for that...

hard to keep track of what's good for what... agree re PA, I just bought it from the DJ special and love that little program, it's fast, clean, easy to use (like on2 flixpro) and a lot under the hood...

actually what I'm most after is the ability to create great reflections off logos, like broadcast animations... maybe I need 3dsmax .. it's hard to tell what's good for what application..

A good example of top editing like what I'm after is what Troy does, eg in this example..:
http://www.digitaljuice.com/dj_showcase/detail.asp?page=1&portfolioid={E16E46FE-4B60-456A-A1D7-64D34CF161A6}&sortby=most_viewed_ever&display=all&workid=3377

he says he uses 3ds and AE, so I suppose that's what I need to learn.. (the learning curve, ack)..

ken

"Particle Illusion is pretty much just particles. It's not an editor or compositing program, it's designed to create particle based effects to add to your NLE."

PI is a 2d particle engine. This SAME engine was licensed for combustion. Combustions particle engine is IDENTICAL to the PI engine, to a point of being 100% compatible with the emitters on @ wondertouch, only running on a different timeline and workflow in regard to compositing.. which brings me ot the quote above..
PI3 DOES allow for basic compositing with blocking, deflecting and forces.. Its nice, it does the job, its FASTER than combustion and your rendering with basic work is about realtime... with combustion youre looking at least 4 to 6 times the render speeds of PI.. to me thats enough in its own to keep me using PI as oposed to Combustion..
Then again, i distribute PI here in Aus, but most people buy it online anyway...

Combustion on the other hand is a compostiing tool, much like AE, but on a grander scale.. advanced GSplines allow for 2d elements to be placed in 3d space.. racking and all.. if you want to see it in action, go check out some video samples..
Combsution IMO is only for high end work and persoanlly if any one wants me to use it for them, i charge no less than $550 an hour... i know compositors who charges about a grand an hour for use on this app, so the cash cow is there once u learn the app.
I cant remember his name, but theres a dude in the US (Randy Subbs? Stubbs? or something.. ) who seems to use an app like this for good effect.. he does entire "this is your life" slideshows and creates entire 3d envorionments with 2d sources.. he chargesa bout 10k per project.. to the general public.. and hes making a killing..

In all honesty, for basic work Pentos on the ball..

Ken,
note how long the guy took to do that. Factor in that he's probably spent a huge amount of time learning the skills to do it in 20 hours. The read what PJ is saying below and what he and others charge for this kind of work. They're nor gouging the clients, they're trying to recover the costs not of the tools but of the time they spent learning them.
If you only need a bit of this kind of work done you may be way, way in front contracting it out, not only should you get someone who knows the tools but also someone who knows graphics i.e. what looks good and what screams amateur.

Bob.

hey thanks DJ, that puts it all in great perspective, I like your comparisons, thx re the heads up on render speed differences, that's good to know...

re PI, I'm thinking, hmm I would likely just use it to render the animations (so why can't one just buy those alpha-keyed as movs/avis w/o the app, like digital juice swipes etc) ... and drop them in Vegas, to pan/crop move around from inside the NLE .. not sure that I'd ever find a use for the editing tools inside PI, eg shaping the flames etc, that's not what I'd use it for, though that would be good for flexibility...

learning new apps, choosing what to learn, looks like ProAnimator, 3dsMax and After Effects are probably the best combination of 'stuff', still on the fence about whether or not to get PI ... though it looks neat..

good point Bob re the skill behind the tools... 20 hours is a lot of work for a 30-second cut, and probably hundreds of hours of experience behind that 20 hours, to make it look so good... right re outsourcing it ... best solution would be to outsource a few good projects, and get the source files with the rendered video, to try an learn it myself... though very time consuming, it's always been well worth the huge learning curves (flash comes to mind), for learning core tools myself...

-k

Ken,

Unless you're dead set on being a one man shop, it appears as though your true talent lies in producing the material you're editing for your DVD's - why not hire this out? I'm sure you could find a college-aged kid with suitable skills to work for $12 bucks an hour to do this stuff for you - have him / her create a bunch of canned animations for you to use over and over?

I appreciate how eager you are to want to learn new apps, however with learning curves and such, you may be able to find someone who can do exactly what you need done, for fairly cheap and allow you to focus on other things rather than learning yet another software application.

I guess I'm just to the point where I'm focusing more in certain areas.. may not be everyone's cup of tea ;)

-cheno

Ken,

Unless you're dead set on being a one man shop, it appears as though your true talent lies in producing the material you're editing for your DVD's - why not hire this out? I'm sure you could find a college-aged kid with suitable skills to work for $12 bucks an hour to do this stuff for you - have him / her create a bunch of canned animations for you to use over and over?

I appreciate how eager you are to want to learn new apps, however with learning curves and such, you may be able to find someone who can do exactly what you need done, for fairly cheap and allow you to focus on other things rather than learning yet another software application.

I guess I'm just to the point where I'm focusing more in certain areas.. may not be everyone's cup of tea ;)

-cheno

ok, for one, if it's a choice of what to learn, it probably shouldn't be Combustion because the scuttle butt I heard around NAB this year was that it was on it's way to the chopping block (very sad to hear since it kicks major booty in my book compared to AE, just a much nicer work flow and tool set to my mind but then again I'm not an adobe fanatic, not that there's anything wrong with that).

Combustion is the bees knees and if you want to take the time to learn a compsiting software (other than the really big dogs out there), this is, IMO, one of the absolute best for the money, hands down. However Boris Blue was pretty impressive at NAB this last year, however they're not quite the same thing in my book.

Anyway, to make a long story short. Don't Do Drugs.

Dave