Hasta La Motion!

Since my Motion and Shake thread became a 3D in Shake discussion and as a new user I discovered some unpleasing things about this part of Shake I decided to start a new thread to discuss Shake’s 3D limitations more in depth. I have been researching about 3D compositing in Shake for the whole weekend but couldn’t find much. The only thing I found is the general comment that Shake sucks in 3D. But one thing that confuses the heck out of me is, The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong VFX compositing were pretty much done in Shake. Those movies are notorious for their use of CGI and 3D stuff. If Shake was so horrible in 3D compositing how did they do in those movies? Unless they used Shake only for 2D? But it’s said Shake was the main compositor and most of the comp shots involved some sort of 3D. Was Nuke even available back when they made those movies or was it still Digital Domain only? I know the Foundry had not bought it yet. Anyways, if Shake sucks so much in 3D how did Weta make it work?

On a second note, I tried finding some tutorials for 3D compositing in Shake but I could not find any. All the training DVDs out there don’t have any solid chapters in 3D compositing for Shake 4. Gnomon doesn’t, Lynda doesn’t, the only one which has a title on it is CMiFX called “3D compositing in Shake.” But I’m a little hesitating in buying it because most people seem to give very poor reviews for CMiFX DVDs. Hs anybody here watched this DVD and can comment?

Thanks.