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BlackMagic Fusion 8 available and is free, good VFX option
  • Software that they got from Eyeon.

    Fusion is the world’s most advanced compositing software for visual effects artists, broadcast and motion graphic designers and 3D animators. With over 25 years of development, Fusion has been used on over 1000 major Hollywood blockbuster feature films! Fusion features an easy and powerful node based interface so you can construct complex effects simply by connecting various types of processing together. That’s super easy and extremely fast! You get a massive range of features and effects included, so you can create exciting broadcast graphics, television commercials, dramatic title sequences and even major feature film visual effects!

    Thousands of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters and hit television shows use Fusion to create their groundbreaking visual effects. Fusion has been used on feature films like Thor, The Amazing Spiderman 2, and The Hunger Games, as well as hit television shows like Orphan Black, Breaking Bad, Grimm, Adventure Time, Downton Abbey and the Emmy award winning Battlestar Galactica

    https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion

  • 13 Replies sorted by
  • Their press release is the definition of propaganda. I mean, it's cool folks have more options for node based compositing, because compositing in After Effects is borderline torture for more than a few basic layers but they're seriously over-stating their impact, penetration and perception in the visual effects industry at large.

    Maybe it's used like crazy at shops doing work for television. It's not used extensively on major motion pictures or at most major VFX facilities.

  • @BurnetRhoades

    If you are small crew who works on small projects and use such thing occasionally only, why you need to care?

  • Care about being lied to? They want you to buy the studio version, ultimately, though the free version is very full featured. But they are being very misleading.

    Were such a string of untrue statements issued by a developer or company in a field of interest or profession you had a vested interest in and more than twenty years of experience I think we all know exactly how much you would care to express your opinion.

  • I've now had about 20hrs working with the Mac version of Fusion 8. In many ways its amazing to get all this stuff for free, but in many ways it has odd flaws and omissions. The toughest issue for me, is that Ambient and Directional light do not cast shadows.

    I've been winding up the 3D Render quality for DOF but I can't yet achieve the same quality of Bokeh that I get in Cheetah3D. Look at the oddness in the text on the Fusion test.

    Here's examples, back to work ....

    FusionTest0001.png
    1920 x 1080 - 370K
    CheetahBokehTest.png
    1920 x 1080 - 2M
  • Have you tried rendering a Zdepth pass rather than rendering it internally within the 3D engine of fusion? Fusion remains a compositing software first.

  • @GeoffreyKenner Many Thanks!

    Since there are often many ways to do the same thing I have assumed that you mean a depth blur with the OpenGL DOF switched off. I searched 'Zdepth' and didn't find any references in the manual.

    It appears to be a better bokeh, although now my Ambient Occulsion is knackered --- of the zone of many learnings!

    Here is the flow and the results:

    Screen Shot 2015-09-29 at 14.36.18.png
    778 x 356 - 46K
    FusionTest0001.png
    1920 x 1080 - 291K
  • To be honest, I've rarely heard people use Fusion/Nuke to do internal 3d Render beside doing matte painting. 3D rendering is mostly re-use in compositing to "re-light" a scene rather than lightning from scratch. It sometime help to smooth shadows accurately to the original lightning system by blending it with the rendered frame using a fusion mod such as screen/plus/add/overlay.

    What you could do is generate a ramp to which intensity would vary depending on the distance from the camera the object is. That way you would render a separate ZDepth pass that could be use to control precisely the dofBlur.

    to show you what a ZDepth pass is: http://www.creativecrash.com/system/photos/000/155/109/155109/big/simpleZ.jpg In this example the closest object are white while the furthest are black and a nice smooth gradient (32bit float is a must for this pass) indicates how relatively each things are in the Z axes compared to the camera, that re-creating a sense of depth that could be use.

    I apologize for being a bit vague but I haven't touch Fusion a lot and got use to Nuke.

  • Have persevered with Fusion, and here is a recent preview render. The full render would take 108 hours.

    I reckon to have had over 200hrs of self learning on Fusion and I feel that I've just scratched the surface!

    Andy

  • Learning how to match move 3D shapes into a video. The track isnt perfect, but its pretty good.