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A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

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Marek2189

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A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostWed May 22, 2024 1:31 pm

The warper tool works fine at color page. You can undo (ctrl-z) every manipulation of the handles (on-screen points for manipulating). But it is kinda broken when using it in fusion. Manipulating those points work fine, but they are not registered as a user interactions. So when you try to undo the last move it just undoes something else. Long story short, ctrl-z does not work for warpers on-screen handles at Fusion.
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KrunoSmithy

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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostWed May 22, 2024 4:05 pm

I'm not sure if its broken or intended to work in Fusion, but you can select a point on screen and press delete to delete it.
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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostThu May 23, 2024 8:10 am

KrunoSmithy wrote:I'm not sure if its broken or intended to work in Fusion

Well, thats the point of my post. It's a good instrument which I and some people I know use it in Fusion and never at "color" or "edit". So hopefuly guys from BMD may consider it as a good idea to fully integrate this tool to Fusion like they did with some tools that are natively for the color page.

KrunoSmithy wrote:you can select a point on screen and press delete to delete it

Thanks for trying to help. :) But you want to readjust the point, not to get rid of it.
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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostThu May 23, 2024 11:50 am

Marek2189 wrote: Thanks for trying to help. :) But you want to readjust the point, not to get rid of it.


While I agree with a general notion that there should be more constancy among many areas of Resolve, and it does seem like Black magic is slowly working on it. I think they just added Object remover plug in in Fusion studio from Color page, but still not in Fusion page. Saver and loader in Fusion standalone can export in verity of formats, but in Fusion page only image sequence. Noise Reduction I think is not yet added to Fusion stand alone, but it is in Fusion page etc. Lot of inconsistencies, some inconvenient and some feel like they really should be there. At least with new features, like new tracker it has been added to Fusion Page, color Page, and Fairlight and adopted to each. Great.

On the topic of Wraper tool in particular, I am not sure I can agree on that one. If you hold the Shift key you can draw a selection over multiple points and do with them as you please. If you hold the Alt key and click on points they are delete. Which can also be done by clicking on the point and pressing delete button. You can move them around by clicking on them and moving them. I'm a bit confused as to what functionality is missing in the Fusion page.

As far as I can see its all there, just maybe works a slight different way, but it does not appear to be a limited functionality.

The undo button for removing points would not add much of anything if you can just alt click on any point at any time and delete it, or click on reset button in the node to reset it. So what would be gained that is not already there by having what you want? Personal preference I guess.
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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostFri May 24, 2024 11:49 am

The main original point is that as you refine a warp by using the handles, you need to be able to undo a move that was too far. Hence the idea of "undo". It's yet another glaring oversight from a team that doesn't use the tools. It's annoying as hell that there are TONS of these little "gotchas!" floating about in so many places.

Make the undo work as intended in the Warp tool.
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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostFri May 24, 2024 1:15 pm

bentheanimator wrote:The main original point is that as you refine a warp by using the handles, you need to be able to undo a move that was too far. Hence the idea of "undo". It's yet another glaring oversight from a team that doesn't use the tools. It's annoying as hell that there are TONS of these little "gotchas!" floating about in so many places.

Make the undo work as intended in the Warp tool.


Why would you undo a point, instead of juts moving it where you want it? Unlike color page, in Fusion you work with key frames and you can manipulate them anywhere you want, the points themselves can easily be moved or reset the way it works now. I think you want something that you don't understand how current functionality is not a limitation nor I think really an oversight, the more I look into it, since fusion has ability to work with key frames far easier and more powerful than color page, hence undo button in color page is actually a compensation for lacking in fusion functionality, not the other way around.
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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostFri May 24, 2024 6:42 pm

He's not talking about deleting point. The warp tool doesn't record handle movements so if you tweak a point handle too far you can't take it back. Sometimes you only realize something is a bad idea after trying out a few moves. This happens because people are using it like you would the Puppet Tool in After Effects, which is a better implementation of the functionality. So once you've bent an arm to the right place, you might find out that it pinches. When you move the grid back to where it was, it is trying to straighten out 15 points and it invariably looks like crap. What makes it worse it that there is no snapping in Fusion so you can't hold shift or something to lock to an angle amount. Trying to straighten out 15 point handle systems is a lot slower than hitting "Ctrl-Z" 15 or 20 time.

This isn't rocket science. The undo should undo the movements in any tool, not be selective. If I move a point handle, hitting ctrl-z should move the handle back.

It may be a pain in the ass to implement based on the amount the developers are willing to make new things but not fix older tools. For instance, make up an entire new 3D system vs. fix the existing one. It's astounding that are are willing to tackle the most complicated 3D system in existence that even Houdini is excruciating to use vs. make guides and enable shortcut keys for their menu features.

This also ties into the larger issue of caches not re-establishing if you undo a movement. Once you change a tool, it blows the cache and has to be regenerated. Chad at one point explained that to keep caches, they would need to enable a hashing system to keep track of what was going on. So it could be a huge deal to make the undo work correctly. Not half-assed, which it is now.

They've had the program now for 8+ years. If they used this program they would have gotten annoyed with these types of daily things and changed them.
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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostMon May 27, 2024 10:37 am

In Fusion you have the control you need. Weather its one you want, its a different story. But, you can move the points, one or multiple of them. You can delete them. You can add them and change various other parametars in the node settings to match the thing you might need. You can restrict it with a mask.

Of, course, you are not actually animating anything until you move the playhead and choose to create a key frame. At which point deleting the key frame or using spline editor to fine tune it, makes up for any undo you would use. And if you are stretching a static image, you can always just move the handles, and delete or add points.

If the argument is of general kind that there should be consistantncy among tools unless there are reasons to make it different, than I agree with you. However I have a hard time agreeing in this particular case, because I don't see any functionality that would add to what is already there, and the very nature of fusion and the way key frames work, explains is the design was intentional. Must there always be a guy on forum that has a problem for every solution?
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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostMon May 27, 2024 4:15 pm

Did you just say, "I think it's fine, so deal with it."?

We don't, in fact have the control we need in Fusion. Hence the point of bringing up the lack of control over the warper tool. The warper tool is a half implemented version of the puppet tool from After effects. As the name implies, the tool is used to manipulate sections of the frame like a puppeteer would by pulling it around. Whoever created the warper tool has not used the tool professionally because as it is implemented now, it has limited use and is a pain.

In the five seconds of adding the tool I:

Connected the tool to the previous tool
Added four controls to quickly to start the process of working with it
Realized I needed to move one of the controls over by a few pixels
Tried clicking on the control, missed and added a new control
Hit Ctrl-Z to undo the creation of the new control

IT UNSELECTED THE TOOL AND DISCONNECTED THE ORIGINAL LINKING.

So then I had to reconnect the tool
Select the NEW point I accidentally made
Delete that point
Figure out that there is no way to move points into position once created
Delete the original point I wanted to shift
Create, very precisely, the new point exactly where I needed it.
Try out the moving of those points and think, "Man, I wish I could tie these two point together to move and rotate around a null or something...
Realized that the points are impossible to move precisely in relationship to each other and gave up


The three things that the tool is missing to be a complete tool are:
    Allow for UNDO, just like every other interface in Fusion. Just like the Grid Warp or a Bezier curve.
    Have an option to show the mesh of the the warp so you know how tessellated the geometry is and figure out if you need more geo in an area. Something like a tentacle, that needs a smooth bend, could have twice as many points in the end vs the base.
    It needs the ability to Publish the Points. Just like every other point system in Fusion. There's that consistency you wanted. That would allow you to tie point together into systems that you could rig like... a puppeteer! Like it was originally meant to be.

This tool is clearly meant as a hack tool for editors to unwarp a fish eye or something.

People in Fusion use it as a hack tool that works kinda like a missing tool that needs to be in Fusion and has been requested for years. The Puppet tool. If they took the interface for the the Surface tracker and created a warp manipulator with it, they would have the right tool. Instead we have this half baked tool that does nothing well.

This is what I mean when I say the developers don't use the tools. This one completely missed the point. It recreates the functionality of the Grid Warp tool but badly.

To answer your rhetoric question, "Must there always be a guy on forum that has a problem for every solution?" Yes, there must because otherwise Fusion would look like Resolve with the usefulness of a plug-in effects maker and we'd all be sitting around congratulating ourselves on making a depth map work. Which you can't do right now under the USD implementation because it doesn't accept live inputs from a tool flow. You know, one of the core uses of 3D in a compositing program.

I hate being "that guy" in this. Go over to the SideFx forum or to Steakunderwater and you'll find that there are plenty of salty comments but they also admit to the issues and fix them where they can. On the SideFX forum, it's not uncommon to have a developer jump into a chat to explain that the feature isn't implemented yet or that a bug is there. It settles the conversation down and everyone moves on knowing that it's been added to the list.

Communication.
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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostMon May 27, 2024 4:40 pm

bentheanimator wrote:Did you just say, "I think it's fine, so deal with it."?

We don't, in fact have the control we need in Fusion. Hence the point of bringing up the lack of control over the warper tool."


Please example to me what it is that you can't do and you would be able to do with undo button and get different results. Because you sound like you are whining when you find a problem for every solution.

bentheanimator wrote:The warper tool is a half implemented version of the puppet tool from After effects. As the name implies, the tool is used to manipulate sections of the frame like a puppeteer would by pulling it around. Whoever created the warper tool has not used the tool professionally because as it is implemented now, it has limited use and is a pain.


That is your opinion. I have no information that whoever made it was trying to copy After Effects. Nor everyone who used the tool comes from After Effects. So maybe its just you.

bentheanimator wrote:In the five seconds of adding the tool I:

Connected the tool to the previous tool
Added four controls to quickly to start the process of working with it
Realized I needed to move one of the controls over by a few pixels
Tried clicking on the control, missed and added a new control
Hit Ctrl-Z to undo the creation of the new control

IT UNSELECTED THE TOOL AND DISCONNECTED THE ORIGINAL LINKING.

So then I had to reconnect the tool
Select the NEW point I accidentally made
Delete that point
Figure out that there is no way to move points into position once created
Delete the original point I wanted to shift
Create, very precisely, the new point exactly where I needed it.
Try out the moving of those points and think, "Man, I wish I could tie these two point together to move and rotate around a null or something...
Realized that the points are impossible to move precisely in relationship to each other and gave up


Sounds like personal frustration with the way tool works, not what it can or cannot do. Its you, my friend. You are the problem here. Another user would do it differently and no problem.

bentheanimator wrote:The three things that the tool is missing to be a complete tool are:

    Allow for UNDO, just like every other interface in Fusion. Just like the Grid Warp or a Bezier curve.

    Have an option to show the mesh of the the warp so you know how tessellated the geometry is and figure out if you need more geo in an area. Something like a tentacle, that needs a smooth bend, could have twice as many points in the end vs the base.

    It needs the ability to Publish the Points. Just like every other point system in Fusion. There's that consistency you wanted. That would allow you to tie point together into systems that you could rig like... a puppeteer! Like it was originally meant to be.



Personally I would not complain if those feature were implemented. But you are either requesting personal preferences in the cases if undo, which is not a problem of functionality but of preference.

The other two features you requested are good ideas and I would welcome them, but that would be a very different tool than it is now. Its really just a ported OpenFX tool for editors to be able to do simple warping not a professional rigging set up. I would not mind having a rigging set of tools in fusion, but it really opens up all kinds of other areas than as well. Why don't we have ray tracing rendering in Fusion or more advance 3D tools for sculpting or this and that. Fusion means fusing things together. Its not a replacement for everything out there. Lets be realistic. Rigging tools in Fusion can never match for example Moho and neither can anything in After Effects which was never designed for this kind of work to begin with. More realistic request would be some kind of dynamic way to go back and fort between Moho or toon boom and Fusion than it would be to replace those tools. But like I said, having a better wrapper would not hurt. I can agree on that. I can't agree on the undo button., I think you are simply wrong on that one.

bentheanimator wrote:This tool is clearly meant as a hack tool for editors to unwarp a fish eye or something.


Possible. Its a ported open FX basic bending tool from color page. No more and no less. Like Dent or Drip tools. Its not even fusion native. I don't think Fusion studio even has it. But I could be wrong on that one.

bentheanimator wrote: People in Fusion use it as a hack tool that works kinda like a missing tool that needs to be in Fusion and has been requested for years. The Puppet tool. If they took the interface for the the Surface tracker and created a warp manipulator with it, they would have the right tool. Instead we have this half baked tool that does nothing well.


I would half agree there. It could have been more with some effort and that would be a good thing. But its not a useless tool. It has its application. Its simple to use and can be used for all kinds of bending stuff and not rigging for which it would be probably wrong tool to even use. Far better is if anyone is actually into rigging to do proper job in applications designed for it. And use Fusion for what it is made for, fusing elements. The tools in fusion were never meant to be replacements but either quick fixes so you don't have to go to cinematographer or 3D department or something like that. That is where Fusion came from and that is his legacy. Now there are more different types of users, many who see it as fancy title studio for Resolve or come from After Effects and want Fusion to be like After Effects, which is bad idea.

bentheanimator wrote:This is what I mean when I say the developers don't use the tools. This one completely missed the point. It recreates the functionality of the Grid Warp tool but badly.


I am not sure if was meant to recreate neither puppet tool in AF of Grid warp in Fusion. Its its own thing. Simple tool to do simple things for editors and colorists.

bentheanimator wrote:I hate being "that guy" in this. Go over to the SideFx forum or to Steakunderwater and you'll find that there are plenty of salty comments but they also admit to the issues and fix them where they can. On the SideFX forum, it's not uncommon to have a developer jump into a chat to explain that the feature isn't implemented yet or that a bug is there. It settles the conversation down and everyone moves on knowing that it's been added to the list. Communication.


Sure. I do find developers or people from Blackmagic jump in when they feel they have something to add. They did that few times in regards to features of the Resolve and Fusion 19. Beyond that I can't say how they spend their time, what the organizational priorities in the company are but if you pay attention there is so many little features being added all the time, that maybe you didn't ask, but someone else did. I guess you can't please everyone, but its easy to piss off everyone, that's for sure.

A quick detour about the warper tool. One thing I found in fusion often ignored is use of verity of tools in combination to extend the functionality of the single tool. For me this is a strength of node based compositing and Fusion in general. Many tools out of the box are what they are, could be better. But you hook up few nodes together and you have a custom tool for all kinds of jobs. If everyone waited around for developers to do everything out of the box, no one would actually get any work done.

Someone posted here on forum experiment they did. I think it was how to fade to black in Fusion or something like that. They posted 31 different way or something like that on how to do it. Don't ask for the thirty second way and complain about, pay attention to the first thirty. There are so many ways and so much possible creativity with tools we have, that it would take you a life time to figure it all out. Undo button in warper tool is nothing.
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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostMon May 27, 2024 6:27 pm

This is the longest I’ve seen anyone anywhere argue against being able to undo, which is the most basic, essential functionality. Why do we need undo anyway, any action can be inverted by more or less manual futzing, lets get rid of it completely! Nodes are advanced and very powerful, many things can be done with them, so no undo needed.
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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostMon May 27, 2024 6:29 pm

Please example to me what it is that you can't do and you would be able to do with undo button and get different results. Because you sound like you are whining when you find a problem for every solution.


It's literally the breakdown I posted. The undo limits the amount of control and the speed at which you can work by breaking the norms of control in the tool. You CAN'T undo a pin. Calling that whining is putting your head in the sand.

Sounds like personal frustration with the way tool works, not what it can or cannot do. Its you, my friend. You are the problem here. Another user would do it differently and no problem.


My guy, that is literally how you use the tool. It is a personal frustration with the tool because it's janky. I'm not incompetent or can't read the manual. I've used programs from Shake to Nuke and Maya to Houdini. It's obvious when a tool is completed or just thrown on there as a half assed tech demo. This is a half asses tech demo spiffed up because somebody made an ofx grid warper.

The other two features you requested are good ideas and I would welcome them, but that would be a very different tool than it is now. Its really just a ported OpenFX tool for editors to be able to do simple warping not a professional rigging set up. I would not mind having a rigging set of tools in fusion, but it really opens up all kinds of other areas than as well. Why don't we have ray tracing rendering in Fusion or more advance 3D tools for sculpting or this and that.


Yes, they are good ideas. They were already made into a tool in After Effects ten years ago. So asking for a toolset that is well established with a decade of use is a useful tool. Dare I say a staple of the industry. Allowing published access to the pins would allow you to do just what you said. You could stack multiple tools together to create your own rigging system. You can almost do it with the grid warp tool but the Beziers don't rotate when you move them with a parent. The warper tool is a more "generic?" tool that uses a hemispherical warp. So you could parent and turn a group but it's not that kind of tool like you said.

Far better is if anyone is actually into rigging to do proper job in applications designed for it. And use Fusion for what it is made for, fusing elements.


I don't think you can seriously say that making a basic rig is not what Fusion is made for. Fusion is a compositing tool. It manipulates pixels with math. A rig is a set of tools to change the matrix of a transform in a certain domain. I think that's well within the scope of Fusions intended use.

That is where Fusion came from and that is his legacy. Now there are more different types of users, many who see it as fancy title studio for Resolve or come from After Effects and want Fusion to be like After Effects, which is bad idea.


Don't underestimate After Effects users. All of the cool looking stuff has come from there. They have efficiencies that make anything Blackmagic makes look like kids toys. Adobe may be a huge money hungry company but After Effects can smoke Fusion in a lot of ways. They should take cues from Ae. Just not the layering concept. It's not a bad idea, it just needs to be done with restraint and wisdom.
For instance, you can actually undo a movement and it doesn't blow away the rendered cache. I know, mind blown!

I do find developers or people from Blackmagic jump in when they feel they have something to add. They did that few times in regards to features of the Resolve and Fusion 19. Beyond that I can't say how they spend their time, what the organizational priorities in the company are but if you pay attention there is so many little features being added all the time, that maybe you didn't ask, but someone else did.


I'd love for you to show me a thread in the Fusion forum where a developer stepped in and communicated with the group.

One thing I found in fusion often ignored is use of verity of tools in combination to extend the functionality of the single tool. For me this is a strength of node based compositing and Fusion in general. Many tools out of the box are what they are, could be better. But you hook up few nodes together and you have a custom tool for all kinds of jobs. If everyone waited around for developers to do everything out of the box, no one would actually get any work done.


There's a whole lot to unpack there but we know how to use tools. It's not lost on us how to use a combination of tools to get an outcome. It would be nice if the dev team didn't waste time making hacky one off tools with limited use vs doing some larger reaching asks like a mesh warp tool with control points that are accessible. Adding vertex adjustment to the 3D system. Allowing for a guide layer in the viewer. Moving more than one thing at a time in the viewer.

If they allowed vertex manipulation in the 3D tool, then you could do something like make a mesh, uv project your texture to it and then create nulls to mess with the transform matrix of the selected vertex. Aka, a mesh warp tool. One addition to the 3D system would open up a whole world of new avenues of work. That's what people mean when they talk about the resources going in the wrong direction.

There are so many ways and so much possible creativity with tools we have, that it would take you a life time to figure it all out. Undo button in warper tool is nothing.


Here's a secret... It doesn't take a lifetime. It takes about ten years experience in compositing and some really good educators who ware willing to guide us in the foundations. Once you're past the glossy outer shell of a program like Fusion, you see what it's like not what the marketing department wants you to see or what some new fanboys are in love with at the moment.

I like Fusion. I want it to succeed. People who are coming to Resolve/Fusion are used to Adobe Premiere and After Effects. If they can't hold their own against them, then the people who are trying out Resolve and Fusion will just go back. It's not like the $300.00 was some huge investment.

It could take over Autodesk's Flame but at this pace and with the bugs they are leaving in... it's a hard sell.

Maybe I'm being too harsh on the poor warper tool but I stand by it's janky implementation.

It needs:
Undo pin movement
Hold "Shift Ctrl" or something to allow movement of the pin placement
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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostMon May 27, 2024 10:40 pm

bentheanimator wrote: It's literally the breakdown I posted. The undo limits the amount of control and the speed at which you can work by breaking the norms of control in the tool. You CAN'T undo a pin. Calling that whining is putting your head in the sand.


Yes you can undo a pin. Its called a delete button. Or alt mouse click. The result is exactly the same.

bentheanimator wrote: My guy, that is literally how you use the tool. It is a personal frustration with the tool because it's janky. I'm not incompetent or can't read the manual. I've used programs from Shake to Nuke and Maya to Houdini. It's obvious when a tool is completed or just thrown on there as a half assed tech demo. This is a half asses tech demo spiffed up because somebody made an ofx grid warper.


I beg the differ. Its what is meant to be. No more and no less. You want it to be something more than it is, but lets assume for a hypothetical moment its meant to be more than it is, and developer decided to go home early and leave it unfinished.

What would prevent you from using the tool to get the job done if you choose to use it? Nothing. Nothing other than your own expectations.

bentheanimator wrote:Yes, they are good ideas. They were already made into a tool in After Effects ten years ago. So asking for a toolset that is well established with a decade of use is a useful tool. Dare I say a staple of the industry. Allowing published access to the pins would allow you to do just what you said. You could stack multiple tools together to create your own rigging system. You can almost do it with the grid warp tool but the Beziers don't rotate when you move them with a parent. The warper tool is a more "generic?" tool that uses a hemispherical warp. So you could parent and turn a group but it's not that kind of tool like you said.


Fair point. No complaints on my end.

bentheanimator wrote: I don't think you can seriously say that making a basic rig is not what Fusion is made for. Fusion is a compositing tool. It manipulates pixels with math. A rig is a set of tools to change the matrix of a transform in a certain domain. I think that's well within the scope of Fusions intended use.


There is no such thing as basic rig, but that is another matter. However if you want to do a "basic" rig, I've seen people do it in Fusion with verity of tools, some even made their own. So if basic rigging is the thing you want to use Fusion for, that can be done. If you want to do it right, you use the tools made for such purpose. In 2D animation I would suggest Moho Pro. Speaking of which, Moho and Fusion is a killer combo and neither Moho or Fusion can do that on their own. Shouldn't you go on Moho forums and complain how Moho lacks channel booleans tool? You know, to keep it fair and balanced. Or maybe Grease pencil could be added with geometry nodes in Fusion. So we don't have to blend things. Or we can be more realistic with expectations.

bentheanimator wrote:Don't underestimate After Effects users. All of the cool looking stuff has come from there. They have efficiencies that make anything Blackmagic makes look like kids toys. Adobe may be a huge money hungry company but After Effects can smoke Fusion in a lot of ways. They should take cues from Ae. Just not the layering concept. It's not a bad idea, it just needs to be done with restraint and wisdom. For instance, you can actually undo a movement and it doesn't blow away the rendered cache. I know, mind blown!


I know, someone used the tool to make stuff. If only other people could do the same with Wraper. Mind blown.

bentheanimator wrote:I'd love for you to show me a thread in the Fusion forum where a developer stepped in and communicated with the group.


It was for that new Resolve tool that simulates film look. That is where I saw it last. I can't seem to find the thread now. I think people were asking why it doesn't start from zero to build a look, and someone form Black magic jumped into explain their reasoning behind the tool.

bentheanimator wrote: There's a whole lot to unpack there but we know how to use tools. It's not lost on us how to use a combination of tools to get an outcome. It would be nice if the dev team didn't waste time making hacky one off tools with limited use vs doing some larger reaching asks like a mesh warp tool with control points that are accessible. Adding vertex adjustment to the 3D system. Allowing for a guide layer in the viewer. Moving more than one thing at a time in the viewer.

If they allowed vertex manipulation in the 3D tool, then you could do something like make a mesh, uv project your texture to it and then create nulls to mess with the transform matrix of the selected vertex. Aka, a mesh warp tool. One addition to the 3D system would open up a whole world of new avenues of work. That's what people mean when they talk about the resources going in the wrong direction.


Indeed a lot to unpack there. Perhaps too much for a productive discussion. I'm not against those things, but you can't please everyone. There are five tools in Fusion I would like before any of that, so who has the primacy, me you or thousand other requests? How do you please everyone?

bentheanimator wrote: Here's a secret... It doesn't take a lifetime. It takes about ten years experience in compositing and some really good educators who ware willing to guide us in the foundations. Once you're past the glossy outer shell of a program like Fusion, you see what it's like not what the marketing department wants you to see or what some new fanboys are in love with at the moment.

I like Fusion. I want it to succeed. People who are coming to Resolve/Fusion are used to Adobe Premiere and After Effects. If they can't hold their own against them, then the people who are trying out Resolve and Fusion will just go back. It's not like the $300.00 was some huge investment.

It could take over Autodesk's Flame but at this pace and with the bugs they are leaving in... it's a hard sell.

Maybe I'm being too harsh on the poor warper tool but I stand by it's janky implementation.


I think you are being too harsh it is a janky tool. But its not destined to be more. Why take it as if future of fusion depend on it? Its just one tool in resolve that many casual editors or even pro editors sometimes might use for something. Blackmagic simply ported it to Fusion, its not a native fusion tool, but its also not handicapped., the undo thing is not something that limits the way it can be used iif you so choose. You can do it all just a bit differently. But if you never had it, it would not be a big lose I would think, so yeah I think you are too harsh to poor tool that probably most people used for social media memes .

bentheanimator wrote:It needs:
Undo pin movement
Hold "Shift Ctrl" or something to allow movement of the pin placement
[/quote][/quote]

Undo can be done with delete or Alt + right mouse click. CTRL and selection of multiple points with mouse allows for movement of multiple points. Which combined with custom masks can be used to rig simple things if you wanted to. Lets say you want to move just an arm, you could use polygon or B-spline to select an arm , make few points and move it. Its not amazing mature tool, but it can be used if you really wanted. Although I suspect anything more than meme stuff its better to use proper tools for that kind of work.

But for sake of barring the hatched, sort to speak, I'm not much of an animator, so forgive me rough, janky attempt at animation, but I used B-spline to make a mask around the mouth, put three pins and animated simple smile. I don't think undo button would made much of a difference. If it was redesigned tool to be more polish overall and more mature, that's different. But undo button is not a big deal. Here is a smile so we don't become enemies or anything. :)



Look, its a junky tool yes. Its not native to fusion, yes. It has limitations, yes. But my expectations are not as same as yours so I'm not bothered by something it doe snot have, since I can do with it using another approach or different shortcuts to do the same thing.
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bentheanimator

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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostTue May 28, 2024 4:32 am

At the end of the day, the tool needs a proper undo, that's it. I don't care if it's an OFX from MS Paint. You will never convince anybody around here that the delete button is the same as an undo. Ever. That's the hottest take I've ever heard in software.

Moho looks like fun but you absolutely can make a great living using Ae to rig and animate all day long. You can use a variety of tools and scripts. I used DUiK for fifteen years in a variety of jobs to do everything from character animation to tentacles to simple mechanical. Never even knew Moho existed. Toonboom was the next closest thing on my list. People use a distorted image instead of cut out appendages because it looks better. A program as sophisticated as fusion should have a proper warping tool.

For me a "basic" rig is one with a straight 1:1 relationship with the joints around it. No IK, no bendy mods, no jiggles. I've done plenty of rigging in Fusion but no IK, which I've tried to work out but my brain hates Lua. FUgraph has an IK solution but I haven't used it.
https://e.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=kZ95OHZk6kHOOIFwnSfvosujimWx4JCfO4X

The Warp tool is the closest thing to a Puppet tool that Fusion has. I've used it to bend and warp things into position on international commercials. Used it for real work. It could have been the basis for a legit Puppet tool. So could the Surface Tracker. Both have been on the short list for a while now and at least the surface tracker made it to Stand Alone. It can be used for real things. It could be used better and more efficiently with a bit of thought and effort which clearly didn't happen. When the old guard requested the feature of a puppet tool from Blackmagic, this is what they got. Where did you find out that it is an OFX plugin that Blackmagic didn't create in house?
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KrunoSmithy

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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostTue May 28, 2024 9:25 am

You never heard of Moho? Really? That's surprising to me. Toonboom is more or less like Moho, except a lot more expensive, so for many freelancers, small studios etc, Moho does virtually all they need for fraction of the price. In a way its like Nuke getting big contracts in the industry and Fusion filling out the space left behind. Toonboom is like Nuke with contracts in big studios, while Moho is preferred by many who find Toonboom way to expensive for what it is. Moho is especially popular in Latin America and Europe. To try to do the same in Fusion or After Effects would be stretching the application to be something it is not and it would never be as good. But you combine Toonboom or Moho with compositing apps like Fusion or After Effects and its a whole other ball game. Blender is also great for stuff you can do with Grease Pencil or modeling and sculpting, that you would not do in compositing applications, anymore than you would try to do composing in Blender. Its possible, but far from ideal. It even has an undo button. Imagine that.

bentheanimator wrote:Where did you find out that it is an OFX plugin that Blackmagic didn't create in house?


I didn't say in house, I was talking about ResolveFX plug-in, made by team that works on Edit/Color page effects in Resolve, not Fusion page or Fusion Studio, exclusively. I think its a different team of developers. Its a collection of tools. If you ever looked into it, they come in categories.

Resolve FX Warp category has Lens Distortion (Studio Version Only), Dent, Ripples,Vortex, Warper (Studio Version Only) and Waviness plug ins or effects. As far as I know they were not made for Fusion, but over time as Blackmagic is trying to leverage Fusion page being part of Resolve now, they are adding support for Resolve FX in Fusion page over time. Some are still not available, some are available in Fusion page but not in Fusion studio etc. Point I was trying to make is that its not a native to Fusion tool , developed for Fusion. It was ported in from Resolve.

I suspect almost no one uses Fusion for rigging characters, except very few people I've seen who have managed with existing tools. I suspect because of such low demand and interest and great existing solutions, these tools were not made by blackmagic or by third parties.

After Effects, despite not being a native rigging application is far more popular among people who do it and there are some third party tools for it, although still not as good as native applications, for obvious reasons.

I've seen people who finished feature 2.5 D animated short films using Photoshop, custom script to port stuff to Maya for rigging and animation and compositing in After Effects. Today you would do that in Moho for example, no problems. And maybe add some glow or haze effects later in After Effect or Fusion. And Reallusion is doing what you can't do in any of these compositing or 2D rigging systems. So you use the tools that are best suited for the job and available to you. You don't complain about the things you don't have but what you do have.

To complain that in 2024 Photoshop does not have native tool to create Normals, while Clip Studio Paint does, I suspect is as pointless as trying to argue for undo button in case of Warper tool in Fusion. If you want to get the job done, you will find a way. Development for these apps is never linear or able to please everyone. Its just the nature of the beast.
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Marek2189

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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostTue May 28, 2024 4:26 pm

KrunoSmithy wrote:Yes you can undo a pin. Its called a delete button. Or alt mouse click. The result is exactly the same.

Ok. I see the core of the misunderstanding here. We are not talking about deleting a pin. And my topic is not about lack of options for deleting a pin. It is about an ability to undo A MOOVE of a pin. Look. If you have an animated mask for example, and you want to fix it in the middle of the clip. You grab three points for example and MOOVE them in order to fix the mask. And if you don't like the result of your fix, if you want the mask to return to its original state, you don't delete those points because that is going to ruin your mask. And you don't manually bring those points back because it's time consuming and can be inaccurate. You just hit "ctrl-z" couple of times and whoala, in less than a second your points and your mask are back to its original state.
Absolutely the same goes for warper tool points (pins). You don't want to delete them or move back manually. You want to hit ctrl-z so Fusion will move pins back to previous position for you. Like in any other point/pin based tool.
And I do understand that warper is not made for Fusion originally. That's why I made this topic. Because people are using it in Fusion quite often and it would be grate if BMD guys make warper to work the same as it works at color page. And yes, if you move a pin at the color page you can undo that move.
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Marek2189

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Re: A "undo" (ctrl-z) support for "warper" tool in Fusion

PostTue May 28, 2024 5:21 pm

Hendrik Proosa wrote:This is the longest I’ve seen anyone anywhere argue against being able to undo, which is the most basic, essential functionality. Why do we need undo anyway, any action can be inverted by more or less manual futzing, lets get rid of it completely! Nodes are advanced and very powerful, many things can be done with them, so no undo needed.

hilarious

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