A couple of fusion questions (Depth of field & linear comps)

Hi Guys,

I'm just looking into using Fusion for my comping workflow (I come from a background in compositing with Nuke)

I'm having pretty positive results so far, really digging Fusion's 3D implementation and the particles. However, theres a couple of basic things I'm having some issues with:

1. Adding Depth of field with a depth pass. I've found the DepthBlur node, but that only has the blur types 'Box, Soften, and Super Soften' none of which do a nice looking defocus. I've also found the 'Defocus' node, which does a great looking defocus blur, with shaped bokeh - but doesn't seem to be able to modulate the blur based on a depth pass?

2. color workflow for importing srgb footage, viewing it correctly while comping linear 32bpc then outputting correctly in SRGB space. I did a bit of hunting around online, and came to the conclusion the workflow is this:

Set the comp to 32bit float in the prefs

add a loader, click to import tab, open color space, switch from auto to 'space', scroll down to 'srgb' and select. Open Source Gamma Space, set to 'space' drop down list, select sRGB, click
'remove curve'

view the loader in the viewer (looks incorrect) click 'LUT' to turn on viewer lut, open drop down list and choose 'gamut view' (still incorrect) open drop down again and choose 'edit' drop down Output Space to sRGB

Then with a Saver (write node) I also have to set output colour space and output gamma space both separately and manually? Every time? Its a bit of a killer... Or maybe theres a better way?

Hi Chris,

For 2.) - don't forget that you can save the node settings as a default.
Also, you can use a separate gamut node to convert the colour space.

You also don't necessarily need to set the comp to 32-bit in the prefs - this just sets the default for new creation nodes (i.e. Background, Text+, Noise, etc). Fusion flows can consist of a mix of 8, 16 (integer and float) and 32-bit images. Whatever is used as the background image for a node defines how it's processed.

Cheers,
Mike

2) for a LWF (linear workflow) you discovered the way it is in fusion. its really comlicated, there is a great thread here from stefan ihringer about that.
it can be a little easier, dont use the settings in the loader/saver. add a gamut tool after/before them and set the option there. its similar to the colorspace node in nuke

1) there is no native depth based defocus in fusion right now. if you have a studio version which can load plugins the best solution is the frischluft plugin. which is really nice.
for the free version you could try a macro: http://web.archive.org/web/20110823131222/http://vfxpedia.com/index.php?title=Settings_and_Macros/DepthDefocus_Description

You've managed to hit on two weak points of Fusion

What Michael said is right, I just wanted to add that you don't have to set up your linear workflow like this every time:

• You can set viewer defaults using the right click menu (or by using the comp script to set the view LUT plugin on a global basis)
• You can of course set up float32 as a comp default
• I haven't tried it (for Loaders) but you can also set defaults for tools by right-clicking on the panel. This saves a default to whatever directory is configured in your path map preferences (look for "Defaults:" - usually it's something like users\public\documents\blackmagic\Fusion\defaults). You might have to edit the Loader.settings file that gets created there with a text editor to remove all settings that you don't want as defaults (like the name, path and so on... just leave the remove gamma curve value)

As far as the bokeh effect goes you might want to check these threads

http://pigsfly.com/index.php?/topic/493 ... 1?hl=focus

http://pigsfly.com/index.php?/topic/831 ... hl=defocus

http://pigsfly.com/index.php?/topic/813 ... hl=defocus

http://pigsfly.com/index.php?/topic/816 ... entry36143

Thanks so much everyone, really brilliant tips!

That depth defocus macro seems to work really well!

For Color space, I've set up the viewer default settings to Gamut View, with output space sRGB (which is 99% of the stuff I do) so I can just click LUT to turn it on or off

For the incoming & outgoing srgb to linear conversions I've set the defaults on the gamut tool to source space sRGB, then a separate saved setting on the same tool for converting back to sRGB prior to the saver node. That's working heaps better! Thank you all once again