Blackmagic Forum

As some of you might know, I've been on the outskirts of Fusion for the past couple of years, taking a few timid steps away from AE and in Fusion.

With Resolve 15, it's impossible to continue to ignore Fusion, particularly considering the sudden increase in quality tutorials.

A few weeks ago, the perfect project came along for me to force myself to do it all in Resolve 15 and after a couple of weeks of messing with it, I'm not 100% sold — but not on Fusion, but rather on the integration of Fusion within Resolve.

Resolve until now has been a real-time playback environment (give or take some overtaxing OFX or some extreme node configurations). Fusion on the other hand real-time is not regardless of how fast of a machine one runs on. At the very least it requires caching of the frames, as well as running in Proxy mode etc. I find this kinda sorta puts a definite damper on the "flow" that I have enjoyed in Resolve until now. When grading or editing, when Resolve hits that Fusion clip things get sluggish real fast.

So despite Fusion in Resolve sounding really cool on paper, and during the NAB presentation, I am beginning to wonder if, with our current state of technology, VFX and Editing/Grading might be better suited as separate processes after all?

My point is that I do hope that Fusion standalone isn't abandoned, quite the opposite, I hope that it's strengthened in such a way that a Resolve user could start implementing Fusion VFX while in Resolve, then hit a button to switch over to Fusion standalone and continue working without missing a beat.

Anyone else coming to a similar conclusion?

One issue is that the best price/performance for a workstation running Resolve is NOT the same as one running Fusion. It's potentially cheaper to build 2 systems than it is to build one system that would be faster than 2 separate ones. Depends on how network rendering is implemented in Resolve.

Moving pixel perfect intact shots between applications in an efficient manner doesn't exist right now, either, but I agree that it would be very desirable. I'd love to have Resolve with 1 timeline with 12 shots open on one machine and Fusion with 12 comps open on another machine and see changes in one application's settings (NOT RESULTS) updated in the other application. Right now we can't do that, heck you can't even decode DNG's in Resolve and Fusion in an identical manner, but that would be my ideal setup.

In my opinion having Fusion into Resolve is really making things easier (to some extents).
Sure Fusion is not realtime, and it's not intended to be. But you still can render cache the fusion output only, then continuing to work on Resolve other modules in realtime as usual, which is pretty cool.

Umberto Uderzo wrote:In my opinion having Fusion into Resolve is really making things easier (to some extents).
Sure Fusion is not realtime, and it's not intended to be. But you still can render cache the fusion output only, then continuing to work on Resolve other modules in realtime as usual, which is pretty cool.

That's if you really want to use Resolve in the rest of your pipeline. For working on a few shots, not part of an edit (say in FCPX), having to load up Resolve, create a project, ingest media, throw them on a timeline, jump to the Fusion tab just to track and add a billboard is dumb, unnecessary and inefficient.

I'm still hoping for a Fusion 10 (or X since that's a thing), but with no substantial talk or roadmap on here from BMD, on their website, twitter or wherever, since Resolve 15 was announced a month ago, I shouldn't hold my breath.

They have confirmed that Fusion will be available in the standalone version for now.
I agree, there are situations where it’s much more desirable than working within Resolve.

Uli Plank wrote:They have confirmed that Fusion will be available in the standalone version for now.

Can you point to some official BMD source where it is confirmed? Any page/link/quote on BMD homepage? I ask our of interest because only place where I have seen any kind of even mildly solid confirmation is some random interview in Redshark.

Hendrik Proosa wrote:

Uli Plank wrote:They have confirmed that Fusion will be available in the standalone version for now.

Can you point to some official BMD source where it is confirmed? Any page/link/quote on BMD homepage? I ask our of interest because only place where I have seen any kind of even mildly solid confirmation is some random interview in Redshark.

same here. So far BMD has yet to publically announce a standalone version through their standard channels of communication. Even a comment here would suffice (although a small roadmap would be better). I guess the fact the last update for Fusion was back last December is an indication? :\

I think you guys might be misreading what is being said. I think BMD is basically saying that the current Fusion 9 will continue to be available for download and function as a standalone app regardless of whether or not you're running Resolve.

I personally haven't heard or read anything else regarding the future of Fusion 9. I think the upcoming Siggraph in a couple of months will be very telling as to BMD's future direction with Fusion standalone.

If they really meant that Fusion 9 will be the last standalone then they will loose 90% of they standalone user base to Nuke.

It seems like most ppl coming from resolve don´t understand that's,for a longtime fusion user, it is not about "are all features in Davinci Fusion page" its about how the workflow was and is with Fusion standalone and that it´s simply not possible in Davinci Fusion simply by how Davinci works and is structured compared to fusion standalone.

Fusion in Davinci is great and Fusion standalone is great but they are two very different beasts.
And if thats it for fusion standalone then Nuke will be the winner.

Markus Cermak wrote:If they really meant that Fusion 9 will be the last standalone then they will loose 90% of they standalone user base to Nuke.

Markus Cermak wrote:And if thats it for fusion standalone then Nuke will be the winner.

Hi Markus,

Maybe. But have you seen the prices of Nuke? I, for one, can't afford the basic version while I've got the Studio version of Fusion. Maybe for the big productions this makes no difference, but for me it is important: the possibility to have a copy of Fusion free and fully functional and from that go to the Studio version with a reasonable price even for a simple enthusiast Like me.

Mario.

if it's between fusion in davinci and paying for nuke I'd have to pay for Nuke, I've used fusion for 15 years, when I purchased fusion it was around 5k, I love fusion and hate Nuke, BUT, if I have to choose between davinci fusion, and Nuke, I'm going Nuke, I can't do my job in davinci fusion, it's crippled, the work flow is flawed, It is not an option for professional compositors. It's great if you are an editor or colorist that dabbles in VFX, but for full time VFX guys, it's not workable.

Come siggraph if fusion standalone is dead I'm out. And every professional Fusion compositor I know has said the same thing.

I queried support here in Australia about the future of Fusion, and basically they said it will continue as a standalone. I will post the msg here when I get home. I think Fusion in Resolve is for colourists and editors convenience. It's not really for compositors. And I also don't want to go back to Nuke.

Out of curiosity, why the aversion to Nuke? I thought it was quite loved.

Kays Alatrakchi wrote:Out of curiosity, why the aversion to Nuke? I thought it was quite loved.

To me it seems that Nuke and Fusion lovers as groups simply don't overlap much. And there is more than love in play when choosing tools for different jobs.

Here is some of the info I got from BM support here in Australia (The local distributor):

For now, the Fusion integration in Resolve is at very early stages and is only a partial implementation. It is intended, eventually, to be a feature-complete integration of Blackmagic Fusion inside Resolve. The integration will grow more feature complete over time.

The fully-featured standalone versions of Fusion\Fusion Studio is still being developed and there no plan in the foreseeable future to discontinue this. Blackmagic however do not give any ETAs in regards to releases, so I'm unable to estimate when the next update is due. As an existing Fusion Studio user, you can not only continue to use it with Fusion Studio, but you can now also use that same dongle to run Resolve Studio v15 beta 1 or later.

We strongly encourage current Fusion users to give as much feedback as possible in regards the integration in to Resolve so it can be shaped and updated to the expectations of existing Fusion users.


Here is the release info that he kindly pointed me to:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s678/sh/ ... 3b9707e092

Kays Alatrakchi wrote:Out of curiosity, why the aversion to Nuke? I thought it was quite loved.

Its a good product to use if someone else is paying. Back when I went solo it was prohibitively expensive for me to work as a compositor so I switched to Fusion and to be honest never looked back. A friend of mine had all sorts of problems with them claiming he was using the software out of license, they had tracked him down using information on his computer and were threatening legal action, harassing him by email, phone. He told them to bring it on, but nothing happened, apparently they have a whole dept dedicated to this, someone mentioned they were bought by a US company that has changed the culture. The fact that they are watching what you do is a bit scary and pulling details of your PC is borderline illegal. Plus very rarely does anything good come out of an oligopoly, especially when the company is just profit driven.

I like what BM does, they are trying to bring high end tools to everyone. I feel better giving them my money. And don't even get me started on Apple ...