Blackmagic Forum

In the Edit page I have a still image and on top of that I have a Text+.
Turned both into a Fusion clip.
In Fusion I want to animate the text+ nodes opacity. Any ideas how. I would think it would be easy but I can't find a way.

I don't know your setup, but usually you do this in Fusion by animating the blend slider in the merge tool, to fade out your text over your MedianIn. Or if you want to do in the Text tool, you can go to the shader tab and adjust the.... Opacity! slider.

Okay, so after deleting the text node (mediaIn after making the Fusion clip with it) and making a new text node in Fusion those options were available, thanks.

In Fusion, you can create a BrightnessContrast node. Inside the node, at the Inspector, the slider that controls Opacity is not named, but has the words LOW and HIGH. It controls 0.1 to 1.0 (or more). You can stipulate which of R, G, B, or A (all) are controlled. By pressing A (for All), I find that sliding the controller between 0 and 1 controls the opacity.

To animate, this slider can be keyframed.

It's much easier to just use the Gain control to do that than the threshold range control. Gain is a multiplier on the channels, so Gain 0 means RGBA * 0 = 0.

I've found this somewhat frustrating myself in Fusion. I haven't been able to make the Brightness/Contrast node option to work for me (it turns black instead of transparent).

My current work around is to just make an extra merge node and connect a transparent background node into the merge's background input. Then connect the section I want to animate opacity on into the foreground input and animate the blend.

That said, just a simple "Opacity" or "Transparency" node would be much nicer to have. Not just for a simple function, but also for easy visibility in your node tree.

I've found this somewhat frustrating myself in Fusion. I haven't been able to make the Brightness/Contrast node option to work for me (it turns black instead of transparent).

That's because by default the Brightness/Contrast tool doesn't influence the alpha channel. If you check the alpha box the gain control will work.

And if you want to create a transparency node, it's about 3 minutes of work. Check the alpha checkbox, create a macro, only expose the gain slider, rename it to opacity/transparency and hide all the other controls and you're good to go.

Sander de Regt wrote:And if you want to create a transparency node, it's about 3 minutes of work. Check the alpha checkbox, create a macro, only expose the gain slider, rename it to opacity/transparency and hide all the other controls and you're good to go.

Thank you! That was super simple to make and a huge help!

I go for a rectangle node connected to the "mask" connector con the "Text+"
Then on the Inspector Animate "Level" on the rectangle node.
Found it frustrating actually that is not a simple Opacity control non "Text+" or "Transform"

Coming from AE

Made a video

There is already an opacity slider in the Text+ node.

Also Sander de Regt's trick for creating your own Opacity node as a Macro from a Brightness and Contrast node works perfectly and was super easy to setup.

And if you want to create a transparency node, it's about 3 minutes of work. Check the alpha checkbox, create a macro, only expose the gain slider, rename it to opacity/transparency and hide all the other controls and you're good to go.

That said, it would be nice to have the Opactiy as an option in the transform node. It would just make it easier on all users but especially for new users who are transitioning.

IMO there should be an opacity option for the "whole" node(s).
If you add a shadow or anything else, you have to deal with their own opacity slider.

You could use a brightness tool


Edit: Just seen that Bryan already mentioned that. So yeah the Brightness Gain slider is really the easiest way.