It's another day, it's another Fusion problem

I have successfully imported a number of cartoon character animations into a TIF sequence, each TIF image having a greenscreen background. I import them into my project and Delta Key them and have them all as separate screened sequences.

I followed a Casey Faris tutorial on making 2D images move in 3D. And I've successfully been able to "move" each of the sequences as I wish. I made Fusion Sequences out of each clip (or set of repeated clips) and followed his instructions. So I now have them appearing to "travel" from far out of view moving way up close and then passing out of view. (There will be someone who moves through all of these characters.)

But now I want to layer them together. I need to create a crowd of these characters and I want to combine some of them so that when any one of them moves in "front" of the other it appears like that.

So I've started with just two. I managed to put two of the Fusion compositions together. And I thought all I had to do was merge them together. And to judge from the media out in Fusion, I have done just that.

BUT
When I go back to the timeline, one of them completely disappears.

I have tried all sorts of different merges. One of them got them to appear together EXCEPT that they would flicker back and forth part of the time OR would suddenly have a negative image for a frame or two.

I'm including 3 images.
#1 shows how I have both Fusion compositions.

two media in.jpg (143.69 KiB) Viewed 2034 times

#2 I've clicked on the media out to show how the two sequences appear combined and overlapping.

one media in with media out.jpg (142.79 KiB) Viewed 2034 times

#3 Is what I see at the same frame but in the timeline. One of the characters is now gone.

timeline result.jpg (264.78 KiB) Viewed 2034 times

Any suggestions?

My first suggestion is also a question: why is there a second media out? Did you add that with a purpose, because you could just skip mediaout1_1 and go straight from the merge to the other merge.

Also without knowing how the footage is supposed to look and work, you might be better off doing your crowd work in 3D space first. A couple of 3D duplicate nodes with the correct settings will go a long way in helping you create a crowd.

I'm also not really sure what the point of the greenscreen background is.
If you can make it green in Photoshop you can make it transparent as well which will give you better results than keying.

All very good questions.

I have two media outs because that is just how I did each original set up (from the Casey Feris tutorial). And then I figured I could just merge each media out together into a "final" media out. Maybe that's where I am going wrong? I'll try as you suggest.

As for your second idea..... yes, but isn't that what I'm already trying to do? From the Fusion set up I have, I need render each INDIVIDUAL character separately in order to be able to move each one in its own path, direction and speed. If it is possible to place them together from the start I wouldn't know because I haven't learned how to do that. Yet.

As for your third point. I started doing a greenscreen from a reply to another post I had made asking how to get a character to appear in front of some animation in the background. I got a lot of responses, but the "cleanest" (meaning easiest for me to understand) was the suggestion to make a greenscreen in Photoshop, and key it out. That worked perfectly, so I just kept doing that. I have not been aware that Resolve can deal with a "built in" transparency in a TIF image/sequence. But it's not really a big problem. If I'm making a transparent background, it is one more click to add it to green.

The problem remains how to build up a crowd of these characters, each with completely independent movement. I need to be able to change each character's movement as a trial and error while I'm creating the whole scene for various reasons. But the primary one is that I'm just not yet sure how the main character is going to move through the crowd. So this will build both by intentional movement and happy accident.

I hope that makes some sense. But thank you for your response.

BTW I took the liberty of looking up your website and your sample reel. The one scene that jumped out at me most was the short clip of two people riding in a cartoon car. Very funny!

Disable caching for the Resolve Edit page. Also purge the Fusion cache by right clicking the lower right percentage label in Fusion.

Thanks, but that doesn't resolve the problem (no pun intended).

As per the suggestion from Sander, I've removed one of the media outs and merged.
The way it looks in Fusion (final output on screen 2)

fusion screenshot.jpg (142.39 KiB) Viewed 1933 times

The way it looks on the Timeline Edit page

timeline edit screenshot.jpg (168.84 KiB) Viewed 1933 times

I then removed the OTHER media out 1_1 and merged.
The way it looks in Fusion (final output on screen 2)

fusion screenshot2.jpg (136.08 KiB) Viewed 1933 times

And a new surprise in the way it looks on the Edit page
(See next post)

And a new surprise in the way it looks on the Edit page

timeline screenshot 2.jpg (129.01 KiB) Viewed 1932 times

A black screen.

And Mr. Ridanovic,

It looks like that Fusion purging you suggested I do just removed hours and hours of work. It completely deleted a whole series of painstaking 3D movement I had made for one of the characters.

THANKS!

I'd say the reason you have the black screen on the Edit page in your last screenshot is that when you make a Fusion Clip from the Edit page, it creates a MediaOut node. It is the output set for that Fusion Clip. From your series of posts it looks like it is MediaOut1. This should be your final node. Unless you are sending different outputs for use as inputs on the Color page, you should not have multiple MediaOut nodes. I don't see any DeltaKeyer nodes in your screenshots, so it looks like you have many nested layers of Fusion comps, which could have strange effects on your project.

I remember your posts asking about removing backgrounds of your line art that you have scanned in, several of us gave fairly straightforward advice on how to deal with it, but you chose the least straightforward, which is fine. It does seem like you are trying to run before you can crawl which can cause issues. I would suggest putting your project on the back burner, taking a few months to progress through the basics of Fusion and Resolve, and trying simpler projects that relate to the one you are working on now so you have an understanding of how it all fits together, then come back to your main project and try and tackle it. Try it with simple 3d shapes first instead of your art and create your multiple copies and see what works with getting them to work together.

Excuse me Xunile, but I'm going to take umbrage at your lecture.

You can claim that I didn't choose what you believe were straightforward directions. I beg to differ. I CHOSE AMONG the responses (after trying and failing on a couple of others) and found that one that was easiest and most straightforward to ME. Why? Because I believe that with a program as complex as this, I find myself going way into the weeds in order to do something that is otherwise simple. The directions I chose involved a fair amount of Photoshop work. But that wasn't a problem.

I know Photoshop more than I know Fusion. And using my skills there I could create the greenscreens relatively easily. Then the steps in Fusion were something I easily grasped, RATHER than a whole series of steps I struggled to understand. I have learned the basics of Fusion. That I didn't choose your suggestion (whatever it was) doesn't mean stubbornness on my part. It means that the suggestion I chose made the most sense to ME. Capiche?

FYI all the characters you see ARE deltakeyed but not in that Fusion composition. That was all done previous and then I combined a multiple series of animation cycles into a Fusion clip and that's what you're seeing now.

I know I shouldn't have multiple media outs. But removing the first ones did not solve the problem.

Anyway now I have start all over for the motion paths I had created for these characters because one of the "straightforward" replies I received to purge the Fusion cache somehow deleted them all.

If this forum does not tolerate beginners, please tell me and I'll go back to reading through the 3016 page instruction manual. Or if it is only you that doesn't then please refrain from replying to my posts.

I'd say by the dozens of replies to your questions and the thousands of posts where people were helped that it is obvious that we try and help beginners, but I won't bother you again, good luck.

By the way, below is what 15 minutes of work got me.

It seems more of an operator problem than a Fusion problem.

I recommend ditching the green screen process. It's an entirely unnecessary component to what you're trying to achieve, and is only serving to slow you down (extra work to setup, and extra computer processing needed).

Clearing the cache should never, ever delete your work. I'd look into what other events might have
occurred around the same time that might have triggered that, so they can be avoided in the future.

And Mr. Ridanovic,

It looks like that Fusion purging you suggested I do just removed hours and hours of work. It completely deleted a whole series of painstaking 3D movement I had made for one of the characters.

THANKS!

I don't want to interfere because I think it's a workflow issue anyway, connected to the lack of experience (it will come, just be patient).
But here I can tell for sure that purging the cache won't ever delete what's on your TLs or nodes. Just read it again...

JimCricket, what exactly was deleted by clearing the cache?

The only issue I know of related to that is a fuzzy memory I have of someone commenting that if you store media in the cache folder (which you really shouldn't be doing in the first place) it can get deleted along with the cache - unless you ran into that particular issue, I too am lost on how that might have impacted you.

Or was the comment about "removing" hours of work related more to the apparent disconnect between your remaining MediaOut node and the edit page?


A note about the MediaOut nodes: the one that is given to you automatically when you create a comp is connected to the Edit page. If you look at its properties, it has an "Index" value of zero.

If you add a second one, it is not connected, since the first one already is - its index value is 1 (or higher if you created more than one extra).

Deleting the original MediaOut node, which was connected to the Edit page, does not automatically connect the remaining one. It is still disconnected as its index value is not zero.

Check your remaining MediaOut node and change the index value to zero if it is not already, in order to connect it to the Edit page. If it is not zero, you probably deleted the original MediaOut node instead of the extraneous one.

Note that the "extra" MediaOut nodes tie into additional inputs on the Color page. If you have your Fusion clip selected on the color page, and there are multiple MediaOut nodes on the clip, you can right-click along the left edge of the node graph on the Color page to add a source. The initial source takes its input from the Fusion MediaOut node which has an index value of zero, the second source (the first one you add) from the MediaOut node with an index value of 1, etc...

Hi Frank, thank you for your thoughtful reply.

I shouldn't have said "deleted". There is still a motion path there, but quite a lot of points in the path (or if you prefer, keyframes) disappeared. So now instead of a complex movement (e.g.I had the character pivoting on one foot), the character just zooms straight into the camera.

All I know is that I purged the Fusion cache and then turned off the cache in the Edit page and the next thing I know the XY path of one of the characters had changed from a complex turning into just a straight line movement. Which is to say the movement was still there, but most of the points had disappeared and the character now just moves straight into view like a camera zoom. I had NOT selected any of the points. I had NOT pressed delete. I know correlation doesn't prove causation, but there were no other things I had done before I noticed that the path had changed.

I really want to turn this thread into a discussion about that. It was at the end of a very long day of work on the project, and that deletion was just an insult to injury and I lashed out. I'm sorry for that. But it just end up causing me to end this year long project as I didn't expect it to turn me into a Sisyphus.

It's early in the morning, and I'm dealing with some excruciating pain from an injury yesterday (an injury to the insult to the injury). I will focus on your ideas later. But thank you.

Xunile, I downloaded your screenshot so I could enlarge it and actually grasp what you've done. It looks clever and yes I'm sure I can learn something from it. But from what I can see all you've done is create a crowd. I see nothing in that comp where you can move each of those spoons independently from the other. I don't need help in creating a crowd. I need help to create a scene of a crowd where each individual character can move independently from the other, and can move in front of any character without blending.

CORRECTION: I really DON'T want to turn this thread into a discussion about that.

Okay, I don't think anyone is going to like this (assuming anyone is paying attention by now) but I managed to get it to work, but not at all according to any of the instructions I've been getting.

I had forgotten that last night in frustration I had deleted the Fusion set up. But that was just as well to start over.

I put two characters in, each with their own 3D image plane (as before). I removed one of the media out nodes. I tried to merge that one into the other without merging two media outs into a third media out (as instructed). I tried changing the index numbers of each of them (in all sorts of ways). Maybe I was still doing something wrong, but nothing worked.

So in frustration I tried once again to merge each of the media outs into a third one.
Media out 1_1 has an index of "1".
Media out 1_1_1 has an index of "2".
And the final media out has an index of "0".
(Full disclosure: I have no idea what these index numbers mean and can't find reference to it in the manual.)

Here is a screenshot of that composition.

fusion screenshot3.jpg (159.18 KiB) Viewed 1469 times

And here is a screenshot of the timeline now.

timeline screenshot3.jpg (223.25 KiB) Viewed 1469 times

So that is essentially what I am after. Whether or not I can combine five or ten of these characters together in this fashion, time will tell. If I can't, I'll just shoot myself and make Xunile happy.

So if you remove the MediaOut1_1 and MediaOut1_1_1 from the flow it doesn’t work as it does now? I can’t see any reason for them to be there so asking out of interest. MediaOut with index 0 is what produces output for comp on timeline, what other MediaOut indices do, dunno.

Agreed.

The MediaOut nodes send media out of Fusion and into the Color page. If you are only using one image from Fusion on the Color page (which then feeds the display on the Edit page and what gets rendered to your final output) then you only need one MediaOut node.

The Index determines the order in which the MediaOut nodes feed the source inputs of the node graph on the color page. Index of zero feeds the first one, index of 1 feeds the 2nd, etc.

If you do not have additional inputs to receive them on the Color page, then the MediaOut nodes with indexes other than zero are doing absolutely nothing of any benefit and you can simply remove them.

So if you remove the MediaOut1_1 and MediaOut1_1_1 from the flow it doesn’t work as it does now? I can’t see any reason for them to be there so asking out of interest. MediaOut with index 0 is what produces output for comp on timeline, what other MediaOut indices do, dunno.

No it doesn't work if/when I remove them. Again, I could be doing something wrong there, but I really tried as many permutations as I could think of to make it work.

Agreed.

The MediaOut nodes send media out of Fusion and into the Color page. If you are only using one image from Fusion on the Color page (which then feeds the display on the Edit page and what gets rendered to your final output) then you only need one MediaOut node.

The Index determines the order in which the MediaOut nodes feed the source inputs of the node graph on the color page. Index of zero feeds the first one, index of 1 feeds the 2nd, etc.

If you do not have additional inputs to receive them on the Color page, then the MediaOut nodes with indexes other than zero are doing absolutely nothing of any benefit and you can simply remove them.

I ignored other references in other replies about the Color page, because I didn't understand it and didn't want to muddy the question any more than it has! But nevertheless I should make it clear that I'm not using the color page at all. At least not yet. I have little reason to because this is all fake, cartoon, colored pencil color in the first place. This isn't Disney Studios here. My focus is only in the Edit page/timeline and getting more than one character to appear and overlap any other one I place with it.

That said I appreciate the explanation of Index. I figured it was something like that. But again, I've tried removing the first two media outs and I lose having the two different characters merge and appear in the timeline. One of the two always disappears.

Is there really anything WRONG with the set up I have? Maybe other than making the computer heat up in processing it? I mean, it's finally working.

No, if it is doing what you need it to that's fine, but they really shouldn't be having any effect - the images should just be passing through from their input to their output.

You are connecting the output of the node before them back to the input of the node after them, correct?

In other words, try connecting the output of Merge1 directly to the yellow input of Merge2, and the output of Merge1_1 directly to the green input of Merge2.

It should be very rare for a Fusion comp to need more than one MediaOut node.

No, if it is doing what you need it to that's fine, but they really shouldn't be having any effect - the images should just be passing through from their input to their output.

You are connecting the output of the node before them back to the input of the node after them, correct?

In other words, try connecting the output of Merge1 directly to the yellow input of Merge2, and the output of Merge1_1 directly to the green input of Merge2.

It should be very rare for a Fusion comp to need more than one MediaOut node.

Okay that works, but don't ask me why and especially don't ask me how this is different than what I had been trying before!

Full disclosure: I really hate Fusion. I understand its power and maybe I'll grow to love it in about ten years, but I just find it very unintuitive. The layout I like but not much else.

Thank you Frank.

I'm on a roll. I just added a third character and now have 3 moving and overlapping successfully.

I'll keep adding more until the computer blows up.

Most of Fusion's organization is inherently simple, though they did a few things to complicate it somewhat when going past the basics.

Any given node takes zero or more images coming in, does something with them, and takes the results and places them on an output.

A MediaIn node is the source of an image reaching the composition from the Edit page or from the Resolve media pool and provides that on its output.

A Merge node takes a foreground image and a background image, places the foreground image on top of the background image, and provides that on its output.

A MediaOut node takes an image coming in and sends a copy of it to the Color page, then provides another copy on its output, without actually changing it.

In this case, you had two merge nodes each feeding a MediaOut node (call them 1 and 2), and those MediaOut nodes feeding a third Merge node, which in turn was feeding another MediaOut node (zero).

The MediaOut nodes 1 and 2 were not doing anything to the images they were receiving from those first Merge nodes - they were simply passing them along to the third Merge node as-is.

By connecting the ouputs of the original Merge nodes to the third Merge node directly, where the intermediate MediaOut nodes previously were, you are sending the same images to that third Merge node that you were previously sending, so nothing changed.

At that point the only thing that MediaOut nodes 1 and 2 would have been doing would be to send copies of that same image to the Color page, where they were being totally ignored (because it was only actually using the output from zero). Deleting those stopped uselessly sending that output to the Color page, and since it wasn't being used anyway, your output did not change.


I wouldn't be too worried about your computer blowing up over that - it will just keep getting slower until you run out of memory or storage, so depending on your specs you might be at that for a while.

Fusion comps sometimes have thousands of nodes, though those are mostly done on the standalone version of Fusion Studio rather than the version inside Resolve.

This is a lot digest. I already know the first couple of paragraphs, but I'll need to study the rest while looking at my composition.

So one thing I'm now realizing in this scene I want to build.... I may be backing myself in a corner. Unless I can do some tricks and figure out how to have some separate fusion comps of different crowds that don't "double expose" when I put one over the other, it's looking like I'm going to have to build this crowd scene all in one large (and growing) Fusion composition. It is already getting very big, but I guess there really isn't a limit to the number of nodes in a Fusion comp. (I do know I can make groups though.)

Each individual character needs its own 3d rendering, if only to be able to move separate from any of the others. So that set of "3D motion instructions" (if you will) then gets merged with another character's set of "3D motion instructions" and then those two merged sets get merged with a third, etc etc etc.

That's how I'm building it now and it is working. I haven't yet decided just how many characters I want at any time in the crowd, but it seems that unless I have a "pause" of emptiness, or have one crowd over on, say, the right side of the screen so I can build and place another Fusion comp crowd on the left (without the overlap), then I'm going to have to just keep adding the characters one by one in one composition, merging the last added to all the previous, ad absurdum.

Do you follow me? If not, let it go. )

One thing that I would love to do, but haven't yet figured out, is to be able to have one character appear from BEHIND another, then over take it and pass IN FRONT of the same character. So far, all I have been able to do is have them all as if they are in layers. For instance, I have one character that is behind another when it first appears, but it comes to the camera much quicker so it appears as if it should now be in FRONT of the character it was originally behind. But when it passes over that same character (that is still as if it is in the background) the now larger one passed BEHIND the character again. Which is to say the Z value makes it appear closer, but if it is in a particular position in the set of node sets for each character, it will stay along the same plane.

Do you follow me? If not, never mind.

But thank you for all your input and patience. You've helped me a great deal.