Blackmagic Forum

not really a bug report or a feature request, but just wanna tell that each time i need to make some simple stuff like screen replacement or a lower third, Fusion has some freaking surprise! it just never works as expected. like today it was that one can't merge easily 2 images of different resolutions.
it's tempting to have everything in one program, but it just never works. NEVER. the same task took literally 1 minute in After Effects, including rendering from each program. I'm pissed off, confused, and tired. wasting hours on searching for answers online, for a simple 1-minute task is not for me.
it's probably not the same for everyone, for some it's probably awesome if they spent a couple of years learning the software. but i don't want to waste years learning how to do elementary stuff you can learn to do in another software in 10 minutes. that's my experience of struggling for a year or so

yargord wrote:that's my experience of struggling for a year or so

I am sorry, but you really spend a year learning Fusion and still don't understand the basics of it? That sounds unbelievable. Surely, after 1 year, you at least should have mastered the basics?

I would recommend youtuber Casey Faris, he has some beginner tutorials on Fusion that explain the very basics. He also talks about the problem of having different resolution images and how you can solve that.

He has a whole playlist on Fusion things, mostly beginner:



Here he explains how he uses a transparent background node to set the resolution for the Fusion comp.



https://www.youtube.com/user/CaseyFaris777/featured

Wouter Bouwens wrote:

yargord wrote:that's my experience of struggling for a year or so

I am sorry, but you really spend a year learning Fusion and still don't understand the basics of it? That sounds unbelievable. Surely, after 1 year, you at least should have mastered the basics?

I would recommend youtuber Casey Faris, he has some beginner tutorials on Fusion that explain the very basics. He also talks about the problem of having different resolution images and how you can solve that.

He has a whole playlist on Fusion things, mostly beginner:

Here he explains how he uses a transparent background node to set the resolution for the Fusion comp.

https://www.youtube.com/user/CaseyFaris777/featured

about a year ago i started to try it for non-frequent tasks, according to needs of my videos. i didn't spend a year learning it. the difference is that the same tasks are much more intuitive to make in After Effects (which i also didn't study deliberately).
thank you for the videos.

The easiest one is motion, but it's Mac only.

In the class of software products where Fusion belongs it's fairly user friendly and not the hardest one to master. This is a professional compositing software that's focused on getting the job done. The assumption is that the user is already familiar with nodal based compositing.

I like to make this analogy with Fusion vs Motion and After Effects. Fusion is a low level programming language where Motion and After Effects are a higher level with many functions built in.

For example, with Motion is I want to draw a line with and arrow head it is something that is already available. And, I can animate with key framing.

Drawing a line with an arrow head is much more difficult in Fusion and requires many operations to do so successfully. To draw a line with and arrowhead in Fusion one needs the following steps:

- Create a background
- Place a rectangular mask on the background and adjust the width and height.
- Make another mask in which you create the arrowhead.
- If you want to animate the line, you need another mask to reveal the line. Animate the line with keyframes to reveal the line.

Gee. That's a lot of steps just to create an animated line in Fusion. And, doing the above does not even animate the arrowhead as the line grows.

With Motion I put in the line, say I want an arrowhead, then keyframe the write-on to animate.

Fusion is not all that efficient. Maybe it will get better one day. But there are things lots of things in Resolve that I like way better than FCP, e.g. animating a mask.

Since I own After Effects and Motion maybe a hybrid approach is best. Use Resolve for assembling the time line and just use Motion or After Effect for animations.

Fusion. What did you expect for free!

Don

Hmm. Did you ever try to use a software like Flame? That's the world Fusion is coming from!

It's a compositing program and not a motion graphics software. I mentioned Apple's Motion as an example for easy to handle motion graphics, not as a competition for Fusion (or Flame). Someone once said that compared to Motion, even After Effects looks like a scientific laboratory. Nobody is generating their graphics in Fusion (or Flame), they are done in a bitmap or a vector software and imported. After Effects is using Photoshop and Illustrator for such things. Of course, you can find thousands of ready-made elements for any software for a few cents.

Did I mention that one year of Flame is 4,415 and Motion costs 50 bucks (no subscription)?

And for sure it's a good solution to generate clips externally if there exists a software that makes it easier.
I know a guy (a professional), who has a small Mac next to his mighty PC for Resolve only to use Motion.

Uli Plank wrote:It's a compositing program and not a motion graphics software.

This is the major existential problem Fusion has right now. Everything BMD is doing points in the direction of the wish for Fu to become the motion graphics and simple comp part of Resolve, not stay a hardcore comp software. And the "it's not intuitive" is becoming somewhat of a hindrance on this target, because "in software X this, that and the third thing is so much easier". And they are right, Fusion has the tendency to make some easy things hard. And it isn't a good thing, whichever way you look at it. I don't have problems with the mental model of nodegraph based compositing (I've been using Nuke for nearly a decade) but Fusion still manages to make me scratch my head.

Uli Plank wrote:Did I mention that one year of Flame is 4,415 and Motion costs 50 bucks (no subscription)?

Yeah, and compositors ask thousands per month, not offer their services in fiverr for peanuts. What a bunch of greedy bastards

well, i don't see much difficulty with nodes per se. Color page also uses nodes, so that's somewhat familiar. it's tons of hidden bugs (if those are bugs) or limitations, which a normal person, a novice, or intermediate user can't anticipate. and since the market exists, i don't see a bright future for Resolve's Fusion at the moment if they won't do something. which is a pity since the one-software-for-everything approach is very appealing.

p.s. meanwhile, I've got a new gotcha - Fusion isn't a friend to RCM! all the graphics or even Text+ added from the Edit page has messed up colors. there is a topic on that but seems like the staff doesn't care. how nice...

My 2 cents in this discussion. Comparing After with Fusion is simply the biggest mistake the vast majority of new users make. It's the same as comparing a quadricycle with a car, only because they both have four wheels and are good for getting around.

After Effects is by no means more intuitive than any other software. He is just the most common. The gateway for most people, what causes this illusion that he is more "intuitive". Simple as that. I can spend days quoting various things that don't make any sense within it.

Now talking about Fusion. The hard fact is that simply stopped in time. Yes, it´s still very powerful and we keep using it to get the job done. But is a fact that for the last 5, 6 versions, it has simply been overlooked at the expense of other aspects of DR.

It wouldn't cost to invest a little in resources for work optimization (see the customization and organization that Houdini has in the node tree). Update basic tools like Text+. Fix design errors, such as timeline (keyframes). Etc...