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Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

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wesleykosta

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Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

PostSat Sep 24, 2022 4:33 am

I've been watching BM Fusion for the last few years and thinking...

1- Why don't we see big productions like Maleficent and Ant Man using fusion nowadays?

2- Why does the homepage of BM Fusion stand alone look so old without major changes with each update?

3- Why doesn't BM Fusion receive major updates like Davinci Resolve? Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

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Hendrik Proosa

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Re: Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

PostSat Sep 24, 2022 5:22 pm

What do you mean, Anonymous was comped in Fusion as we can read from BMD website! Oh wait it was in 2011. After Shake died off compers transitioned to Nuke, Eyeon twiddled their thumbs while it happened and this thumbtwiddling is continuing in BMD at aggressive pace. There is zero incentive to transition to Fusion besides price difference which is humongous, something like at least a weeks worth of salary fund of a mid to senior level comper, per year. This will surely bring massive leverage, I guess Weta, ILM and others are banging on BMD door as we speak, but Foundry sales people are blocking the door with their bodies.
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KurtFill

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Re: Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

PostSat Sep 24, 2022 7:38 pm

I'm hoping it has not been abandoned. But seeing new features hit the Color page in Davinci Resolve and NOT being made available on the Fusion page (where frankly a lot of these features belong) and worse, not being offered in Fusion Studio does cause me some concern.
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Chad Capeland

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Re: Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

PostSat Sep 24, 2022 7:51 pm

The amount of redundant work is concerning. ResolveFX shouldn't be a thing, they should just be a part of Fusion and Fusion should be a part of the Color page. It's a confusing design that doesn't help users and doesn't have reasonable user story.
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Sam Steti

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Re: Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

PostMon Sep 26, 2022 7:56 am

KurtFill wrote:I'm hoping it has not been abandoned. But seeing new features hit the Color page in Davinci Resolve and NOT being made available on the Fusion page (where frankly a lot of these features belong) and worse, not being offered in Fusion Studio does cause me some concern.

Yes, this is sort of an evidence which is indeed disappointing... And a shared feeling : viewtopic.php?f=22&t=158669

I still don't really understand the strategy underneath, but if it's only a way to grab Fusioneers to Resolve by force, it may not be at no cost.
It actually reminds me the way Apple spoiled their huge FCP users base with just one single main reason : the lack of communication. Of course, they made drastic choices and there were other reasons too but no communication still was the real reason they screwed their transition..

For instance, even with a reunification will into Resolve as the main goal (which would be hard, yes), it would need so much more roadmap shares, inputs, hints and explanations that the actual state would be scary so far.

On the other hand, if it's just a matter of time, hands & minds available or things like that, it's almost a greater waste, because a fisful of GUI upgrades and 10 new tools imported from the color page into Fusion studio would do the trick for a few months ...

Therefore so far, I don't really see/feel a real and genuine drop into the thrash yet, but yes, one can be rightly worried...
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Hideki Inoue

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Re: Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

PostMon Sep 26, 2022 3:11 pm

They didn't abandon Fusion, Fusion Studio was probably never in their plans from the beginning.
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Sam Steti

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Re: Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

PostTue Sep 27, 2022 8:39 am

Hideki Inoue wrote:They didn't abandon Fusion, Fusion Studio was probably never in their plans from the beginning.
This is pure speculation... Never saw/read any official statement about that and neither did you.
Fusion was a standalone app when bought from Eyeon and it just kept this status afterwards. And it had "a real life" before as a standalone app, with kind of a fame and pro users base, I mean it's not just like Fairlight.
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Hendrik Proosa

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Re: Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

PostTue Sep 27, 2022 10:19 am

Sam Steti wrote:Never saw/read any official statement about that and neither did you.

Has there ever been an official statement about anything Fusion related besides aquiring it and ”we made a release”?
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Sam Steti

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Re: Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

PostTue Sep 27, 2022 10:27 am

Hendrik Proosa wrote:
Sam Steti wrote:Never saw/read any official statement about that and neither did you.

Has there ever been an official statement about anything Fusion related besides aquiring it and ”we made a release”?

No indeed, but even less "Fusion studio is not in our plans" :mrgreen:
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bentheanimator

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Re: Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

PostTue Sep 27, 2022 3:48 pm

Even just porting the OFX engine from Resolve to Fusion to allow new FX in both would show progress. I love Resolve. It gives a one stop location for doing a whole production. BUT I have to work with other people. They aren't on machines with a whole Resolve set up. The footprint of Fusion vs Resolve is hilarious. We work on multiple comps and copy and paste flows through chat. It's about as straight forward as you can get. We aren't doing edits, we're doing CG comps both still shots and animations. Not having parity with Resolve is an annoyance. Not having a standalone Fusion would be...tragic and as expensive as it is, would mean a move to Nuke. Not going back to After Effects. But I'm also not going to launch a program with it's own database backend just to comp a scene.
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raphaelgoesm

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Re: Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

PostWed Sep 28, 2022 11:48 am

In my opinion the problem with Fusion is that it's kind of an odd guest in the BM business model. BM sells hardware, DR exists to create interest in these hardwares... Given the nature of Fusion, it is very difficult to have some kind of panel, device, to operate with fusion...

I can only see 2 ways to justify greater interest in development. Or BM releases Fusion Standalone as Open Source and lets the community take care of it, taking advantage of the code in an "Effects" tab in DR...

Or develop some kind of device that works together with the cameras that they can sell, to generate track information, Deth information, etc... For example, LIDAR and Gyros.

As long as none of those things happened, I think Fusion will remain the last point of development interest for BM....
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Hendrik Proosa

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Re: Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

PostWed Sep 28, 2022 1:38 pm

Imho it all points in the direction that aquisition of Fusion was to get an ”effects” page for Resolve. Fusion standalone is just a lingering byproduct kept alive, but it is by itself utterly useless and uninteresting for BMD.
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Frank Engel

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Re: Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

PostWed Sep 28, 2022 4:18 pm

Hendrik Proosa wrote:Imho it all points in the direction that aquisition of Fusion was to get an ”effects” page for Resolve.


That wouldn't have made any sense given that they already had one, in the form of the Color page, which is far better in Resolve than Fusion is in Resolve.

Fusion is a compositing application with some limited motion graphics capabilities.

I think what BMD is actually doing is trying to treat it like a motion graphics page rather than an effects page for Resolve, in which case it is a sub-optimal tool for the job, and in the meantime the more legitimate use case of Fusion as a compositor is suffering... we get the worst of both worlds because BMD doesn't really seem to understand what Fusion actually is.

Just look at the headline features for F18:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion

  • Create templates for use in the Cut page. The example picture? A fancy title.
  • Animation curve modifiers. The use case cited? Titles and effects being dragged into the timeline.
  • Audio plays back on the Fusion page. While this is one of the few things they have added which are actually legitimate for something other than motion graphics, the use case they list for it is to sync animations to the sound.
  • Custom vector shapes. Why? Motion graphics.
  • Access to new GPU-accelerated Resolve FX (they probably added them for the Edit page and just mentioned it here...)
  • Node tree bookmarks, to ease navigation. This one could go either way...


Note that practically every major feature they are adding has a focus on motion graphics. They are trying to transform a pro compositing application into a sub-par motion graphics application by ignoring what Fusion was really meant for.

Node-based tools such as Fusion are not the best choice for motion graphics. Period, end of story. They are optimal for compositing.

BMD is trying to treat a high-end compositing application like a motion graphics tool. The end result is that people trying to do compositing are suffering when they change things to better suit motion graphics but as a result make things worse for compositors, but in the meantime the entire concept of the application is wrong for motion graphics, so people trying to motion graphics in Fusion will always find it to be sub-par for that.

As I said earlier, the worst of both worlds.
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bentheanimator

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Re: Has BM Fusion been abandoned?

PostMon Oct 03, 2022 3:51 pm

Fusion, quite frankly, needs to look at Ae a bit. There are some things that are janky as hell in Fusion. The way keyframes work in the Timeline and in Spline Editor both need some help. Most obvious thing? Try selecting a key frame or more and hit "Ctrl+C" then "Ctrl+V". It has never worked. Always throws the error that you need to select a spline etc... So you have to go to where you want, add a keyframe or scrub the timeline and then right click and select the exact same command from the menu that the shortcut is for and it works. Sometimes it pastes the right thing. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it pastes a previously selected keyframes data just to be extra unhelpful. Just tried it in 18.03 to make sure.

After Effects is a PITA but it's accuracy with copy and pasting data makes Fusion look like it's a beta program.

Copy and Paste is literally broken. That's pretty messed up.
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