Fusion's painstakingly slow

HI Guys,

I love Davinci Resolve so much that I ordered a dedicated PC specifically for DR. i.e. AMD 24 cores/48 threads, 128GB RAM, 2TB SSD, Nvidia RTX 3090X 24GB graphics etc.

While realtime rendering and delivery runs smooth now, the fusion work is still painstakingly slow. I attempted a simple Fusion Composition with particle rendering/dispersion and every time I make a small change for the particle render, I keep waiting for the red line ( over the fusion composition) turn blue. This is extremely sluggish even for a small Fusion Composition.

On the PC, I checked the task bar, and noticed no difference in CPU or GPU. There are no spikes.

I am wondering, Doesn't Fusion tab take advantage of CPU or GPU yet ?

I need some help, seriously !!! How can I make the Fusion Clip go smooth ?

I am running free version of DR ( 16.X )

Thanks
Pritam

IMO, Fusion-in-Resolve is throttled back in performance by Resolve's architecture. It's a finishing platforom with Editing, Compositing, and Audio layered on top of it.

This is not a big deal with Audio, as most of the impacts are felt on aspects of the software that have to render video and effects. Fusion is the biggest "hurt" as a result of that.

You can use Fusion 9 Free and import comps to Resolve.

If you upgrade to Resolve Studio (Activation Code), you can run Fusion 17 alongside Resolve on both PCs you install Resolve on (it will use the same Activation Code). Fusion 17 Studio is like 5x faster than Fusion in Resolve.

I upgraded to a new Desktop, and Resolve Studio makes it feel like a waste of money, IMO. Fusion 17 is a complete night and day experience.

I'm going to keep Fusion Studio and ditch Resolve for editing. It doesn't bring enough value [to me] to offset ludicrously heavy it is, unless you're using it primarily for finishing (color grading, basically).

Generally speaking, if the price of Free Resolve is really that huge of a draw, considering the low price of Resolve Studio; chances are your machine is not going to be able to run it at good performance levels - particularly the Fusion page.

Also, this forum is for the Fusion product, not the Fusion page in Resolve. IME, Fusion in Resolve has issues that are exclusive to it in many cases.

Just as a side note, if you are changing particle flow parameters it will need to totally regenerate the simulation from start to end, if there are a lot or particles/dynamics involved it can take a while.

Thanks Guys (Trensharo & Kel).

I did not know until today, Fusion is also available as Stand alone product . Hence the mistake of raising this topic under "Fusion" category.

So, what i understand here is
> Considering my use case, if I am looking for best performance in Fusion ( particle or any other fusion VFX) , i must go for Fusion Standalone. Is this right ?
> If I am using the free DR version (16.X), which free "Fusion Standalone" version will complement the DR 16.x ? @Trensharo, are you saying Fusion 9 free version will suffice here ? Also, as you mentioned Fusion 17 Standalone will be 5X faster than what I am using now ( Fusion tab in DR). How about free version Fusion 9. How fast will this be compared to what I am using ?

> If i decide you buy the Studio version of DR, will i have to buy Fusion studio separately ? or it comes along with that ? Sorry, question might be redundant, but the product offerings are little confusing , hence the question.

> If i decide to take the plunge (buy the studio version of DR), would you recommend DR-17 beta , considering it may have several bugs, or you would recommend DR-16 ?


Thanks
Pritam

Fusion 9 free will probably be faster than the Fusion page in any version of Resolve for many tasks, but there have been some fairly substantial speed improvements in the last two versions.

As far as I know, the particles system is not yet GPU accelerated, regardless of which version of the product you're using. So if your only comparison point is particles, then F9 standalone will almost certainly be faster. But not a lot faster.

Remember that Fusion is VFX software, designed for feature film use. It's optimized to show every pixel at best possible quality rather than to achieve playback quickly. So no matter your use case, it's unlikely that you'll get the same level of performance you're used to having with editing software, which is optimized for playback and sacrifices pixel fidelity to get it.

The free version of Fusion 9 should work with Resolve 16's VFX Connect feature, but I haven't tested it to be sure. In any case, the features you'll be missing by not having a Fusion Studio license are:

The Camera and Planar Trackers. Optical Flow. Access to OFX and compiled plug-ins (notably Krokodove). Distributed rendering (which you don't get with Resolve, either, so no big loss for you). Licensed ProRes export in Windows and Linux (which you won't miss because you'll be using VFX Connect and exporting your finals with Resolve). External scripting control.

Now as to the licensing, Fusion Studio 17 now accepts a Resolve activation code, so if you go that route, you'll have access to all versions of Resolve Studio back to at least 15. Probably earlier, but I didn't start paying attention before that point. And you'll have access to Fusion 17 Studio.

With a hardware Resolve dongle, you get access to all versions of Resolve Studio, and Fusion Studio 16 & 17.

With a hardware Fusion dongle, you get access to all versions of Fusion Studio back version 7, and Resolve Studio 15+.

The dongle lets you move to whatever computer you like at any time. Just take the usb device with you and plug it into a new machine to move the license. The disadvantage is that there have been numerous cases where the dongles just stop working one day. I had one of those, myself. No explanation has been found—the computer still recognizes the device, but it stops authorizing Fusion. I'm not sure how common it is, but in most cases, users have been able to get Support to send them a new dongle as long as they purchased it from an authorized reseller.

The activation code lets you activate the software on two computers. To move, you have to first deactivate one before you can activate another.

Thus far, Fusion Studio 17 beta doesn't appear to have crippling bugs, but it's only been a couple of days. However, BMD has historically been fairly quick to release new builds during the beta cycle, patching away the worst of the bugs rapidly. So in my opinion, you'd be fairly safe using it if that's the way you go.

Awesome , thanks Bryan for the details.

> My first attempt would be check out the Fusion stand alone and compare performance improvement in general (as compared to Fusion tab in DR). For this, I am looking for a link to download free version Fusion 9.
I can't find one. Would be helpful if you can point me to the link.,

> I am LiL confused about Fusion's release number. The last free release was Fusion 9. After version 9, the straight jump is to 16/17. Or i am missing any in between release ?

> If i like Fusion Standalone, i might as well buy the product. What I gather with all these info is that , If i buy license version for one product, i can use the same to activate the other product. For example, If i buy Fusion Studio, i can activate DR and Vice Verse. This way i don't have to pay for both the products.

> FYI, yes, since you brought up the discussion on Planar Trackers, this is another area which i attempted in the past and left it with utter frustration, as it was sluggish beyond belief. Hopefully, with Fusion Standalone, that will all go away. Hoping 4 D best

Thanks Again, guys
This is super helpful

Thanks
Pritam

> If I am using the free DR version (16.X), which free "Fusion Standalone" version will complement the DR 16.x ? @Trensharo, are you saying Fusion 9 free version will suffice here ? Also, as you mentioned Fusion 17 Standalone will be 5X faster than what I am using now ( Fusion tab in DR). How about free version Fusion 9. How fast will this be compared to what I am using ?

That depends on:

1. What features you use in Resolve | Fusion, and
2. Whether or not there are features in Resolve | Fusion that are not in Fusion 9.

That being said, now that I have thought about this, you should be getting pretty decent performance on your particular machine, which is quite high end.

But, you can always load a comp into Fusion 9 and see what the relative performance is, with the same source video, of course.

> My first attempt would be check out the Fusion stand alone and compare performance improvement in general (as compared to Fusion tab in DR). For this, I am looking for a link to download free version Fusion 9.
I can't find one. Would be helpful if you can point me to the link.,

Direct links to each release are available in this thread at the We Suck Less forums:
https://www.steakunderwater.com/wesuckl ... =16&t=3444

> I am LiL confused about Fusion's release number. The last free release was Fusion 9. After version 9, the straight jump is to 16/17. Or i am missing any in between release ?

They jumped version numbers from 9 to 16 in order to synchronize with Resolve, since the two products now share a development schedule.

> If i like Fusion Standalone, i might as well buy the product. What I gather with all these info is that , If i buy license version for one product, i can use the same to activate the other product.

A Fusion hardware dongle will license any version of Fusion Studio from 7.7 and up. It will also license Resolve Studio 15 and higher.

A Resolve hardware dongle licenses any BMD version of Resolve, and also Fusion Studio and up.

A Resolve activation code will license any version of Resolve and Fusion Studio 17.

So for access to Fusion Studio 9, you'll need a Fusion dongle. Make sure you buy it from an official BMD reseller.

As a wrap back to you original concerns about speed, are you used to something like After Effects? After Effects has a really good dynamic caching system that does a lot of heavy lifting without your intervention. It will split caching for shapes and footage and keep them when new parameters are created. It will then flatten the caches with the new layer instead of having to re-render the underlaying layers. It's fantastic.

Fusion goes about things a little differently. It assumes you know exactly what you've created and know when you've moved on to the next set of tools in a flow. It doesn't cache something until you tell it to. This means you have to cache manually along the way. As you build up your flow and cache them you'll see your speed get better and better. Set you cache folders to a fast drive like an NVME or RAID and you'll have good performance. Your processors don't do as much as your hard drive bandwidth. Especially on Windows. File performance in Windows is miserable compared to Linux and OSX but can be mitigated by fast drives. Once you're on NVME drives it becomes a non-issue.

Particles are a special kind of caching consideration because you need to cache each pRender in a particle flow. Then you need to cache the Render3D. Render 3D is a 2D plate after all.

It's caching all the way down. I created a script to map the caching command to the "0" number key so that it replicates the action in After Effects.

Code: Select all

tool = comp.ActiveTool

tool.Output:EnableDiskCache()

save this as a ".lua" file and add to...
C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Roaming\Blackmagic Design\Fusion\Scripts\Tool

You can then assign this to be a shortcut in Keyboard shortcuts.
Fusion really needs a whole bunch of Keyboard shortcuts that aren't there but you can create most of them.

Thanks @Trensharo.
> I will try to download the free Fusion standalone, I think that would be a good starting point.


@Bryan , Thanks
> I went to the link you mentioned above which lists all the fusion versions. I downloaded the latest, but it asks for the activation code. With this i am assuming that Black Magic has stopped giving free lunch for Fusion standalone, may be. Would you know if this is correct.

> Considering your last post, where you mentioned the issues you faced with dongle, i am planning to go for the actual license, not the dongle. With that in mind, i think, If i buy any one license ( DR or Fusion Standalone ) I should be able to use it for the other.


@bentheanimator, thx for the new perspective.

> Although I havn't used After Effects, i kinda get your explanation about layers. I come from a photography background and use similar layering tools such as Affinity Photo. Yes, I agree, layering approach could given DR some edge to improve the Fusion tab performance. They went for "node" approach instead, There must have been some strong reasons to go down this path.

> Thx for the piece of code snippet. I will definitely try it. Which coding language is this ? I come from a programming background, hence the curiosity

Thanks
Pritam

The layering analogy was just to explain the way it takes caches and keeps them for individual layers then do a much faster merge render of those caches if it can. The node system blows away the layering concept when it comes to making up new things and repeatability. For making things with crackshot timing super quickly it has issues. Mostly with how the timeline tab is handled. It's a hot mess of good-ish ideas.

Fusion uses Lua of all languages. It takes some getting used to but isn't too far removed from JS or Python enough to cause much trouble. You just have to reference it like any other language.

Caching is a big deal in Fusion. It's where most people falter when it comes to making sophisticated comps. Set them up on a fast scratch dive and you won't have as many issues.

I'm in the middle of using Resolve Studio to create a commercial and having Fusion inside of it is fantastic. If you're working on footage and doing vfx type work, I would seriously recommend getting comfortable in RS17b3 and getting over the quirks of Fusion in there. Cache handling is pretty nice so far and with the right hardware it's a beast of a daily driver program. Don't forget to install Reactor to sweeten it up.

The biggest thing so far is that selecting a clip on a timeline and opening it up in Fusion only affects that specific clip of footage on that timeline. Even when you drag it into your bin. It doesn't make a useable Fusion comp. Just the footage, it's weird. You can create an fu comp in a bin and work on it but it will take on the timeline properties when you add it to a timeline which can blow away your timing if everything started at the beginning of your comp and now it's 60 frames in with no way to offset your tools. To get around that you create a new timeline from your fu comp in the bin and use THAT as a piece of footage with it's own timecode. It's weird but I get why they did it that way.

Sorry, just needed to write that out. Bit of a non sequitur. Just know that once you get a handle on the tools it can make for an amazing experience.

Layers and nodes have only cosmetic difference, technically it makes no difference compositing math wise. Layers are just a bunch of linear node trees (loader + effects stack) merged together in order dictated by layer order. Since some things are fixed in structure it is basically a subset of nodegraph and thus more rigid. And it makes little difference in how cacheable one or another is, caching is much more dependent on actual caching methodology chosen by devs.

I know this is late to the discussion, but I didn't specifically see anyone point this out. In the interest of helping people find a definite answer...

The reason for this is...at least as of DR/F v18.0.3 b5, the ONLY node in the particle system that is GPU accelerated is the pRender. AND, the pRender is only GPU accelerated when pRender is set to 3D. Thus...ALL of the p-nodes prior to the pRender are processed exclusively via the CPU. That's why you are having issues with severe lag when working with particles. I have asked for the particle node system to be revamped and the entire set of nodes made to, at least, be able to be GPU accelerated. Maybe this could be a studio-exclusive feature.

How do I know this? Someone posted this pdf in another thread I posted... https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/UserManuals/Fusion_GPU_Accelerated_Tools.pdf

And, I have a project in which I was attempting to test which node (pEmitter vs pImageEmitter) gave the best result. The pEmitter turned out to be the only usable option. When I attempted to swap in the pImageEmitter, the CPU went to 100% usage, stayed that way for over an hour, and still had not made any progress in the render (green progress bar on the pRender node). I double checked to verify the pRender node was set to 3D, and it was. Yet, the entire time, the GPU was idling while the CPU was maxed. Thus...all particle nodes are handled by the CPU...BEFORE...the pRender can start crunching its numbers.

An (hopefully optional) GPU mode on the particles would be great. But I assume the reason your performance tanked with the pImageEmitter is because it will create a particle per pixel by default. In big resolutions that’s just massive amounts of particles.
I personally think this is not a good default setting as resolutions have greatly increased since it was developed and people wonder why their computer hangs after piping in a 4K image.

Be sure to reduce the X and Y amounts massively before starting the simulation. It’s unlikely that you need that many particles.

I personally use Fusion particle System a lot. Including for a lot of commercial work that ends up on TV so I would welcome any improvement to them. But I wouldn’t call them awfully slow for what they deliver.

I would love to have the ability to branch the system, to get a smoother pTurbulence, and have the functionalities that they apparently envisioned but never implemented. Like the mass attribute which makes me think they wanted this system to have more physicality.
I also wouldn’t say no to more user attributes in the pCustom and pCustomForce tools.

An (hopefully optional) GPU mode on the particles would be great. But I assume the reason your performance tanked with the pImageEmitter is because it will create a particle per pixel by default. In big resolutions that’s just massive amounts of particles.
I personally think this is not a good default setting as resolutions have greatly increased since it was developed and people wonder why their computer hangs after piping in a 4K image.

Be sure to reduce the X and Y amounts massively before starting the simulation. It’s unlikely that you need that many particles.

I personally use Fusion particle System a lot. Including for a lot of commercial work that ends up on TV so I would welcome any improvement to them. But I wouldn’t call them awfully slow for what they deliver.

I would love to have the ability to branch the system, to get a smoother pTurbulence, and have the functionalities that they apparently envisioned but never implemented. Like the mass attribute which makes me think they wanted this system to have more physicality.
I also wouldn’t say no to more user attributes in the pCustom and pCustomForce tools.

I am sure you are correct about the pImageEmitter. The scene did require a lot of particles though, which is why I was even considering trying it. What I found odd though, even when i set the pEmitter to 10k particles, even though it took a few minutes to finish grinding...it did finish. The pImageEmitter never even showed the first stage of progress. Yeah, the project is in a higher resolution, but still...it was only a 4K UHD project. It would have needed to be hundreds of thousands of particles for it to take as long as it was. The input image was 2000x2000, and the output size was 2000x2000. The input image was mostly transparent, being a torus with a custom material used on it. I would venture a guesstimate of no more than 30% of the pixels were non-transparent.

Oh...heheheh...I just did the math on that. No wonder it was taking so long. Even a GPU accelerated scene would take a long time to render out >1million particles.

For those who do a lot of particle work I think there are better options than Fusion out there. Blenders group nodes and particles are a good place to start (and free), also these guys are doing insane things, all in realtime (RTX GPU required):

Sure there are other options out there (I personally use Houdini if I need very specific or fancy particles). And if you need interactions between pyro/fluid sims then Fusion won’t be able to deliver that.
But I wouldn’t discourage anyone from using Fusions particle system. It’s quite capable of amazing effects and you produce final images instead of having to bring in renders from somewhere else.
Creating the particles right where you composite makes iterating and trying out different things quite fast.
Also setting up some optical flow particle interactions is just very quick and easy in Fusion once you know how to. This is something I also do frequently for effects.

Yeah, there's a ton of particle use cases for live action VFX using Fusion. Like if you wanted to add muzzle flashes, or tire smoke, or steam off a coffee cup, or some gnats circling a character's head, etc.. It's a LOT faster to just do them in Fusion than to deal with another program just for that one nearly insignificant element.

Some cases true, but smoke, dust, fire, water all look average at best, interaction is limited and when when you have a lot of particles or need decent lighting it's just too slow. I can create most things faster and better in blender and embergen. But I guess that does require additional knowledge.