Jump to: Board index » General » Fusion

"Back and forth" Fusion/Resolve color page workflow

Learn about 3D compositing, animation, broadcast design and VFX workflows.
  • Author
  • Message
Offline

TCP786

  • Posts: 456
  • Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:05 am
  • Real Name: Cody Predum

"Back and forth" Fusion/Resolve color page workflow

PostThu Nov 18, 2021 10:45 am

I'm wondering if there is a good workflow for using the Resolve color page in conjunction with the Fusion page or Fusion studio in a way that allows more flexibility regarding signal path. My ideal scenario is to be able to have a node that would function as a send between one page and the other that I could insert anywhere in the node tree. Don't get me wrong, I know that's a huge ask but there are some features that exist already that I don't know about. Let me describe my current use case, and maybe someone has some ideas I can try that aren't simply "edit a clip on one of those pages, render it, drop in the timeline, use other page, repeat."

The first place I'm coming from is that I often want to be able to use several of the color page tools that aren't available on the Fusion page before that media comes into my Fusion composition. There are also situations where I wish I could add a node into a Fusion composition that simply took me to the color page and back (like loader/saver nodes, but having the color page be the round trip rather than my hard drive).

The obvious solution is to use the color page first, and then render a new clip to put on the timeline, then do the Fusion stuff on that clip. While that would theoretically work, it's far from ideal, since I might even be going back into the color page again after that, and having to render that many times during the pipeline is a waste of time, not to mention that I would be doing the initial color work without being able to see the clip I'm working on in the context of the Fusion composition I'm going to be using it in. Another example situation that shows how unnecessarily time consuming this workflow can be if is I want to use a certain tracker or keyer from Fusion, but I want to manipulate my media in the color page in order to make it easier for that Fusion tool to find the information it needs.

Anyway, I can elaborate on my use cases if anyone wants me to, but in general, what options are there in terms of going back and forth between Resolve's color page and Fusion (preferably in Resolve, but Studio is fine too if it involves rendering clips less often)? Can it be done with several separate clips from a Fusion composition such that they still come into the color page as separate clips?
Offline
User avatar

TheBloke

  • Posts: 1905
  • Joined: Sat Nov 02, 2019 11:49 pm
  • Location: UK
  • Real Name: Tom Jobbins

Re: "Back and forth" Fusion/Resolve color page workflow

PostThu Nov 18, 2021 11:40 am

The idea of a node for adding Color or Fusion in at a specific place would be very nice, but nothing like that is implemented.

Resolve has a specific image processing pipeline, which is represented by this graphic from the manual (the Color page is the last two boxes):
Image

So Color comes after Fusion. Specifically, the image from MediaOut1 is sent to Edit, and from there to the first image Source on the Color page for that clip. Additional MediaOut nodes can be added to pass extra images direct to the Color page (bypassing Edit I think), which are accessible by adding additional Sources in the Color page. This can be used, for example, to pass a mask from Fusion to Color so that Color can grade parts of the image differently. It doesn't have to be a mask though, any RGBA image can be passed.

We do have the ability to adjust the image processing order by using nesting. By creating a Compound Clip or Fusion Clip from clips on Edit, we can now do Edit and/or Color processing before Fusion. Specifically, by opening that Compound/Fusion Clip (right-click, Open in Timeline) and then adding Edit or Color effects to the clips inside, the result of those effects will be seen by a Fusion composition placed on top of the Compound/Fusion Clip in an enclosing timeline.

So in your scenario, there may be no need to do intermediate renders. Nest the clips, apply your Color effects inside the nesting, and place your Fusion composition on top of the nested container. You can then dynamically alter those Color effects at any time, by going back to Edit, switching to the Compound/Fusion clip containing the clips, and then going to Color. You can use Stacked Timelines on Edit so that you can have both the main timeline and any nested containers open at the same time, like you see me doing here with normal timelines + Fusion Clips:
Image

There are some downsides and things to be aware of:
- Resolve's nested containers don't support resolution independence. If all your media is the same size as the Timeline, this is no concern. If it's smaller resolution than the timeline, be aware that Fusion will see the media after it's been scaled to Timeline resolution, which is different than placing a Fusion composition directly on a clip where it would see that clip at native resolution.

If it's larger resolution than the timeline, then the same thing applies - Fusion will see it after it's scaled - plus there's the additional limitation that the "Center Crop" scaling option is no longer usable on the main timeline. You can't for example have 4K media on a 1080p timeline and set it to Center Crop and then pan it around on the main timeline - it'll just crop at the edges.

- If you plan to use Color to grade the output of Fusion, you'd lose access to remote grades, as you'd now be grading a container, not the actual source clip. Likewise any per-clip filtering options wouldn't work. This only applies to a grade done after Fusion, it doesn't apply to any grading you do inside the container, which is now happening before Fusion.

- There's a few other minor inconveniences, such as it being impossible to do a Deliver from inside a Fusion Clip or Compound Clip. So if you did for some reason want to render out the clips you'd nested, you can't do it directly. You have to copy all the clips to a temporary timeline and Deliver that. This appears to be an arbitrary limitation or just an oversight - I can't think of any technical reason why it shouldn't work, they've just disabled the Add To Render Queue button if you're inside a Compound/Fusion/Multicam Clip.

So there are edge cases to be aware of, but it does generally work OK.
Resolve Studio 17.4.3 and Fusion Studio 17.4.3 on macOS 11.6.1

Hackintosh:: X299, Intel i9-10980XE, 128GB DDR4, AMD 6900XT 16GB
Monitors: 1 x 3840x2160 & 3 x 1920x1200
Disk: 2TB NVMe + 4TB RAID0 NVMe; NAS: 36TB RAID6
BMD Speed Editor
Offline

TCP786

  • Posts: 456
  • Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:05 am
  • Real Name: Cody Predum

Re: "Back and forth" Fusion/Resolve color page workflow

PostThu Nov 18, 2021 1:55 pm

Ah, cool. As for your last point though: if I needed to render an individual clip from within a compound or Fusion clip, couldn't I just go into the Fusion page and route the appropriate MediaIn node directly to the MediaOut1 node? Maybe also I'd have to either disable the other MediaIn nodes, or disable those clips on the compound/Fusion clip timeline to keep from getting an error, but that seems like a good way to non destructively bypass the Fusion composition while still including any processing done before the compound clip's Fusion processing. Thanks for also pointing out the potential issues of this process too.
Offline
User avatar

TheBloke

  • Posts: 1905
  • Joined: Sat Nov 02, 2019 11:49 pm
  • Location: UK
  • Real Name: Tom Jobbins

Re: "Back and forth" Fusion/Resolve color page workflow

PostThu Nov 18, 2021 2:15 pm

TCP786 wrote:Ah, cool. As for your last point though: if I needed to render an individual clip from within a compound or Fusion clip, couldn't I just go into the Fusion page and route the appropriate MediaIn node directly to the MediaOut1 node? Maybe also I'd have to either disable the other MediaIn nodes, or disable those clips on the compound/Fusion clip timeline to keep from getting an error, but that seems like a good way to non destructively bypass the Fusion composition while still including any processing done before the compound clip's Fusion processing.
If you have a Fusion composition on a Compound Clip, you have only one MediaIn for the whole Compound. So no, you can't selectively render any single clip from inside the compound by adjusting MediaIn nodes. You could set in/out points appropriately on the enclosing timeline, then render just that portion (and bypass the Fusion composition, or set MediaIn -> MediaOut bypassing other nodes). Assuming you don't have overlapping clips of course.

In a Fusion Clip you have one MediaIn per layer of video inside the Fusion Clip. You can access the layers individually in the composition, but again not specific clips. Other than with in/out points as mentioned.

What I was referring to was that if you have, say, a Fusion Clip full of clips like this:
Image

you might want to make use of Deliver -> Individual Clips to create renders for each of those clips. For example if you reached a point where your Color work was definitely final, you might want to render all that out to avoid re-processing as you're working on the Fusion comp (though Render Cache would likely be OK in most circumstances). Or maybe you changed your mind about doing the comp in Resolve, and want to make clips to take into Fusion Studio, or wanted to roundtrip the clips through some other software, like Topaz Video Enhance AI.

In that scenario, you'll find you're not able to do that using Deliver, because Add To Render Queue is disabled. So instead you'd have to make a temporary timeline, copy all the clips, paste them onto the temporary, then Render that temporary. It's not the end of the world, just annoying.

That said, you could very likely use Render In Place instead. That does work fine inside any timeline-like clip. It doesn't have all of Deliver's options, including file naming tokens. But if you don't need those, and the requirement is just to get the clips rendered to disk, it will do that fine. And it'll automatically replace them all with the newly rendered clips, which would be what you wanted if you were baking Color. If you didn't want that, you'd then Decompose to Original them.

So it's not a huge deal. Definitely not a roadblock. Just a potential annoyance is all.
Resolve Studio 17.4.3 and Fusion Studio 17.4.3 on macOS 11.6.1

Hackintosh:: X299, Intel i9-10980XE, 128GB DDR4, AMD 6900XT 16GB
Monitors: 1 x 3840x2160 & 3 x 1920x1200
Disk: 2TB NVMe + 4TB RAID0 NVMe; NAS: 36TB RAID6
BMD Speed Editor
Offline

TCP786

  • Posts: 456
  • Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:05 am
  • Real Name: Cody Predum

Re: "Back and forth" Fusion/Resolve color page workflow

PostThu Nov 18, 2021 9:21 pm

Oh gotcha. I haven't ever considered making a Fusion composition that involved clips that weren't all the same length stacked on top of each other. That makes though, but at least I don't expect to have to solve that problem with the way I'm currently working. Thanks.

Return to Fusion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 25 guests