Blackmagic Forum

I started compositing with After Effects about 6 years ago and was introduced to node based compositing through Blender about one year ago. I instantly saw the potential and moved up to Fusion. I used Fusion and Blender for all the VFX of my last short film and was pretty impressed. On a whim, I tried Nuke for a project at work and I have to say, I tend to reach for it more than Fusion now. So I started thinking, why do prefer it and what would make me reach for Fusion more?

It came down to two things. First, a 3D camera tracker would be amazing, I use this in Nuke and formerly AE all the time. The second has to do with the Flow window. In Nuke, when I line up nodes next to, or on top of eachother, the connecting lines with adjust too, allowing me to keep the nodes nice and neat and to visually see the flow line through the connections, as it's nice and straight too. In Fusion, if I line up the nodes, while the connections to rotate around a little, I still constantly get angled flow lines because the outputs never line up with the inputs. If I adjust the nodes for the flow lines to be straight, then I have nodes offset all over the place.

On a small comp, this is no problem, but for larger comps it becomes difficult to visually follow the flow. I'm not sure what the rest of you think, but I'd like to hear your thoughts too.

I may suffer from Déjà Vu, but didn't you post this exact same topic a year ago or something like that?

if you work with Blender, why dont you use the camera tracker in there and export the results back into fusion (or any comp software)?

Sander de Regt wrote:I may suffer from Déjà Vu, but didn't you post this exact same topic a year ago or something like that?

Not that I'm aware of.

michael vorberg wrote:if you work with Blender, why dont you use the camera tracker in there and export the results back into fusion (or any comp software)?

That is a way to do it right now, but part of what would be nice with a built in tracker is the ability to then work with point clouds which take your data and reconstruct your your scene, in color, as a series of points, allowing you to instantly view your shot in 3D to better integrate objects/text/cards....

I understand what your complaint is about the connections in the flow, but what is your suggestion?

Chad Capeland wrote:I understand what your complaint is about the connections in the flow, but what is your suggestion?

I think the organizational layout of the flow area needs to be reworked to be more in line with Nuke or Natron. The nodes need to be able to be lined up but also show the flow lines lined up. I know Fusion has been around a while and that it works, I just think it can work more efficiently or provided a better user experience when things can be organized better. I'm actually a disorganized, non OCD person in real life, but when I get into complex comps, organization is key.

Chris Tempel wrote:

Chad Capeland wrote:I understand what your complaint is about the connections in the flow, but what is your suggestion?

I think the organizational layout of the flow area needs to be reworked to be more in line with Nuke or Natron. The nodes need to be able to be lined up but also show the flow lines lined up. I know Fusion has been around a while and that it works, I just think it can work more efficiently or provided a better user experience when things can be organized better. I'm actually a disorganized, non OCD person in real life, but when I get into complex comps, organization is key.

Don't know about Natron, but in Nuke if you have 3 nodes lined up ABC with A->C and B->C, The AC and BC lines will overlap, while in Fusion they are visually distinct. If connection lines occluding other connecting lines is the goal, what's the benefit?

Ah, one of my pet peeves!

Merge together two images in Nuke, and come in from the right hand side with the foreground (or A). Then try to add a mask. Have fun!

I can't say I'd ever set up my nodes like that lol I'd have a constant B line with A coming in from one side and masks typically coming in on the other. I realize the answer is "just use Nuke then if that's what you like", but I just want to see Fusion be the best it can be.

I'm just pointing out that there are some pretty simple ways of making Nuke's flow totally useless. This forces you to work in very specific ways. This is less common in Fusion, so I'm just not sure what should change when Fusion already does it much better. Maybe there's a corner case I'm not seeing? That's the stuff that needs to be included in a feature request so the product manager and developers know what to fix.