Blackmagic Forum

Hello

I apologize in advance for this question which will likely have a simple answer, but I am just starting out with Fusion so bear with me. I am going through the tools manual to familiarize myself with the tools in Fusion, and one I saw was the trails effect. I thought this might be interesting to try, so I brought a picture into the composition and I want to just place the 2D image at the back of my scene a bit and just have it slowly move across the frame, with the trials effect on it. However, when I try to connect its node to the Merge 3D node, it won't let me and nothing happens. This has happened with a few other effects and different nodes. So why do some nodes allow for a connection to others in some places but not in others? For example an image imported into a Merge 3D node.
http://imgur.com/Cd9nITj
Thanks

Inputs and outputs in Fusion can be many different datatypes. Shapes, voxels, images, text, numbers, materials, gradients, look up tables, gridwarps, audio, etc..

The Trails tool outputs an image. Merge3D inputs a 3D scene. So you need something that inputs an image and outputs a 3D scene. Try Shape3D or ImagePlane3D.

Can you see in Fusion what type of input or output a node uses?

Not by default, as inputs and outputs can support multiple datatypes. You could make a script that printed out what types a tool supported for each input and output.