Will I miss my VCP and other AE plugins in Fusion?

Hello All,

In hopes that the Mac version of Fusion hits the streets soon (hoping for August), I'm preparing for my migration from Aftereffects. One of my biggest potential issues is about how much will I miss some of the Video Copilot and other AE plugins that I use on a regular basis.

I love Element 3D for its simplicity and speed, I fear that one will be a though one to get over, unless Fusion has its own version? Any options?

I love VCP Optical Flares, is there a good flare solution in Fusion? How do you guys handle flares?

Is there a VCP Twitch-like solution in Fusion? I use twitch to create some drastic camera bumps/earthquake effects, but I also use it as a much more subtle slightly-unsteady cameraman type of effect. In some cases, the movement is almost imperceptible, but it does add an extra layer of realism, particularly in fully CGI scenes.

I am also very dependent on AE's motion-blur plugin (similar to RSMB), does Fusion have a similar type of function for simulating camera blur to CGI animation and other moving elements?

I'm a big fan of some of the CC plugins in AE, like CC Vector Blur, is there a vector blur in Fusion?

Lastly, I find Trapcode Form to be intriguing for certain types of effects, does Fusion have a similar function?

Of course, I'm hoping that the VCP guys are monitoring the gradual adoption of Fusion by more and more AE users, and will consider releasing Fusion-compatible versions of their plugins like they have done for Nuke, but I am curious as to what I can expect to find in Fusion that will make my transition smoother?


Many thanks!

hi,

fusions 3d renderer can do nearly all of the effects that you can see in Element3D. the downside is: you have to do it by yourself. the biggest advantage of the E3D is the simple GUI where you can create all the effects. in fusion you have to build all that with the nodes you have.

but its nearly everything in fusion

fusion has a vector motion blur and you can get RSMB for fusion too

for effects like twitch, surely someone made a similiar macro or setup already. but again: you can rebuild that with the nodes you find in fusion. sounds not so user friendly but gives you more control over everything

Optical flares is the king for lens flare creation, there is nothing out there which can beat its simple approach. and like before: you can rebuild everything with native fusion tools

you should also consider to buy fusion studio, just because you can use the free plugins from krokodove
https://vimeo.com/channels/krokodove

and take a look at the demos from dunn lewis, everything you see there is native fusion stuff:
https://vimeo.com/dunnlewis

VCP is an awesome plugin but it's locked into an absolutely awful 3D space. Fusion has a real 3D space where everything life together in harmony, butterflies are plenty and the sun is always shining. Well, they do if you create them using Fusions particle system.

Here's a setup I did 100% in Fusion, specifically as a proof of concept doing an Element 3D type setup in Fusion just using the built in tools.



Static model imported with textures into Fusion using Alembic (or perhaps FBX), then animated, lit, adding particles for condensation and exhaust, atmosphere and finally rendering using Fusions OpenGL renderer, so as fast as any Element 3D render would be. The problem is, after you do something like this in Fusion, you'll cry getting back into AE and it's nested precomps...

And about Optical Flares - that is a beyond awesome plugin and the only thing coming close in Fusion is using Genarts Sapphire for OFX (link) which supposedly works in Fusion Studio. Personally I don't have a Studio license but I run it in Nuke sometimes when OF for some reason isn't an alternative.

I'm not a big fan of OFX plugins. Every one I've worked with has been icky for integration, at least with Fusion.

I've never worked with Optical Flares though... What does it do other than composite textured lens flares together? Meaning, could this be done with a macro or fuse? Obviously it's not something you slap together in an afternoon, but it seems like something that would be useful to a lot of people.

The other option... Why not ask VCP for a Fusion plugin? Even if they partnered with another Fusion plugin dev (btw, we need listings on BMD's site) they could get at least 90% of it converted over fairly easily, assuming it's not arcane.

Chad, Optical Flares is awesome because it has a gazillion presets (and also add on preset packs), so perfect for an old lazy f¤%&/er like me!

But if you want to create something from scratch, it is a really great flare creation system, nice simple UI, lots of options and what not.

Could you do all of it in Fusion? Of course, but old, lazy, that jazz.

It just means, would it make sense for someone at BMD to make the settings and include it in a future version of Fusion? Seems like the kind of tool that would show what Fusion can do plus pull in users from AE plus give a lot of functionality that a broad base of users want.

And we come back to what some of us "moderate" users have been saying for years and what we expected from eyeon if they ever wanted to entice AE users to switch: we need more out of the box presets either as nodes in a flow or macros, from shaders to flares to particles to motion graphics.

Everything can be done inside of Fusion they just need a team that sits there and populates power library that showcases the Fusion and makes it simple for the folks that have no time to spend a whole day just to tweak a flair to make it look professional or invent background motion graphics.

If you have optical flares for AE I'd export a track from Fu (vfxpedia has a script) and use AE to prerender a flare. The amount of time (and thus money) you'll spend to do them in Fusion will quickly bust your budget. There are flare presets that come with Fusion but sorry to say, they look crappy. I once wrote flare fuses but they are also at most 20% of what you need to reach optical flares quality.
But they provide the means to make your own flares move in unison, which would need lots of expressions otherwise.