Can we please fix the UI!

Peter,

It has been a while since Fusion Standalone 9's UI was changed to remove the ability to customise panel/window setup in Fusion.

I have seen a number of complaints and requests since then from Fusion users trying to get the UI into a state that is manageable for their workflow. I myself have raised the issue a number of times with Support and have not received any response or action. I have spent weeks attempting to find work arounds in F16 and F17 so that our studio and others can use the UI in an efficient manor.

Why has BMD taken no action?

I urge any Fusion user that agrees to +1 this post to let BMD know this problem needs to be addressed.

+1

I second that. The new Fusion UI for the standalone version has been outright unusable to almost everyone who has used Fusion before. Most of us tried various hacks to get it to work properly and, just when we managed to get something roughly working, Fu17 broke almost all of these solutions.

There doesn't seem to be enough thought put into the UI, and, despite a lot of us complaining about that since the release of Fu16, no one seems to listen or improve the design. It took ages to get the mess of the identical icons almost sorted.

The least you could for us is give us an option to revert the UI until these issues are sorted. I really don't think that is a lot to ask for.

+1

How much more do you want us to suffer?

From the panels thread in Resolve feature requests section I get the impression that user manually changing UI at will is a strange and dangerous idea from another, forgotten world, and has no place in the bright future. So UI already got ”fixed”. Don’t resist, you are being rescued

+1 from me too. Especially because it feels like a direct blow to standalone users that we don't even have the new layouts that the Fusion page got. They always refer to floating windows which is nice if they wouldn't be so buggy and if I could readjust the main layout. Am I supposed to cover the whole main layout with floating frames?

I do think this is somewhat on their mind, though. The new Resolve Hue Grids have gotten an undock able pane, Fusion Page has gotten new layouts and the toolbar can be somewhat customized. But the Layouts aren't in Standalone, the toolbar only reads "Macro" for all Macros I tried and it can't save scripts either.
Great they added "new" functionality to the Fusion UI, but doesn't seem like they thought that through or tested it with real world users.
I'll gladly give feedback in a closed beta as I am already doing in the open beta and normal releases.

+1

[Peter Chamberlain]

Are any of the improvements in v17 Resolve valuable to you?
We spend time on Inspector cleanup, toolbar and vertical vs horizontal flow.

Improvements? You do not seem to understand our voice at all.

These improvements are good, but way to few.
And all these things worked in Fusion 9 and it's old UI.
Can you please bring back all the old features?
This would make many people very happy

Is there a Roadmap or something for the developement of Fusion you can share with the community?

A BIG +1 from me on fixing the GUI.

Making Fusion 'look like Resolve' might be perfectly acceptable for the Resolve user-base, since they're used to Resolve's GUI for many years.
But the loyal Fusion VFX user-base has been accustomed to an efficient, productive and logical GUI for over 20 years.

-A GUI that was replaced with something that is difficult for us to grasp and accept and is anything but efficient, productive or logical to us. Certainly BMD is well aware of the ridicule and derision that arises from the Fusion VFX base with each release? That is because we are again reminded that the GUI has yet to be fixed.

REQUEST:
Let us have the option to set it to the classic Fusion GUI [such as in v9] and this whole thing is fixed. What is so contentious about something like that? An OPTIONAL setting. Something that satisfies the VFX users and stops the noise about the GUI being a disaster. the resolve users can keep their Fusion-inside-of-resolve as is, and we VFX users can be productive again and the griping ends abruptly. it would also demonstrate that BMD respects its customers.

...As for improvements in v17; seriously- don't go there just yet. Fusion is over a decade behind the times when it comes to lacking a number of standard, base-level VFX tools. Like it or not, believe it or not, the VFX user-base represents a large core population of your customers. We only ask that BMD respects us by listening to our needs and granting non-controversial requests that actually make the software better and satisfies us.

I personally appreciate having the icons and labels option in the inspector. Much easier to navigate through the inspector tabs compared to icons only. Even with the mostly done tab icons I prefer having both so that's great.
The customizable toolbar is a nice start too. But as mentioned before, it lacks proper support for macros and scripts to be truly usable. It would also benefit from a label option similar to the Inspector or F9.

But the vertical node flow doesn't really exist in Standalone. It's nice that you did it for Resolve, but why not in Fusion Studio? This is literally the most requested feature since F16. A more flexible UI. Yes floating windows exist and are nice for dual screen setups but why not different layouts for single screens? Why is that functionality Resolve exclusive? Don't get me wrong, it's great it's in Resolve but I'm unsure an editor or colorist trying to make a quick mask will dive into the depths of Fusion compared to the vfx artists using only Fusion Studio all day long.
There is a similar argument to be said about the missing OFX effects from Fusion Studio. It's great for Resolve users that they have another Page where they can use the denoiser and such, but an integration into Fusion Standalone would make more/equally sense to me. But I don't want to convolute this UI discussion with other topics.

Are any of the improvements in v17 Resolve valuable to you?
We spend time on Inspector cleanup, toolbar and vertical vs horizontal flow.

There are some promising options in there, although I don't quite understand what you mean by horizontal vs vertical flow.

Also some of the stuff in single monitor workspace would be great to also have when using dual monitors.
Also the option to 'fill' the seperate views with their own editors would be great.

I don't know many Fusion users who use the keyframe editor a lot, but most of us do tons of work in the spline editor. With really widescreen monitors becoming more common a layout where you could have (from left to right) a node editor with a spline editor underneath each other, with the inspector next to them and then the image viewer on the right of that could be really productive.

A full screen node editor on my left screen with the viewer on the right is - for me personally - not as useful. In standalone mode I prefer having the whole UI on my right screen with a full screen viewer on my left screen.

But people coming from Nuke or - something that might be more in your reference/target audience - AE will be looking for other options to improve their experience.

Is there a technical reason why these layout presets for Resolve aren't available in standalone? Lots of us still use Fusion standalone primarily for more difficult/demanding shots, so it would be great to have some layout options there to try out as well.

Are any of the improvements in v17 Resolve valuable to you?
We spend time on Inspector cleanup, toolbar and vertical vs horizontal flow.

I'm not sure that I understand your question correctly. Are you saying that we need to install Resolve to get an idea of what's to come??? If so, why would I? I don't use Resolve. I'm only interested in Fu standalone.



^-- We need ALL that back please.

So to chime in: +1

vertical vs horizontal flow.

Why is this one option not available in Fusion Studio? This alone would solve a lot of problems for users with wide monitors that are now common. It’s omission from Fusion Studio is frustrating given it was implemented in Resolve.

Are any of the improvements in v17 Resolve valuable to you?
We spend time on Inspector cleanup, toolbar and vertical vs horizontal flow.

The vertical vs horizontal workflows doesn't seem to be available in Fusion Studio. Even in Resolve, the layout presets doesn't seem to be working well enough in dual-screen mode, but I still haven't tested them thoroughly to report these issues.

Back to Fusion Studio, without the vertical and horizontal flows implemented in Resolve, we have nothing that allows us to customize the UI to suit our needs. Before Fusion 16, there was a layout system that we could tweak either from the UI or by writing Lua layouts. Fusion 16 took the UI option away, so the Fusion community had to rely on writing Lua layouts and scripts to customise the UI. Now, Fusion 17 seems to have broken that option. We have been trying to figure out what happened exactly and how we can work around it with no luck so far. There is a thread, maybe more, on the subject over at the We Suck Less forums. I am not going to link to it since, as far as I remember, adding external URLs is generally discouraged, but one of these threads is around the top of the page, so you won't miss it.

As for the Inspector cleanup and toolbar improvements, I haven't even checked whether these made it to Fusion Studio or they are limited to Resolve like the horizontal vs vertical flows, since I have been stuck on the basic task of even setting up the Fusion layout to how I usually like to work.

^-- We need ALL that back please.

+1

Please stop using so many pull-down menus. I was tired of click, click, click,....

Please stop using so many icons that don't make sense. the toolbar is pointless.

Please stop using the arrow keys in the timeline. I'm having trouble moving keyframes and moving between nodes.

Why do we need to fight vertically and horizontally? It will change from time to time. Let's put everything to good use.

Please understand that you are heading in a direction we do not want.

Please stop using the arrow keys in the timeline. I'm having trouble moving keyframes and moving between nodes.

I don't mind them shuffling around to have Resolve users have a consistent usage of the arrow keys. But it wasn't shuffled around, much functionality was just taken away.

How do I jump between nodes now? Up and down in the flow just goes up and down not upstream or downstream.
Nudging key frames is gone in the Spline Editor.


If you're taking something away, not because you're replacing it with something better, but because you don't want to confuse Resolve users, then please make sure people have a way of setting it up again.
Small things like this can make or break a workflow.

And in 17 there are two bugs that make it even more annoying. The first is that you can't even use any assigned keys when a Spline modifier is active, and the second is that 17 will just destroy or switch around the custom key frame files.

Both of these bugs have been reproduced by support.

This is especially annoying because I'm from Germany, and using a germany keyboard. The default keys for some shortcuts simply do not exist on my keyboard, so I need to create custom ones.

And +1 to the viewer controls. Too many drop-downs. Disable it by default so Resolve users can see a simple, clean UI, if that was the initial goal, but bring it back please.

And this is coming from someone who didn't use Fusion the last 20 years but only for the last 3 years. Much of that time was spent with Fusion 16 and 17. I only used F9 very briefly. I'm very accustomed to the new UI, but there are only so many buttons on my Wacom, not enough to get all the viewer controls back that I frequently use.

+1

In my opinion, there are some good things in the UI changes since v16, such as moving the Time Ruler to the center of the screen by default, and implementing virtual sliders and buttons to move between keyframes in the Inspector panel.
However, most of the rest are deterioration or simply feature reductions, and the "improvements" you refer to are really just fixes to bring them back.
I'm not nostalgic, I know there are many things to improve in the Fu9 UI, but they have not been touched since Fu16, and it seems that things that were fine as they were have been changed for the worse.

●Inability to display each tool in the toolbar with only a text label.
(Putting aside the evaluation of the revamped icons themselves, if this feature had been kept, it would not have been so unpopular at the time.)
●Wasted space in panels and toolbars that use icons.
●Inability to freely rearrange and tab each panel on the screen.
●Inefficiency of storing buttons in pull-down or hierarchical menus.
●Changing the size of nodes depending on settings.
●Color limitations with color labels.
●Buttons to call up the panels (Spline, Timeline, etc.) which are newly created instead of tabs are placed at unnecessary distances from the Flow panel.
(Furthermore, the row of these buttons at the top of the screen itself feels unnecessary, because if Bin's functions evolved properly, there would be no need for the Effects panel.)

These are all problems that did not exist in Fu9, but have been present since Fu16.
I sincerely hope that these will be fixed first, and that eventually real "improvements" will be made.

+1 to what Ghonshi wrote above this post.
Very well well put, both the praise and the critique.

I also would say that the general design language since F16 is a plus in my opinion. The darker color, the cleaner flow/Spline Editor and general look of the existing buttons are modern and sleek in my opinion.
And I think if the UI would be brought to a more efficient customizable way similar to F9, then more people would actually use newer versions. In many ways I'm glad that I'm not that used to F9, simply because F17 is much faster for me to render and I've grown accustomed to the layout. Which doesn't mean that I don't find many of the decisions unintuitive, even without comparing it to F9.

I don't mind the general look of the new(ish) UI. I'm really just missing what was taken away.

All in all, I do look forward to F18. The few changes (excluding the arrow key changes) that were made to 17 are small but the right steps.

Hopefully after this thread it's clear what most users need from the Fusion UI. And hopefully you can find a way to support Resolve and Fusion Studio in a similar fashion, so that the missing Layouts and features that are in Resolves Fusion Page will make it to Fusion Studio as well.

+1 to what Ghonshi wrote above this post.
Very well well put, both the praise and the critique.

I also would say that the general design language since F16 is a plus in my opinion. The darker color, the cleaner flow/Spline Editor and general look of the existing buttons are modern and sleek in my opinion.
And I think if the UI would be brought to a more efficient wand customizable way similar to F9, then more people would actually use newer versions. In many ways I'm glad that I'm not that used to F9, simply because F17 is much faster for me to render and I've grown accustomed to the layout. Which doesn't mean that I don't find many of the decisions unintuitive, even without comparing it to F9.

I don't mind the general look of the new(ish) UI. I'm really just missing what was taken away.

All in all, I do look forward to F18. The few changes (excluding the arrow key changes) that were made to 17 are small but the right steps.

Hopefully after this thread it's clear what most users need from the Fusion UI. And hopefully you can find a way to support Resolve and Fusion Studio in a similar fashion, so that the missing Layouts and features that are in Resolves Fusion Page will make it to Fusion Studio as well.

I have been using Fusion since version 7, and I am not against the new more modern look. I don't care for it that much and I personally preferred the older look, but the look itself is not something that is bothering me. I am using Fu16 instead of Fu9, because Fu9 has become increasingly unstable for me.

All I want is a functional UI that fit my needs and doesn't hinder me when I am working in Fusion. I am not even overly attached to the tabbed interface of Fu9, as long as I get enough customisability to allow me to use Fusion the way I like to, I would be okay with the UI.

Another thing that has been mentioned multiple times before is the fact that everything is hidden in a menu now. I don't want to go clicking on menus upon menus to achieve the things I want to do. Fu9 had loads of buttons. Most of the things that we used to do regularly in the viewer, for instance, can be accessed with a single click of a button. That is gone and the alternative BMD provided is less functional.

This is the issue. It is the loss of functionality not the change of the UI per se. If they changed the UI to something that is more functional and makes more sense, I would be okay with it.

Hey All

I know the interface is touchy subject. I did prefer the tight and efficient F9 interface, but I also understand why Back Magic would try to consolidate their software platforms.

I too think that there is room for improvement on the current interface, but do think the icons and the arrow-key functionality in spline view, and when editing polygon mask points in Fu17 is very much appreciated. Thank you.

I would also add that processing speed and new features are more important to me than the interface. Fusion 16 and now 17 is still very fast. Faster than 9 is for me. Those sort of developments are more important to me. I say -- give us some new image manipulation tools we didn't even know we needed instead of more changes to the interface.

However, I would like to make this suggestion. Customizable hot keys will probably be the way I get around the multi-clicking of the interface, as much as possible. I would love to see a better hotkey editor. One where you can search/filter for keywords, one that can find and existing hotkey easily by pressing the hotkey when the editor is open.

However -- I did notice that there are some window/view options that are not available in the hotkey editor. Things like NORMALIZE VIEW could be useful, but I do not see it as an option in the hotkey editor. It is critical that all interface options have the ability for a hot key. If there is a button for it, there should be an option to make that button a hotkey.

Normalize View used to be a button right under the view port we could click and toggle easily when we needed to look at something. Assigning it to an easy hotkey would make it useful again instead of dropping into the ... menu all the time. Especially because this option to normalize the view is usually something I need to view briefly and quickly. Click + DropDown + Select to turn on, then the same 3 clicks to turn it off is not as good as "On/Off/On/Off" real fast while I am checking something.

Anyway, I am glad everyone is so passionate about Fusion, and the interface. it is because we really enjoy this software.

Gnite all - stay safe.

However, I would like to make this suggestion. Customizable hot keys will probably be the way I get around the multi-clicking of the interface, as much as possible. I would love to see a better hotkey editor. One where you can search/filter for keywords, one that can find and existing hotkey easily by pressing the hotkey when the editor is open.

If BMD just released a Fusion keyboard or panel, I bet we'd all be happy. At least those of us with large desks. BMD would get hardware sales from Fusion, and we'd get our controls back.

Are any of the improvements in v17 Resolve valuable to you?
We spend time on Inspector cleanup, toolbar and vertical vs horizontal flow.

Peter,

Thank you for your response and I am sure many others appreciate that you are on the forum and listening to users.

As you can see from Fusion UI discussions, users seem to have different requirements of Fusion, be it the type of work (motion graphics, VFX, Animation, Roto Scoping, Compositing, Matte painting, etc.. ) to the physical setup (Monitors, Font Sizes etc...) and Fusion 17 (16) seems to have overlooked this.

The improvements made to V17 in Resolve would be definitely be beneficial but as others have voiced it would be great if we were able to have customisable options (Such as those in Fusion 9). The base code to do this existed in V16 and a lot of us hacked the Layout to get a somewhat customisable UI (and hide things like the action strip), this option is not available in V17 as it appears the layout is now overwritten/locked by Fusion.

So speaking personally, UI customisation similar to V9 and for myself 150% font size would also be great (100 and 200 are good but miles apart). Also some integration to the speed editor in Fusion Studio would be fantastic, I notice a lot of people buying Resolve + Speed Editor but are Fusion Studio users.

I'm relatively late to the party. I bought a Fusion Studio Hardware Key (Dongle) due to some install issues on Linux and now have Resolve 17, Fusion 9, and Fusion 17 installed. The difference between 9 and 17 is quite significant. I can understand why the developers want to push Fusion to have the look and feel of Resolve, but in doing that many significant controls were either hidden away or eliminated.

So count me with the +1 crowd. Please return the Fusion UI to what it was before. Return Fusion Studio and the Fusion page in Resolve to the level of productivity that was possible with earlier versions.

Thanks.

And another big plus +1. I have tried again and again to use the new UI and like pretty much everyone else found it to be very poor for any sort of complex VFX work. Compared to fu9 I can only work at a much slower speed, something I can't really afford to do. Please, please return at least a subset of the fu9 interface (as an option maybe?) - the number of pro users that have found the same thing (see the many many posts here and on WSL) must count for something!

And to clarify - this isn't just users complaining about a new interface because it's something they're not used to. The new UI actively slows down the use of the software and given that the speed of Fusion has always been one of its main assets this is a very bad thing.

In response to the suggestion that a special panel or keyboard is what we all need just for operating Fusion in order to make us all happy:

Sorry, no. If I am going to shell out a pile of dough just to get Fusion's former basic logical design features back, I'd be expecting a mountain of VFX tools included to bring it into the 21st century as well so it isn't so antiquated.

And a special piece of hardware for that wouldn't solve the wasted real estate on the screen, either.
I would much prefer to pay yearly maintenance fees like before just for the assurance we'd be getting the tools we've been screaming for for over a decade that has put Fusion so far behind.

What is needed is for BMD to:
A) restore the efficiency that has been removed from Fusion by letting the end user decide how the GUI should be - including the customization function that is now long gone AND adding the option to use the v9 GUI, FFS.

B) start dedicating themselves to injecting some standard VFX tools that have been long absent. These would include but would not be limited to:
- Deep
- VDB import
- USD

And they could start being progressive with entirely new functions. They could put their once-groundbreaking (but now ancient) functions to retirement by showing some bold leadership with this dreamy idea:
- PBR shader interchange

IMHO: it seems that BMD, making Fusion something where you 'pay a tiny fee now and never pay again for an update or render node' has the idea in mind that we're all complaining when we're not even paying extra for all the things we want. Well, they set that up.

I'd pay handsomely right now for all of the above if that was all going to happen. I'd rather pay up every year than have no significant tool additions and a GUI that cripples productivity.

I keep being told 16 and 17 is faster-- well, I have yet to see that on my machine. Maybe it's the hardware, who knows. I'm willing to take everyone else's word for it. Faster? Great. Fusion has always been faster. I'd expect that every version gets faster.
But Fusion also used to be way ahead of the curve and on top of development. Nuke stole piles of Fusion's concepts and functions and yes, even it's GUI from v6.
But now Fusion is over ten years behind in standard VFX tools?
WTF!?

Nuke stole piles of Fusion's concepts and functions and yes, even it's GUI from v6.

Interesting, tell me more. I can't find any significant differences between Nuke 5 and 6 between which Fusion 6 was released.

+1 for me too.
I feel like Fusion is problematic (both the Resolve & Standalone version) from the very start you open it.
There are things I just don't understand as choice like having this "keyframe / spline" windows ridiculously small when what you do is review a timeline like Editing.
Imagine for a second your cut page or Edit timeline be very narrow, everyone would think that's unpractical.

Then there are things, I have very hard time to understand wether it's legacy stuff (I come from a NukeX background so can't say if these were present before)
-By default the zoom/pan control with the mouse is such a pain. I always tell student to fix this in the interface (preferences) before doing anything because that's how 99.99999% of the softwares work in the world (beside Fusion apparently). For a beginner who might want to hop in the compositing train is very counter-intuitive and may scare them.
-The fact the node do not snap by default, I think snapping between each other would be nice as a default in the interface. I also would LOVE to have this feature added into Resolve Color page (than & sticky Note + underlay + better node management in the graph cos complexe color pipe can be a real pain to manage).

Now about the window, to me, the only interface that's working correctly for my workflow now is the one added in Resolve 17 (and magically absent from Fusion Standalone) of the Vertical node graph that has the interface configure pretty much like a standard with enough space for keyframes, a large enough window for monitoring and a node graph next to the dedicated options so you don't have to constantly go back and fourth and zoom in zoom out the interface (especially with this awful default control) like this:

I'd really want this to be part of the standalone for a start, it will not fix everything but this will be a bit better than the infinite chunkiness that the floating window provide which isn't renowned for its "crash-free" usability.

I understand the philosophy to have the interface locked so Blackmagic can focus on the control surface for the user experience but, as of now, compositing is done with a mouse or a tablet and it's not about to change that soon unless you bring mind reading to the equation.
Since there are no surface, the benefit for having a fixed interface is close to 0 but the handicap is enormous when compared to the competition (or the former version of the software when it was under eye-on).

I find it very difficult to use in production, not because fusion is hard but just because the interface is set up in a way that's not optimized and non customizable.
I also always prefer to teach for that reason Nuke instead of Fusion first because students had time struggling with just getting the interface to behave correctly for a project which meant less time for actually doing anything in compositing.

Some great constructive feedback above. Just hope we haven't scared Peter away!

Are any of the improvements in v17 Resolve valuable to you?
We spend time on Inspector cleanup, toolbar and vertical vs horizontal flow.

The inspector cleanup and toolbar are still regressions. They're worse than version 9. Whether you improved them in Resolve compared to v15 doesn't matter, they're still less functional and reduce productivity compared to Fusion v9.

The vertical flow layout is not available in Fusion. I can't tell if you're offering to move it to Fusion or not. But even if it was, it's still a regression from v9, where tabs could be freely reconfigured. In Fusion 9, I can simultaneously have vertical AND horizontal flow views, because I can create as many flow views as I want and either float or dock them wherever I please. I can even have my second monitor hold 12 columns of inspector (tool control) views, including modifier views. I can even nest views using MultiViews so I can have a hierarchy of tabs. I can save these custom layouts as .layout files and recall specific ones for different types of tasks. Those .layout files were available in v16, but are not in v17, so there's some regression even between v16 and v17. So from our perspective we're seeing significant regressions in the UI between every version except v8 - v9.

v7 - v8: Lost the ability to view two or more comps simultaneously. Lost contextual help.

v8 - v9: None that I can think of.

v9 - v16: Lost the viewer toolbars, multibuttons, text labels, modifier color flags, nested views, tear off views, customizable and floating toolbars, etc.. Decreased the amount of controls viewable in the inspector. Decreased the range of flow view zooming.

v16 - v17: Lost the ability to save and load layouts.

v17 - v17.1: Lost viewshaders.

And that's just the objective regressions. Subjectively, some people consider the icons, tool representations in the flow, text alignment/justification, and color selection to be regressions.

Chad's got it, as do the rest of the posts above.
This GUI issue is just a big blot on Fusion and will be bitched about until BMD gets the message and do something about it.
So please, peter: listen to your user-base. Gawd!

@GeoffreyKenner:
As for Fusion being hard/slow to navigate with a mouse:
Nuke is as well in exactly the same manner.
FWIIW, i hounded the Foundry incessantly for a year or so about how it desperately needed to have proper pen and tablet functions like Fusion does, because for a long time if you had a pen and tablet in Nuke, you couldn't pan and zoom with just the pen- you still needed the same keyboard shortcuts the mouse did.
Eventually they implemented that; and pen and tablet functionality works the same in Fusion which had it many years beforehand.
[it is way faster to work with a pen and tablet in Fusion- just as it is in Nuke] You can work quickly and effortlessly with one hand if you set up the pen buttons in a logical manner.

+1

I won't get into details. You guys are doing a perfectly good job describing issues.

+1

I'm new to Fusion, but having dabbled with it for about 15 years, I can recognize that my shiny new install of 17 here at my new studio job using Fusion has lost a lot of UI functionality and flexibility from previous versions.

Coming from Nuke and having had the supervisor role a couple/3 times, one thing I've noticed is how wildly different everyone's interface style is. Funny actually how some people set things up like Fusion (well, v9 anyway) to where I can almost tell a comper who "came up" on Fusion just by how they have their interface set up. There are also certain characteristic choices where I can almost spot someone who is an old guard Digital Domainer who might have been using Nuke prior to the Nuke 5 makeover where they basically switched to the Shake-like layout. There are people with wild 2 monitor setups that have huge viewer windows. There are people who have 2 or 3 viewers open at once (matte painters, doing more 3d setups). There are folks who like to keep scopes open and other utilities. There are those that have their node buttons condensed to just icons. There are those who get rid of the node button icons entirely and fly with just right clicks or tab menus. There are those who straight up stick with the defaults. There are those who change everything. Everything.

I guess my point is - with UI stuff, no one is the same and it needs to be flexible/modular enough to support all of these different ways of working. And the golden rule, is to never... ever... break backwards compatibility. Always leave a legacy checkbox somewhere in the prefs that allows someone to revert, and layer in the changes that are able to be undone if needed.

Kind of seems like your UI has gone rogue and now might be a good time to restore order.

I'm still on my honeymoon with it and just enjoying looking at a different layout for now, but it'd be even nicer if I could set things up exactly like I had them over in the other software and not have to completely rewire my brain. Flexible, dockable, modular, with the ability to skin+ customize where needed.

Hopefully it's not at the point of no return and some work could be done to re-enable some of the lost functionality?

Is there an active beta group or the like where communication on these issues has an active dialogue?

Short version is, Fusion 9 had a professional UI, and Resolve has traditionally had a semi-professional UI.

In the transition to Fusion 16, the professional UI of Fusion 9 was replaced with a semi-professional UI modeled after Resolve, which is backwards.

Instead, Resolve's UI should have learned from Fusion when attempting to "harmonize" the apps so that both programs would have a professional UI instead of being crippled with a semi-professional one.

Resolve already has a professional feature set, but lacks the flexible, modular UI to match, and now Fusion is being similarly crippled.

Instead, Resolve's UI should have learned from Fusion

And if you visit the Resolve forum, you'll hear many user requests for a more flexible UI and for many UI features that were standard in Fusion.

It's not that we're being cranky, the things we're asking for are also the things Resolve users want. We just know how those things used to be implemented first hand.

are pleasing, and it has a nice overall aesthetic.

But where it lacks compared to version 9 is the usable screen space. Below is a visual breakdown of v17 vs. v9; I also included a graphic of version 9 after you hit the F4 key to maximize the viewport, which you can't do in 17.

My breakdown uses a 1920x1080 monitor, but similar results will happen regardless of what resolution your monitor is.

Left is v17. The usable viewer workspace is 1,092,445p pixels, or 53% of the available screen space.

Middle is v9. The usable workspace is 1,376,036 pixels, or 66% of the available screen space.

Right is v9 + F4. Of course, you won't be doing the majority of your work with a fullscreen viewer, but it is super helpful to have the ability to toggle so quickly. The usable workspace is 1,701,408 pixels or 82% of the available screen space.

+ 100 As well on this.

I'm not going to repeat what everyone else has said but they are all valid points.

+EXR 2.0 as well
+USD support

My breakdown uses a 1920x1080 monitor, but similar results will happen regardless of what resolution your monitor is.

Fusion 9 allows you to run a floating view fullscreen. It's over 99%. Fusion 17.1 does not.

Not a terribly useful image, I suppose.

Fullscreen.png (34.76 KiB) Viewed 44271 times

@JayBills explained a very strong point quite clearly.
Bottom line is we're all being forced into a less configurable [virtually un-configurable] GUI, with no option to revert it to what us old timers got used to over the past 20+ years: a logical, productive [and space-efficient] layout that let us set it up to be most efficient for the individual's work habits.
Indeed yes; no doubt you can spot the ones who have been on Fusion for a very long time based on their layouts.
And Yes, there is a beta forum and beta group however you'll find the GUI was brought up endlessly there the instant the change took place. We've been at this for ages now.

I'll +1 this discussion. I have used Fusion since the 4DVision days. The Fusion Studio 17.1 UI is a mess and a substantial downgrade from v9 and lower.

I'm fairly new to fusion, but I've seen quite a few tutorials with the old UI and after reading through this topic, I think I get where people are coming from.

Having used multiple 3D packages over the years, where you are able to create pretty much any layout you want I understand the need for good customization options.

+1 from me.

+1

but BMD doesn't seems to listen to fusion customers...You have a powerful tool in your hand BMD..why are you not improving it???if you had listened to your fusion requests, you would know how fusion is lacking behind ..please listen this time and atleast in the next virtual NAB we as a fusion enthusiasts expecting a major improvements in fusion standalone like you do for resolve.

but BMD doesn't seems to listen to fusion customers...

Resolve users are also asking for this.

”For next NAB it will be great!” still lives after all these years...

Reviving this thread to acknowledge that the layout presets have found their way into Fusion Studio! I'm very happy about this addition!

It's baffling how neither Blackmagic nor Foundry give 0 care to fixing UI and UX issues

The new interface is no better than the old one, but much, much worse. So much so that it makes it almost impossible to work in fusion. Why are you doing this to us? For what?

It's baffling how neither Blackmagic nor Foundry give 0 care to fixing UI and UX issues

Well, to be fair there is active work done in the dreaded N-word software on the UX side. Whether it is what everyone wants, maybe. Because “everyone” wants “everything”. But it is being done. If UX just means fix the damn bugs, I agree.

+1

Also want the ability to tie scripts to tool bar buttons again. Having to track through scripts menu is pain when you do same action multiple times