User Manual Fusion 9 July 2017 Welcome Fusion is the world’s most advanced compositing software for visual effects artists, broadcast and motion graphic designers and 3D animators. With over 30 years of development, Fusion has been used on over 1000 major Hollywood blockbuster feature films! Fusion features an easy and powerful node based interface so you can construct complex effects simply by connecting various types of processing together. That’s super easy and extremely fast! You get a massive range of features and effects included, so you can create exciting broadcast graphics, television commercials, dramatic title sequences and even major feature film visual effects! Grant Petty CEO Blackmagic Design Contents 3 1 Getting Started 5 Contents 2 Preparing Projects and Images 38 3 Flow Node Editor 51 4 Control Panel 96 5 Viewers 124 6 Time Ruler 180 7 Timeline Editor 192 8 Spline Editor 216 9 Bins 248 10 Polylines, Masks and Motion Paths 269 11 Tracking 309 12 Working in 3D 333 13 Auxiliary Channels 385 14 Introduction to Controls and Customization 398 15 Final and Preview Renders 424 16 Preferences 441 17 Steroscopic and Optical Flow 492 18 Network Rendering and Licensing 509 19 Fusion Connect 533 Chapter 1 4 Chapter – 1 Getting Started Getting Started Getting Started 5 Getting Started 6 Introduction to Fusion 6 Chapter – 1 System Requirements 6 User Interface Overview 8 Navigating the Interface 12 About Compositions 15 Example Workflow 17 Getting Started Getting Started 6 Introduction to Fusion Fusion is the world’s most advanced visual effects and motion graphics compositing application Chapter – 1 for Mac OS, Windows and Linux. It has been used for compositing on over 1,000 Hollywood blockbuster feature films and prime time television shows, including Avengers: Age of Ultron, The Hunger Games, Breaking Bad, and Downton Abbey, as well as hundreds of commercials, music videos and game productions. Compositing is the art of blending imagery from multiple sources to create a new whole. The Getting Started job of the visual effects artist or motion graphics designer is to take all of the discrete elements that make up a shot, and turn them into a single image that matches the artistic vision of the production. To accomplish this, you use techniques as diverse as color correction, green screen replacement, tracking, particles, blur and glow effects. Node based compositing was once only available to large visual effects studios creating the most sophisticated visual effects in the world. Now, with Fusion, the efficiency and flexibility of powerful node based composting is available to everyone. Fusion uses its unique node based compositing environment with over 200 image processing tools to improve the compositing workflow. There is also a deep and powerful Macro system for combining tools together as a way for you to create your own plug-ins without needing to know how to write code. Fusion is a resolution independent compositing application. That means it can use images of varying resolutions within a single composition but more importantly it normalizes the tool controls not matter what the resolution of the image maybe. For example, a .4 blur results in the same effect in HD, UltraHD or 8K. Similarly, Transform controls are normalized so the center of the image is always .5 irrespective of the resolution. There are two versions of Fusion available. The free version of Fusion for Mac OS and Windows can be downloaded from the Blackmagic Design web site. It contains all the features and tools for a single artist or small studio to produce incredible Ultra HD visual effects and motion graphics. Larger facilities can choose to purchase Fusion Studio to access more advanced features, including higher resolution output up to 32K by 32K, third party OFX plug-in support, network based distributed rendering, as well as 3D Stereoscopic and Optical Flow analysis tools. If you are new to Fusion, we recommend reading through the Getting Started section of this manual. It will introduce you to the user interface and take you step by step through an example workflow that will get you up and running quickly by covering the essential concepts. System Requirements Before installing Fusion, you should review the following system requirements to make sure you are getting the best possible performance. Hardware Requirements Processor Intel and AMD processors; Core i7 or AMD multi-core processor minimum. Graphics OpenGL and OpenCL capable graphics cards with 2GB memory minimum. 3D scenes that make heavy use of textures will require more graphics memory. RAM 7 8GB of memory minimum; 16GB or greater is strongly recommended. USB Port 1 open USB port for Fusion Studio hardware Licensing lock. Hard Drives Chapter – 1 1GB of hard disk space for installation. TIP: Fusion will work on MacBook Pro, or Windows laptops with Nvidia or AMD graphics. Getting Started Software Requirements Operating Systems Mac OS Yosemite, Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit, Microsoft Windows 8 64-bit, Linux Centos 6.x and 7.x 64bit. QuickTime Apple QuickTime required to read and write MOV. Keyboard and Mouse Conventions You can use Fusion on Mac OS, Windows or Linux platforms. Commands that are platform specific have been documented whenever possible. This section summaries the differences. In most cases Mac OS and Windows keyboard commands are identical, with the Command and Ctrl keys being interchanged. The Mac OS Delete key is isolated below the F12 key and is the equivalent of the Backspace key on Windows. It is highly recommended that you use a three button mouse for contextual menus and navigational controls. Although you can use a combination of keyboard short cuts to mimic the three button mouse functionality, you will find you are much more productive investing in a three button mouse. In this documentation we assume a three button mouse is present and we refer to the buttons as follows: Mouse Button Documentation Reference Left mouse button Click Middle mouse button Middle click Right mouse button Right click Working with a Stylus Fusion can be used with a graphics tablet and stylus. The stylus can often come in handy when working with the Paint tool or rotoscoping. To make your stylus work efficiently with Fusion, you can set the pen tip to be your left mouse click, the top thumb button to work with a right mouse click and the lower thumb button to work as the middle mouse click. Using Blackmagic Design Capture and Playback Hardware 8 Chapter – 1 Getting Started Blackmagic Design capture and playback products like DeckLink PCIe cards, can be used for monitoring your work on an HD, Ultra HD or DCI 4K display. The Video Monitoring Preferences allow you to select the type of video card you are using, the output resolution and the pixel format. User Interface Overview Once you install Fusion and open the application, a new, empty project opens. The projects you create in Fusion are called compositions or “comps.” When you start working on a comp, you’ll use five main areas. Viewers, Work Panel, Control Panel, Time Ruler, Tools Bar Viewers 9 There are two identical Viewers in Fusion that are displayed above the Work Panel. The viewers can show 2D images from your composition as well as any 3D environment that you set up. You can load images into either viewer or use one viewer for images and the other viewer to display waveforms, histograms and vectorscopes. You can create floating Viewers if additional viewers are needed, or use an external video monitor by installing a DeckLink card. Chapter – 1 Getting Started Dual viewers are accelerated using graphics hardware Work Panel The Work Panel switches between the three main editing panels that you use to construct your composition in Fusion. The three main panels are the Flow Node Editor, the Timeline Editor and the Spline Editor. There are also tabs to switch to a scripting console, a comments windows and a chat window. The Work Panel uses the tabs in the upper right to switch to different editors Flow Node Editor The Flow Node Editor is the default Work Panel view and is the primary work area you use to construct your compositions. You use the Flow Node Editor to create and display the structure of your composition much the way you use a layer list to put together elements in a graphics application. Instead of rigid layers, your composition is viewed as a schematic or flow chart where each image, mask, filter effect, and graphic, as well any other element in your comp, is represented by a tile called a Tool. The Flow Node Editor is used to connect tools together to modify how images are processed. By default tools in the Flow connect from left to right, but can be set to flow from top to bottom, or all directions simultaneously. The direction of the Flow is not related to how the Flow is processed. For example, the downstream nodes do not have to be below the upstream nodes because Fusion follows the arrows not the flow. The schematic view offers a lot of flexibility for connecting tools, including the ability to branch a tool’s output into separate image processing streams and collapse entire groups of tiles to view a single thumbnail image of several tools’ outputs. 10 Chapter – 1 Getting Started The Flow Node Editor with tools connected to create a composition Control Panel The Control Panel is a tabbed panel on the right side of the Fusion window that you use to modify a tool’s parameters. When a tool is selected in the Flow Node Editor, its parameters and settings appear in the Control Panel.