Just watched an update on new features in Resolve/Fusion 20.
Some major ones:
Full deep compositing toolset. (One thing lacking compared to Nuke, Flame doesn’t have)
Proper use of embedded exr layers fully integrated into the toolset (One thing lacking compared to Nuke, Flame doesn’t have)
Magic Mask tool improvements (It was a great tool already, looking forward to playing with it).
Massively improved Text Tool (No comment).
Improved warping tools (No comment).
Not saying I want to use Fusion (Transform tool is awful) but seeing lots of development there.
We use Fusion a fair bit for Magic Mask. The holdout mattes are actually pretty good. I’ll be interested to see how the depth map tool is now as they are suggesting it has improved a whole heap.
I’m not going to lie, if some of the simpler tools were better (the transform tool is just horrible to use) and the user interface was a bit more polished then I may have switched to it by now. Some of the more complex tools are actually pretty good (such as the UV unwrap which I have also used Fusion for). It is fast too. Give Fusion a couple more years of improvement (apparently they have spent the past 2-3 years recoding) and Fusion may give Nuke and Flame a run for the money. When you talk money, you can’t really beat the price.
Deeps is a big deal. It may put a serious bug in small/medium studios budgets to reconsider renewing Nuke, or at least reduce the amount of seats. Specially those dealing with medium to big environments and CG assets work. The new tools do need some improvements that will probably follow in subsequent updates. A dCustom tool is essential I think. It should expand considerably what you can do with Deeps.
The coordinates system not being based from the centre of frame. I appreciate that you can change it from a percentage to a pixel value but it should be zeros or 100 for positioning or scale.
No skew. This is a biggie for me. Sure, you can use a separate skew node but it really needs to be in the same node.
The UI is not as super friendly as Flame or Nuke. If I want to move the pivot point (centre in Flame) you have to hit tab repeatedly and if you accidentally click on the wrong spot you need to do it all again. If I want to carefully position where that centre point aligns with something else, having the tool to move the image in the centre of the image when the pivot is somewhere completely different makes it really difficult.
Not being able to slide the values from the values box also is terrible. They need sliders in the transform tool. I understand you can customise this tool to do that but I shouldn’t need to learn python and spend time testing something that should be the default.
I appreciate that it is a 2D transform but I would still appreciate the option of rotating the 2D object in 3D space. Sure, you can move to DVE for this but then you are missing tools from the transform tool that are needed. If you could combine elements of the transform and DVE then it would be a lot closer but still missing stuff.
If you didn’t use transform in almost every setup then I could stomach it. More than happy to be enlightened about how to get around these things. The transform tool in Flame is a lot more capable and the hotkey combination works fast in comparison. Ditto for Nuke.
I should also add, I don’t understand why the OpenFX Resolve tools that are in the Fusion tab aren’t available in Fusion Studio. That has always been a head scratcher for me. I actually think the Resolve transform tool, though still lacking, is a lot more capable than the default Fusion Transform.
It took forever to convince Eyeon to give us pixel coordinates for the transform tools. Their take was that normalized values was the best way of doing a resolution independent method. They finally did it as a patch and it seem it has stayed that way since then.
Yeah well there’s a lot to unfold here @AdamArcher - for sure things are different for Flame and Fusion - first of all, lot of things are done in Flame in a way to “get to the point” kind of operating stuff, while in Fusion/Nuke I feel the importance of setting up comps similar to the way you do it in batch.
@milanesa already said that yeah, if you go down to “Reference Size” section of Transform node, then either use “Frame Format settings or you type whatever resolution there” it’s going to convert 0-1 values to (let’s say) 0-1920 and 0-1080.
In Fusion, there is a significance in setting everything in truly resolution independent way - meaning you can have 12k plates originally, but do your work in 1/4 proxy and still be able to just switch to final resolution and your comp will look basically the same.
As for sliding values - I hold CTRL and slide cursor over values no problem. Not sure what the issue is here - please elaborate.
As for hitting tab repeatedly to get to axis or rotation gizmo - I feel ya, but I take it as one of those things I can live with and rest on advantages of using Fusion (price, speed, being more “artsy” than Nuke so I can do more than just hardcore vfx comps).
As for not having skew - yeah that’s something I really feel should be taken care of quickly, for concentenation purposes.
As for 3D transforms - well I’d say that for me, Fusion is one of the best 3D systems out here that I’ve used in productions. It takes a bit to set a layer in 3D space but once you there, you can do all kinds of crazy things and they render rather quickly. Some 3D displacement effects I’ve did in Fusion would bring Nuke to it’s knees.
If you guys have more questions regarding Fusion, I’m happy to answer.