Blackmagic Software & Hardware>Design Fusion Studio for Mac and Windows (Dongle)

Blackmagic Design Fusion Studio for Mac and Windows (Dongle)

Harnessing the benefits of a Node-based workflow, Blackmagic Design’s Fusion Studio delivers a complete 2D/3D software compositing system right on your computer, compatible with macOS 10.10 or later, Windows 8, or 64-bit Windows 10. With resolution independence, it supports images exceeding 32K x 32K and has no restrictions on output resolution. Fusion Studio also leverages GPU acceleration, offloading demanding image processing tasks from your CPU for enhanced performance.

Fusion essentially places an entire VFX studio at your fingertips with keyframe- and spline-based animation tools for controlling the image effects you apply to your footage over time. You can use the keyframe and spline tools to control the included tools, which include Keying and matte tools, particle tools, and vector paint tools. The included 2D and 3D text tools allow you to create and animate text effects from simple to Hollywood-style effects. Fusion also works in 3D space, allowing you to import 3D scenes and models created in other programs, such as Maya, 3ds Max, and Cinema 4D and integrate them into your effects work. Fusion Studio is the paid version of the software, which includes several features that the free version lacks.

General

• Support for all major VR headsets
• 3D Camera Tracking
• Lag-free 90fps viewing
• Planar Tracking
• Planar Stabilisation and steadying
• Planar Rotoscoping
• Delta Keyer and Clean Plate
• Studio Player (supports custom playlists, storyboards, and version tracking)
• Supports ProRes, DNxHR, and MXF support for round tripping between applications
• OpenCL support for GPU acceleration
• Real-time viewing of 3D scenes
• Live-action VR playback
• Supports Stereo VR
• Conversion between VR image formats
• VR Paint and Fix workflow
• VR Motion Graphics and Tiling
• Stabilisation of VR live-action scenes
• VR Colour correction
• Collaboration—Multiple Artists can access the same projects on different machines
• Optical Flow-Based retiming
• Integrated 2D and 3D compositing an animation environment
• Resolution independent with support for images over 32K x 32K
• Mix and match footage of different resolutions, field orders, aspect ratios, and formats within a single project
• Footage of different colour depths can be processed in their native colour depth within a single flow graph
• Responsive UI with interactive, real-time rendering
• Render to multiple formats and resolutions in a single pass, with multiple saver nodes at any position in the flow process
• Seamlessly blend floating point, 64-bit and 32-bit images without concern
• Two-level proxy system for fast, interactive response
• Open and work with multiple comps at once
• Open unlimited floating display views
• Save Custom interface layouts
• Use Independent LUTs for each display view
• Support for dual displays
• A/B split view for comparing shots
• View and edit your project in frames, timecode, or feet+frames modes
• Includes Generation studio wide management software for assigning tasks, tracking assets, and versioning shots
• Includes Avid Connect plugin for using Fusion from the Media Composer timeline

GPU Accelerations

With its GPU acceleration, you get instant feedback while you work so you can see exactly what you’re doing. Whether you’re working alone or with a client, Fusion gives you the real-time control you need so you can spend more time being creative and less time waiting.

Node Based Interface

Fusion uses nodes small icons that represent effects, filters, and other processing can be connected together to easily build up larger and more complex visual effects. Nodes are easy to see and connect together; you can combine tools, images, and objects in any order to create unlimited visual effects. Nodes make it easy to adjust any single part of your project simply by clicking on the node and making an adjustment.

• Intuitive node-based flow-graph interface for building composites
• Branch and connect tools to multiple nodes
• Open and work with multiple comps at once
• Copy and paste tools into other comps
• Group and collapse tools into sub-flow for better organisation
• Drag and drop footage into flow directly from file explorer
• Add notes to any node, or even the flow itself, as reminders or to assist with collaboration
• Render a comp while working on another
• Show thumbnails for images in flow graph
• Integrated Script Debug Console. Step through code, set breakpoints, and have multiple scripts open at the same time

Optical Flow Tools

• Optical Flow analysis for generating forward and back vectors
• Change the speed of a clip using optical flow analysis
• RepairFrame regenerates a frame using optical flow between its two neighbors
• SmoothMotion for smoothing of colour or aux channels using optical flow
• Tween interpolates between two non-sequential images

Stereoscopic 3D Toolset

• Built-in 3D cameras with support for eye separation, convergence and toe in, or Parallel mode
• Disparity stereo map generation, with mapping in both left and right eyes
• New Eye tool for generating new left and right images, with convergence and alignment
• Stereo Align tool for adjusting vertical alignment, convergence, and eye separation
• DisparityToZ and ZToDisparity converts Disparity to and from Z depth
• Global Alignment tool for adjusting a stereo pair without warping
• Stereo Stack and Unstack to combine Left and Right images into a single stereo pair
• Support for 3D stereo viewing systems including OpenGL quad-buffering, anaglyph, side-by-side, stacking, and interlace viewing
• Stereoscopic Hardware Support including NVIDIA 3DVision, Planar and JVC monitors, Christie Digital Cinema Projectors, and Mirage Projectors

Generation

Fusion 16 Studio includes Generation, which is a multiuser management software. Generation helps you manage and track versions of every shot in your studio. You can assign tasks to artists, make notes, and see each team member’s workload to help balance the work and finish projects faster. Fusion 16 Studio also features a bin server to let everyone share and see common assets that are needed for the job. That means you don’t have to copy and track multiple elements on different computers.

Animation Tools

• Display and edit multiple animation splines
• Use Bezier or cubic splines for animation curves
• Scale, shape, and stretch splines
• Set looping parameters for ping-pong, relative, and number of loops
• Use keyframe markers as guides
• Step-in and step-out keyframe modes
• Set guides, markers, and snap-to points
• Use time value offsets and scaling for multiple selected keyframes
• Global ease in and out controls
• Shape box to deform and taper splines

Timeline

• Non-linear timeline display for adjusting element timing
• Trim and position multiple clips simultaneously
• Scrub audio and view waveform within timeline
• Sift the timeline display to show specific tools or groups of tools
• Set guides, markers, and snap-to points
• Integrated spline viewer and editor
• Spreadsheet view for quick editing of animated parameters
• Drag-and-drop sorting of tools in the timeline to better focus on timing and keyframes
• Colour coding of tools and splines

Performance

• Completely multi-threaded rendering, uses every CPU available
• GPU Acceleration of 3D workspace and rendering
• OpenCL Acceleration of computationally intensive tools
• Render and interactive performance scalable with remote nodes
• Designed to work efficiently with extremely large files
• Enhanced file caching for local and networked drives
• Disk and RAM Caching stores processed images for immediate playback
• Cache manager work invisibly in background no user intervention required
• Multiple tools can simultaneously maintain their own cache
• Improve local performance/interactivity with remote render nodes
• Automatic memory tuning
• Images already in cache do not re-render
• Cache output of any node to either RAM or disk
• Region of interest and user-definable domain of definition speed up image processing
• Infinite Canvas eliminates clipping of image areas outside the project bounds

3D Workspace

• A fully integrated 3D compositing environment with lights, camera snap casted shadows
• 3D scene importing via FBX and Alembic, includes models, cameras, lights, and rigs
• Render scenes with many millions of polygons and complex shading
• GPU-based renderer
• Import 3D models from Maya, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, and more
• 3D importing of scenes with matched animation curves, stereo cameras, lighting, and multilevel materials
• Relighting using rich deep pixels and reshading tools to a full GPU renderer
• The GPU render outputs multiple layer types for later processing
• GPU accelerated Ambient Occlusion rendering
• Geometry creation, with primitives and 3D text
• Bending, tapering, and warping of geometry or groups of objects
• Duplicate, Replicate objects to create armies or crowds
• Support for multiple renderers and many scenes in one composition
• Import tracked cameras that match live action and also match 3D animation applications, making a seamless workflow for studios

Multichannel Support

• Use the extra channels in Open EXR files produced by 3D applications to enhance the look of 3D rendered material
• Depth merging combines two images based on the relative position of their pixels, eliminating the concept of foreground and background
• 3D Z -Depth Blur for true depth-of-field focusing
• 3D Shader for relighting object based on the information contained in the normals channel
• 3D Fog applies fog to an image based on depth of each pixel, or an external z-buffer map
• 3D Texture to apply reflection maps and replacement textures to 3D rendered objects
• Use object and material ID’s to mask the effect of any tool
• Use the above tools and techniques with particles and grid warping tools in Fusion, which also produce extra channel information
• Deep multichannel output for Z buffers, normals, UV texture, and World Pass pass, velocity vectors

Deep Pixel Compositing

• Generate deep pixel data like World Position, Normals, UV
• Volumetric Renderer, with full ray casted self shadowing volumes with variable density
• World Position Pass integration of images with occlusion
• Masking and Volumetric Atmospherics using World Position Pass
• OpenCL GPU accelerated for real-time interactivity and rendering

Particles

• 3D flow-based particle suite
• Fully OpenGL accelerated
• Bitmap, geometric, or pixel-based particle styles for increased flexibility
• Variable control over spin, size, velocity, angle, spin, fade, blur, and colour over time
• Modify particle behavior with physics-based tools like gravitational, wind, friction, tangential, point, and gradient forces
• Control modifier tools with effectors and force emitters, based on bitmaps, shapes, or polylines
• Advanced behavioral controls like flocking, turbulence, spawning, and n-body attraction
• N-GON particle style provides a variety of shaded geometric shapes for particles
• Image Emitter tool turns each pixel of an image into a particle
• Modify particle attributes with custom expressions
• Produce depth-of-field blurring on particles based on Z-position
• Animate any particle parameter over time
• Apply motion blur to all particle streams
• Choose from a variety of predefined particle styles and brushes
• Merge separate particle streams together with pMerge tool
• Output Z-buffer position for each particle, and depth blur particles together
• Change particle styles based on collision and other ‘events’
• Network renderable to slash render times

Network Rendering

• Render Fusion comps on remote CPUs using unlimited number of render nodes
• Network rendered previews, tool caches speed the entire production process from start to finish
• Powerful render manager for maximum efficiency
• Assign remote nodes to render groups and submit flow to only specified groups
• Assign priorities to a submitted render to help resolve conflicts in busy environments
• Network render Flipbook previews Disk and Ram caches
• Power Cluster predicatively renders the frames around current time during an interactive session using the remote nodes
• Select the range of frames to be rendered for each flow in the queue, without the need to modify or open the saved flow
• Nodes that become available after a render has begun automatically rejoin the queue

Layer Blending Tools

• Use standard layer blend modes like screen, overlay, multiply, and soft light
• Choose between additive and subtractive merge modes
• Perform Z-depth compositing
• Apply ‘burn in’ overexposure to foreground layer
• Dissolve between layers with standard SMPTE wipes and gradients, or use custom bitmaps to control the dissolve
• Apply calculated motion blur to any tool with animation applied

Paint

• Vector-based paint system
• Paint with hard or soft edge brushes or bit map image brushes
• Choose paint styles including Clone, Emboss, Smear, Stamp, and more
• Use strokes and shapes to paint non-destructively on images
• On-the-fly caching
• Individual strokes can be moved, edited, animated, and tracked
• Supports standard pressure-sensitive tablets; brushes can vary by stroke pressure or velocity
• Infinitely scalable brushes with fine softness control
• Flood fill for magic wand-style operations that work over time
• Bezier and stroke wire removal tools for fast and flexible removal of rigging and other undesirable elements

2D/3D Text Creation

• Complete control over every parameter of a font’s colour, size, kerning, and layout
• Use any TrueType, Open Type, or PS1 type font
• Layout text along spline paths, to a frame, or circle
• Align text to frame, image or path, including horisontal and vertical justification
• Full Unicode support for international and extended character sets
• Manually adjust the kerning and position of every character
• Mix and match fonts, colours, size, and texture in a single tool
• Extrude Text in 3D
• Custom 3D bevel creation
• Use multiple fill, outline, and text borders
• Use modifiers like Scramble, Timecode, and Follower
• Animate built-in ‘type on’ effects, rolls, and crawls
• Transform layout, characters, words, and shading elements separately
• Fills and outlines have individual shading, softness, and glow
• Map images and sequences onto text with a variety of mapping styles
• Store commonly used styles in library swatches for future use
• Transform text in 3D, with independent transforms for the layout, character, and shading components

Tracking

• Unlimited tracking points within a single tracker
• High sub-pixel precision
• Integrated corner positioning, perspective correction, stabilisation, and match moving, all within a single tool
• Adaptive pattern acquisition
• Track paths forward and backward
• Stabilisation based on an unlimited number of track points
• Smooth and stabilize camera motion without eliminating existing pan or zoom
• Automatic selection of best tracking channel, red, green, blue, alpha or luminance
• Choose a manual rotation axis for stabilisation
• Drive the animation of any parameter, path, or tool with tracked data
• Publish and connect individual points on a spline

Creator Tools and Grain

• Fast Noise tool for quick, high-quality noise patterns
• Mandelbrot generator produces scalable fractal images
• Continuous and discontinuous noise options
• Noise detail and noise brightness maps for precision control over noise generation
• Background generator for solid and gradient type backgrounds
• Generate gradients calculated in RGB, HLS, HSV, or LAB colour space
• Unlimited gradient colour points for fine control over gradient progression
• Animate gradient procession over time
• Select from one of six gradient types including linear, radial, and square
• Static, repeat and ping-pong modes for out of bounds gradients
• Day Sky simulates the Sky based on time of year and time
• Plasma generator for frequency interference based noise patterns
• Adjustable grain strength, size, softness, and spacing
• Response curves control amount of grain across a gradient for each colour channel to closely match film stock grain behavior
• Colour differences between grain channels help match non-monochromatic-type grains
• Choose between random or seeded grain noise for repeatable and static noise types

Keying / Matte Tools

• Industry standard Primatte 5 Keyer
• Fusion’s exclusive Ultra Keyer optimised for Blue and Green screen extraction
• Chroma and Luma Keyer for extracting mattes from colour or luminance channels
• Five modes of spill suppression to eliminate even the most difficult reflection halos
• Animated garbage mattes for isolating rigging and set elements
• Adjustable edge gamma and fringe colour correction
• Matte thresholding for semi-transparent region replacement
• Matte blur, gamma, and contrast control for post-key processing of the matte

Image Processing Filters

• Lens-type defocusing with blooming and NGon elements
• Lens flare-style hotspots with occlusion and lens aberrations
• Glow, soft glow, glow under, and glow thresholding modes
• Pre-masks for glow, highlight, dve, and other tools
• Directional blurs for motion and zoom style blurring
• Erode and dilate filters for burn in and overexposure effects
• Sharpen and unsharpen masking
• Sobel and laplacian edge detection
• Custom convolution kernel filtering

Transforms and Warping

• Transform image with high-quality area sampling for excellent antialiasing
• Concatenated transformations speed operations and improve quality
• Apply displacements, dents, and vortexes to any image
• Choose from one of eight drip deformations with control over amplitude, aspect, frequency, and aspect
• True perspective positioning and correction
• Corner pinning for sign replacement and four-point scaling
• Grid-based image warping over an entire image or a specified region
• Define separate source and destination grids for morphing effects
• Complete bezier and smoothing control over each grid point
• Magnet or static selection types for easy manipulation of multiple grid points

Retiming

• Linear and Non-Linear retiming of clips
• Animatable frame interpolation and blending for smoother motion

Rotoscoping Tools and Masking

Blackmagic Design Fusion Studio for Mac and Windows (Dongle)

• Create masks using bezier splines, B-splines, paint tool, or bitmap images
• Magic wand-type mask performs colour picking over time
• Non-uniform feathering of spline shapes
• Roto Assist to find edges of the subject
• Roto Onion skinning, shows the roto shapes for multiple frames
• Controllable motion blur
• Use masks to limit the effect of any tool to a specified region
• Re-order, copy, paste, and cut masks

Colour Tools

• Adjust hue, saturation, tinting, gamma, gain, contrast, and brightness for any colour channel or luminance range
• Manipulate levels and image histogram directly
• Spline-based Colour Curves tool allows look-up-table colour correction for infinite flexibility
• User definable ranges for shadows, midtones, and highlights
• Separate colour correction by channel or region
• Colour match to a reference image
• Channel Booleans tool to copy and blend image channels based on add, subtract, multiply, and other mathematical operations

Colourspace Processing

• Supports integer and HDRI floating processing of colour depth
• Out-of-range colour values are preserved through colour adjustments
• Industry-standard colour spaces including ACES, REC709, REC2020, and Wide Gamut
• Linear Light Colour/Open Colour IO
• Monitor calibration
• Waveform, Vectorscope, and Histogram displays
• LUT creation, analysing, and designing tools
• 3D LUTs
• Work in RGB, YUV, CMY, and other colour spaces
• Use logarithmic images like Cineon and DPT without first converting them to linear space

3rd Party Plugin Support

• Support for OpenFX Plugins, including GenArts and RE:Vision Effects
• Native SDK for 3D and image processing tools

Bins and Media Organisation

• Bins for easy access to commonly used Tools, Settings, Macros, Compositions, and Footage
• Bin server for sharing Bin assets over network
• Carry Metadata through a project pipeline
• Read existing Metadata on clips
• Copy and insert custom metadata to any image

File Format Compatibility

• Support for Blackmagic Design Cinema Cameras and Cinema DNG format
• Supports over 30 image files formats including OpenEXR, DPX, TIFF, JPEG, PSD, and QuickTime
• Support for SVG scalable vector files
• Support for Arri raw format, R3D format, Canon rmf raw, Support for Vision Research Phantom Cameras, and Cine format
• 3:2 Pull Down and Pull Up with automatic sequence detection
• Process fields/frames in NTSC, PAL or HD field orders, control over dominance or field order
• Create clip lists containing multiple files within a single loader
• Load and process common IFL (image file list) formats
• Load full resolution and proxy clips together, toggling between modes on the fly
• Use WAV audio for timing and playback
• View audio waveform in timeline

Extensibility

• Embedded Lua and Python scripting support
• Integrated development environment
• Pre-built scripts to automate common workflows
• Control Fusion scripts from local or remote machines
• Launch and control external tools from within Fusion
• Macro tool combines standard tools to create custom tools
• Fuses tool kit for development of OpenCL custom tools
• Just-in-Time compiling of image processing tools