I've just made an update to this video! After a year of seeing all the comments and feedback on this one, I took that onboard and did things like installing reactor and getting the layout working better to give Fusion a better chance second time round. Give it a watch here! ► ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Km2Ajcwkjeo.html
Fusion has the Reactor plug in which is a lot like Nukepedia. I'm always finding new stuff in there. Xglow does the multi step blur/glow effect you needed.
Reactor is probably the closest thing Fusion has that's essentially open source. Tons of people doing all sorts of plugins. And even outside Reactor, people can readily share macros and groups and drfx files. The main thing about Fusion is probably that while it is very powerful. It still was, as I understand, smaller in the industry than Nuke and AE when Blackmagic bought them. And as they did tons of work to integrate Fusion into Resolve, I think they only recently have been able to put money into new stuff. Like AI tools and the whole USD framework with its own renderer and everything. But mostly, I think the lack of tutorials stem from the fact that yes, there was a tight knit group of experts before BM. but most, if not all tutorials are now done by people who have only begun scratching the surface of what the system can do. I sometimes stumble over showcases from the before BM days where only VFX houses used Fusion. And holy carp, they did some very photoreal stuff. There's just that unfortunate gap in the transfer of knowledge. So I welcome all videos showing more advanced techniques. Going beyond the getting started videos. I want more vfx studio grade tutorials. :)
Really good to see this video! Lots of AE vs fusion videos out there, but fusion vs nuke is obviously more appropriate I'd love to see a follow up with Reactor installed - basically, it's a plugin/gizmo manager for fusion and IMO basically a prerequisite for doing real work in fusion - It has things like a lightwrap node, a nuke style grade node and even a full set of scripts for adapting fusion to be more nuke-ey (Though I've not tried it) I've been using Fusion a ton recently and my takeaways vs Nuke pretty much boil down to: - Fusion is absolutely kickass for motion graphics - The way fusion treats premult is inconsistent and kind of annoying - I see why the nuke way would put people off, but it's just a fundamentally better approach. In fusion I think the expectation is "Don't worry about manual premult, it'll all be fine" which I think would boil the blood of basically any nuke artist - There's not arbitrary channels in fusion, which is probably the biggest difference and weakness - though there is a reactor script for mapping channels, still a bit rubbish though - Channel booleans absolutely suck compared to shuffling - Fusions viewport performance poops all over nuke, it's way more interactive most of the time (Especially in fusion standalone) - Fusion particles are fantastic The lack of tutorials is rubbish, fusion is waaay better than people expect and honestly, it should be eating After Effects' lunch. I've been tempted to do a bunch of "Translated" nuke comp tutorials for fusion. Could be interesting. It's miles away from nuke and BMD isn't massively interested in putting in the resources to challenge nuke, positioning fusion as a thing for doing quick comps in resolve, which is a shame. Anyway, enough waffle, good stuff! I'd like to see more!
Very good to hear these thoughts! I'll definitely try installing Reactor. A few people have already mentioned it so it's clearly popular and something I should have a look at!
incredible breakdown! one reason I'm excited about the future of fusion is exactly for the new artists who might otherwise have started by paying for AE before having to learn Nuke from scratch. If students get good at Fusion and want to go pro in Nuke I'd imaging they'd have a pretty decent leg-up 🤘
Good on you for giving our side a go! Fusion is intimidating especially with the lack of tutorials, but you did phenomenal for your first try. Excellent video!
Thanks very much! I recon I could get used to it eventually. It's just the initial frustration of not knowing how to do something you can normally do with your eyes closed 😂
How’s it going, I know the Reactor plug in was mentioned as something close to nukepedia but I’m not sure about if the following was mentioned: something worth noting from there is that there is a tool on it called “nuke2fusion” (something close to that) that adds renamed versions of stock fusion nodes with the names that are from Nuke, may be something to look into if you use Fusion again Also I would love to know which video resources were missing for figuring out how to composite? Sincerely, someone from the DaVinci Resolve/Fusion tutorial community Also Jake Wipp, Nomad R Productions, Pirate of Confusion, and Millolab Tuts are the people I think of when compositing in fusion (the latter two for super in depth breakdowns) which are worth checking out Great vid! I’d love to see a more complex scene for comparison to see if Fusion could meet your expectations
Thanks for the recommendations! For the tutorials, the main one was a tutorial on using the tracker. I watched 7 videos before I found one that actually showed how to use it and then apply that tracking to something else. I also found it impossible to get the colour management working for importing the ACEScg EXRs that I exported to Nuke into Fusion and get them to look correct. I tried for 20 minutes, watched multiple videos and found no answers. In the end I comped it on the ProRes plate from the camera!
I've used Fusion before Nuke was a thing, and now I'm veteran in Nuke and still using Fusion for certain things. I'd say that such comparison video would make more sense if you'd be somewhat mid-level familiar with Fusion. If you'd know how to do similar things in both software - instead of trying to do same shot while having cursory knowledge of one of the software - would be a much better comparison. Still - your point stands, that Nuke is definitely more used in studios and in pro VFX compositing world - and Fusion would need a mighty rework to be comparable, yet it's a much better alternative proposition than cryptic Natron (which doesn't have 3D system for example). There are strengths and weaknesses in all of the software, it's up to us to choose which one suits the job best.
Yeah that's a fair point but I don't have the time to get good enough at fusion for that. Especially as it's not really worth investing time to get used to it when I won't be using it for much going forward. Maybe some simple timeline animation/really simple comps
@@AlfieVaughan I'm really excited to see this comparison between Nuke and Fusion. I'm old enough to remember when Shake ruled the pro compositing roost for feature film work. With all due respect, approaching this topic in this manner doesn't show the strengths and weaknesses of each software so much as it shows how well you can adapt to Fusion as a Nuke user without very much advance preparation. You adapted fairly quickly- I wish I were as fast with new software as you! I'd love to see a "Round 2" of this with some of the suggestions from the comments implemented in the future! Thanks again for the time you put into this!
@@Leprutz as for easier learning I'd stay Nuke, as it has much bigger tutorial library, by order of magnitude. As for software capabilities, there are few key things missing from Fusion, otherwise is quite capable for a lot of mid budget jobs.
@@Pinionistus yes I believe so. I think davinci will only increase over time. But it might bring some caveats with it. Anyways, thanks for clarifying. I believe the worst thing about fusion tutorials is that nothing is really explained. It is just a: how to do effect. But it is important to understand why I do what I do.
Really interesting to hear your professional input. One issue you did not mention was the price comparison. For us non-professionals, the difference between Nuke's €5,240 per year subscription, and Resolve Studio's €350 one-off price (or indeed that about 60% of it is available free), is the deciding factor.
Glad you liked it! Yes the price is a big factor for non professionals. This was more from my perspective as someone that does this for a career. Nuke indie is what I use and it's only about £400 a year which is much more affordable. Still a lot more than resolve but I make that money back straight away so the price doesn't bother me. If money was no issue I'd always want to use the best tools available and I believe nuke is superior for high end work
I learned CG compositing in Fusion and also tried Nuke for some basic work but some how my mind is not accepting nuke so i still stick to my fusion workflow and no matter how outdated version i use but still I love working in fusion itself...
That's interesting to hear! It definitely takes a while to get used to any new software. When I switched from After Effects to Nuke I think it took several months to get really comfortable using it!
I tried the ones that were in there but none of them were really what I was looking for. I saw you could import them but didn't bother going that far with it
@@AlfieVaughan The system is slightly buggered too at the moment, Black Magic hid a load of the layout options in newer versions of fusion, but seem to be slowly putting them back
I just started Fusion recently and ran into several of the issues you did (I used to work as a compositor for a while). I agree that I love how Nuke's input types (values vs color wheel vs RGB) are diverse yet all in one line - makes operations like the grade node very straightforward to use. Appreciate you sharing!
Building vertical nodeflow is quite easy. You just have to to dock node to the left or go Window > View Layouts > Left Flow and set your flow to vertical in Preferences
As a person that has spoken english for a long time, I tried speaking french for a month. And although I see that french people are able to communicate fairly well. And I seemed to do less and less, googling translations. I have to conclude that English is better. This is basically what I hear when anybody uses any software for years and then dabbles into a different software. With the emphasis of "different"" being the keyword. As you know ( but some may not ) when a different software doesn't do the exact same thing as the one that you normally use - doesn't have any bearing in it's usability or quality, or even ease if use. A lot of time it means that you aren't used to the software workflow and steps. I wonder if a person that has used Fusion everyday and is over the 10,000 hours could deliver the goods with identical outcome in a comparable amount of time, that you could do it in Nuke. That would to me be a better comparison, if I was to start learning and have the choice between the softwares. No worries though - there's always the never ending discussion on PC or Mac.
You're absolutely right. And that's why I said a few times to take what I'm saying with a pinch of salt because I hadn't given fusion enough time to become familiar so it was at an unfair disadvantage. I'd love to put in 10,000 hours of both softwares and compare but that's just a practical use of time!
when I read the title of the video, I thought it was a joke (because well, there are nukes that use fusion energy (also, I didn't know Nuke was a software name lol))
Fusion 9's UI was much more simliar to nuke in terms of flexibility of the UI. but the fusion 15 facelift eliminated most of that customization. I still use Fusion 9 for some instances where tutorials were done in 9, once I finish the comp, I simply copy paste the nodes into the updated fusion and everything works no problem. I just need a fusion dongle.
Nuke just seems to manage data better than any of the others. And while it might not be the most visually stunning ui to work within, everything is laid out infront of you relatively easy to find. Fusion just feels like things are hiding from you all the time... an opinion from an after effects user 🤦♂
Yeah it definitely feels that way. Nuke feels like it's also had years of feedback from people at the top of the industry (because it has) and so a lot of the menus and controls make so much sense
I had the same problem when I moved from Vegas to Hitfilm and From HitFilm to DaVinci ... the learning curve can be pretty steep. I'm trying to make the swicth to Davinci (will be buying pro soonish) but for some of my client work, especially motion graphics, I usually load up HitFilm Pro since I can do the work about 5X faster as I've been editing in that for like 6+ years but I'm slowly getting a hang of Fusion by using it on personal projects. I'm exporting a 2d animation / motion graphics project right now for a study music channel I;ve put together using music I;ve licensed (think LoFi Girl) and using that as a learning project, a lot of stuff has finaly clickedm especially uusing the 3d space (I like having camera controled paralaxing on my seperate 2d layers instead of faking it manually). On thing I love in Fusion is that you can have keyframes LOOP or PING PONG! No more copying and pasting keyframes!!! WOOT! My current video has a 2d anuime girl listening to music on a parch bench and having her head bob up and down to the beat was SUPER easy onceI figured that out.
I can see why it would be tough getting into it! I think with enough time you can get used to anything. You just have to endure the first few difficult weeks!
You are not wrong at all, and this is very valuable for those of us who are not VFX professionals but want to dive into creating realistic-looking effects. I recently started to use Fusion to mix 3D objects with footage and it is definitely a steep learning curve. I stopped using Premier a few years back, used FCPX for a while, and decided to settle for Resolve as my editing tool of choice, so it only seemed natural to use Fusion for the times I want to composite something. One thing I learned from your video is that Fusion is actually more powerful than I thought, sure it is not as efficient as Nuke for a professional VFX artist, but for a filmmaker that wants to wow his/her audience (or clients) with a few well-done effects here and there then it's perfect. Thank you for sharing your insights as a professional, great content!!
Glad you liked it! Yes I think for people just look to do some basic compositing it's actually really good because you don't have to export stuff to another software. You can do it all on the timeline essentially
I didn't mean to diss it. I know studios use it too. But knowing more fusion artists than nuke ones is purely based on your personal circle. That's not reflective of the industry. Nuke is much more widely used. I've worked at a couple of places, one being a very big studio and I also have friends at basically every big studio you could name in London. DNEG, Framestore, ILM, MPC... No one is using Fusion there at the really big places
Super interesting to see a professional using Nuke and fusion side by side! I use fusion and aftereffects because the workflow on the studio that i work on, it's so practical to change takes and just enter to fusion tab. Also its important to say, Nuke is expensive for us on Brasil, will use only if you need to work in the bigs studios. I hope start learn someday! Informative video.
Thanks! It's worth downloading the non-commercial version and getting to know it. That's what I'm using here and used it for years. I do have Nuke indie and use it for paid freelance work but I use the non-commercial free version for my RU-vid videos so I can show people how to do it in a software they can access for free!
I used to be a Nuke user but shifted to Fusion, took some time and was frustrating for a while as I couldn't work as fast but that is just the learning process. A lot of your comments are spot on but I have found Fusion to be faster under the hood than Nuke and as a professional artist with a programming background Fusion is even more flexible (Except the UI which was an ruined in an 'upgrade' some years back). I wouldn't recommend Fusion to everyone but it can certainly compete with Nuke, there is nothing that can't be done in Fusion that is in Nuke.
Yeah a few people have pointed that out. It's a fair point but the comments I was getting were about why I wasn't using the compositor built into resolve. If I have to use another standalone software I might as well use Nuke! But fair point 👍
@@AlfieVaughan Fair enough. In 2024 Nuke has more advanced features for VFX than Fusion and Fusion's development has stagnated a lot especially and most of the new features added has been motion graphics related over compositing. But FYI Fusion is actually older than Nuke and was being used when Nuke was just an inhouse tool for DD. But up until Fusion 9, it was very flexible and customizable like Nuke and many times faster than anything else. But you should've named the video Nuke vs Davinci Resolve Fusion instead of just Fusion.
I started in Fusion, but over the past year have been switching to Nuke, and honestly, it’s hard to look back. An issue I ran into with Fusion was one you commented on, that being lack of quality tutorials, and for me the topic that was seriously lacking was lens distortion. Creating an ST map in fusion seems possible, with some really weird workarounds I was never able to figure out. Also once I had a taste of Nuke’s color management, I couldn’t turn back. It just felt so much more intuitive to use than fusion’s color management, which didn’t have a display transform enabled by default. Also, my recommendation for fusion users is if you care about performance, don’t use the fusion page in davinci resolve, use the fusion standalone app. Since the fusion page has a whole other app around it, it’s really clunky, and limits the amount of ram to that you can dedicate to cacheing your composite. Also, perhaps this has been fixed, but the fusion page is severely limited in the file formats that the saver node can export in. You have to use the standalone version if you want to export anything other than an EXR file. Which yeah, usually my saver nodes are EXRs, but trying to render a complex fusion composite to just an Mp4 for preview through the deliver page is a one way ticket to crash city. Anyways, there’s my soapbox.
Haha! Thanks for the insight. That's really interesting. Yeah I found the colour management awful too. I decided to cut it from the video as it was a very niche problem but I found when I brought the EXRs that I also comped on in Nuke, Fusion didn't know what to do with them. They were ACEScg but whatever I did I couldn't seem to display them properly! I tried viewer LUTs, OCIO colourspace nodes going from ACEScg to Rec709 and visa versa... Nothing seemed to get it to look right. I gave up in the end and just comped straight on the ProRes file straight from the camera. Pretty disappointing. I've used ACES in Nuke, Flame and Blender and they were all pretty easy to get setup
@@AlfieVaughan Same experience for me. I've been using Resolve for a while now, but never really used Fusion for something more complex than a slap comp, merging CG layers together. Recently I worked on a short SciFi animation using ACES and EXR's and Fusion just wasn't helpful. Not only did it refuse to display the color space correctly, I ran into some premultiply problems with the alpha when trying to compose my CG explosion. In the end, I gave up and used Nuke which is kinda new to me. I was not really surprised to see that everything worked flawless right out of the box without me having to do anything. For serious CG compositing I think I'll stick with Nuke.
@@AlfieVaughan Fusion is color agnostic so it doesn't take care of the color by default and works with whatever comes in. You can easily turn on a viewer LUT in Fusion by click on the gird at the top right corner of the viewer and then click edit and then add your OCIO file or chose Linear to Rec709 or sRGB. And in the node graph, the color space transform/gamut node does the same.
There is an easier way to remove sky by using the colcr page but it requires the studio version of davinci resolve .. however I use fusion quite a lot and what I like about fusion that it could be used in 2d and 3d motion graphics as well as compositing but to be honest when we talk about compositong nuke is more powerful than fusion .. Thank you for this useful comparison between nuke and fusion ..
I do actually have the studio version and know about that feature. It's pretty cool! But I wanted to mirror the compositing techniques in Nuke rather than use a Fusion specific tool :)
Hi, Great vid! I was wondering if you could make a video about the free open source alternative to Nuke called Natron and try it out, see what you think :)
Thanks! I'm aware of Natron and although I've never used it, I believe it's almost exactly the same as Nuke! They've stopped developing it now because Foundry released a free version of Nuke called Nuke Non-Commercial which basically made Natron redundant. I highly recommend checking it out. Although I own Nuke indie, I use non commercial in all my videos so I can share the project files
This was a great video and you did brilliantly picking up Fusion. I work professionally as a vfx compositor on major movies and I have used AE a little, shake, Nuke and Fusion. For sure if you spent more time with Fusion I think that you'd find it as efficient as Nuke for your example comp. You'd find that there's a really neat way to string multiple masks or keys together and each node can subtract, multiply, add, min, max etc . The tracker has that odd bonus of being a merge too ... I never use it - so set the tracker to foreground only and merge it in a merge. I'd say that if you are working at the very most demanding edge of compositing .. then Nuke is the tool, but for most composites and I include major big budget features, then yes Fusion competes. One thing that you have not included is multitasking. I find the Davinci editor great, the colour page good, even audio is pretty handy. So for the trade off you can edit, grade, mix, vfx, graphics, make multiple versions - which you can tweak individually if needed & export all in one app, which makes archiving a breeze. Add to that, even Studio costs next to nothing and rolls out a new version every couple of months .. Makes the Davinci package pretty compelling, even if Nuke is at the sharpest point for compositing.
I only learned this recently. This helps give you more vertical space if you're trying to setup your nodes like Nuke. Fusion > Workspace > Layout Presets > Fusion Presets > Mid Flow
It's a shame that Resolve doesn't allow user created workspaces and tabbed windows. I would arrange things very differently to what's available if I could (vert node window tabbed in the same column as the inspector - accessable with a key stroke).
Thanks! I do, yes. Foundry, who make Nuke, have been kind enough to sponsor my channel with a license so I'm fortunate enough not to have to pay for it. I make some nuke tutorials for them on return. But I totally would pay for it if that wasn't a thing. I think the price of indie is very reasonable. If you're getting regular work as a freelancer it pays for itself within a day
@@AlfieVaughan Yeah I see how the yearly rate is definitely worth it. The only other this that's holding me back is that I also do some motion graphics stuff so it's nice that GFX & VFX can be done with one software.
@OnecrasFilms yeah that's fair. It depends what you do. I'm purely VFX 99% of the time so Nuke is like the top of the food chain for me. But it's not great for motion graphics at all so if that was a bigger part of my day to day I'd probably use another software for that work and comp in nuke
yeah fusion tutorials are really limited, it's discouraging tbh. hopefully they'll start making more vids for it with more complicated compositions. Good video mate!
Hi. I really love your videos. I remember, in one of your videos, you ran a script which opened Davinci Resolve and it had created folders inside Davinci, How do I do that? cause all I'm able to do now is create a folder structure in windows explorer.
Thanks! It wasn't inside of resolve it was just a .exe batch program I made. If you look at my davonci resolve workflow video I show how I did it. It's a notepad file with some make directory commands for all the folders. It's very simple to setup
@@AlfieVaughan he figured it out tho. So here’s what I wrote; md 1_References md 2_Scene Geos md 3_Footages md 4_Renderings\Shot_01 md 4_Renderings\Shot_02 I also have a python script for that but I wanted to learn another way out
For young people just entering the post production industry, it's good practice to know what the dominant software is used. It reduces the things you need to learn and improves your chances of getting work.
That's an interesting comparison! My choice like yours is Nuke, I've been using it for almost 9 years now. I looked at the Fusion, but in my tests it was very uncomfortable..... If I could master Maya instead of Blender, then it would be the industry standard, but my choice is Blender, Houdini and Nuke.
Yeah I haven't bothered switching to Maya either. For what I do, blender is perfectly usable. Even at work! I've done my own CG for lots of small bits in my comps before. I don't know houdini at all so can't give any tips I'm afraid. I tried it a couple of years ago but got very busy so stopped doing tutorials and I haven't picked it back up since
I learned maya for two years but prefer blender. It is much lighter weight to load, the interface is better, and blender has a much more active community.
@@nihilusedit1447 Start with the basics, poke around the buttons. If you are familiar with other 3D software it will be easier to switch to or learn Houdini, try to do the same things that you do in other software, only with the help of Houdini, so you will slowly transfer your skills to a new environment, moreover, Houdini will become your faithful friend, most likely after learning it you will throw other 3D software in the background, as in Houdini more flexible and intuitive tools, yes, the first time will be difficult, but you do not despair, small steps will reach it
@@LFPAnimations I agree with you, for the same reason and I preferred Blender, and even just because the network a lot of information and tutorials on it, unlike Maya, such a feeling that there do not do anything but modeling and animation, yes, all this is at an insanely high level, but still it is not enough to cover everyday tasks with which Blender copes much easier and faster, although it lacks basic functions, but nothing, they are on the way).
ok, so I actually started learning node compositing with Fusion before I moved to Nuke, I still use Fusion for subtle effects when editing in Davinci, Fusion is ok, and all you went through is exactly what I suffered when learning Fusion years back
Iam using Fusion studio for all kinds of comp/ cleanup work from point tracking to 3D projections and sometimes the comps grow really big. No problems at all. Sometimes pre render or use the cache function and go on.
Amazing video, been looking for exactly this. I do think almost all of the things mentioned as a plus for Nuke over Fusion are already built in to Fusion (18 and above at least) Built in light wrap, community based Reactor, color corrector is a bit lacking though. As a former Nuke artist who made the switch 5 years ago, I can say that with the remote work revolution and Blackmagics quest of video production dominance, I imagine the whole “we use Nuke because that’s just what the pro studios use” narrative will die down
Interesting points! Yes lots of people have pointed out things like reactor. I probably should have done some research before giving fusion a go but also wanted this to be a totally real first impression. I see what you mean though! As for Nuke dying, quite possibly! The top software's come and go. Shake, Smoke, Flame... They've all had their time in the sun and something else eventually overtook them. I'm sure with enough good competition the same thing could happen with Nuke. But I hope not because I'll have to learn something else 😂😂😂
@@AlfieVaughanyou should do a follow up to this video, it seems to have performed pretty well. I’m sure people have shouted the names of all of the good fusion resources at you already. A “tooled up” version of this would be sick.
Hi, I'm also trying fusion while I'm more familiar with Nuke. Did you manage to find an overall slider to toggle the gain and gamma in order to check your black and white points?
I haven't used it much sinse to be honest. I plan on making another one of these videos where I learn it a little better and give it a proper shot. But not sure about the sliders, sorry!
Its hard to switch after so many years using one software, I think with a proper transition period you could feel as comfortable in Fusion as you are in Nuke, both are highly capable... The biggest thing for me is they are not miles apart workflow wise. But there is one massive elephant in the room... Price. Nuke is over $5000 a license and Fusion is just £245. That means Fusion is just 5% of the cost of Nuke, and it certainly isn't 5% of Nukes feature set, I reckon Fusion hits at least 95% partity with Nuke. Just consider that a studio could have 20 Fusion workstations for the same license cost as one just Nuke workstation, thats crazy. So unless your looking to work in alot of studios, fusion is an exceptional option. The value to feature ratio is amazing. 3d software is the same, industry standards are Maya or Houdini, but if your not working doing 3d, vfx, or character work in Maya or Houdini based studio, then Blender is a great option... highly capable ... and free. I'd also say with certainty that if a pro 3d maya artist was given blender for the first time... they would also struggle.
Yeah I agree with what you're saying. A lot of people are saying that but again the point of the video is specifically why I use it. Not whether it's the right choice for everyone. I have Nuke Indie which is more affordable for freelancing at home and I use fully licensed versions of NukeX at work but obviously I don't pay for the licenses.
I have used blender before learning Fusion and then Nuke and i can say that i know them all in a pro level so honestly blender is lacking in all round because after learning it i used it in my short film and it extremely limited all-round before moving to fusion and eventually switching to nuke because of the complex way it handles multi EXR files and pure 3d rendering engine integration in a professional way and more. Although fusion is good but honestly as a pro using of fusion & nuke, fusion its like after effect and element 3d combined in a node workflow but Nuke has Advanced 3d Render Engine, Advanced 3d workspace, Advanced Geometry editing and more which your can't fully do in fusion although fusion just added usd support but above all, it's still limited compare to nuke and I won't even start in fusion limited UI freedom and the extreme freedom UI manipulation in Nuke.
Yep I agree. I think when you get to the serious stuff, Nuke is the winner. A lot of people in the comments don't understand that as they haven't had to use it in a professional environment on complex projects. You explained it well
From what I've seen on Natron it's basically identical to Nuke. I don't think there's much of a comparison to make. It's essentially a clone! Although they've stopped developing it now so Nuke has lots more modern features
I wish I could get a copy of nuke that will allow me to work in 4k. I can't afford it. I'm doing a documentary for my Synagogue, and there's a lot going on. For example, in the book of Exodus, when the death plague comes, then when Moses receives the Ten commandments, and there's the burning bush. I'm no expert by ANY means, I like the simplicity of nuke over fusion. My fav software I had formal training on are: 3DS Max MAYA Avid Media Composer AE (YUCK) I would love to find formal training using Nuke so I can do my projects as an advanced hobby for my synagogue. I would enjoy very much to chat with you about Nuke and our lessons I'm converting into documentaries. Thank you for this video. Cheers
You can work in 4k in nuke NC you just can't render it out higher than HD. I know it's not ideal but I suppose thats why they limit it. Otherwise they'd make no money because everyone would just use that 🤣 If you'd like to chat I have a VFX mentor tier on my Patreon where I help people with their projects and go over anything they want to discuss. That might be what you're after!
One HUGE difference between the 2 that you didn't cover at all is the price - Nuke is totally overpriced and in that regard is definitely not worth it - 10 grand for a licence?! It has a monopoly in the market and is too well established. It's also very seg faulty sometimes... I would love to dump it having used it professionally for 13 years, but like you my muscle memory is too strong... I'm waiting (very patiently) for Blender's compositor to catch up, once that happens I will watch The Foundry shudder and turn to obsolete dust!
I agree it's over priced. I use Nuke Indie for freelance work and think that's a much more reasonable amount of money. Granted, studios can't use it. It needs better competition to drive the price down. If there was a cheaper option that was just as good they would feel threatened. But at the moment Nuke is so far ahead I don't think they care enough
@@AlfieVaughan Exactly, to switch to another software package requires massive pipeline changes in studios as they use nuke for almost every dept shot reviews... Studios don't care about cost, plus there;s a huge pool of nuke compers to pick from, not so many fusion artists... I tried to get into Fusion at home as a cost thing, and even though I enjoyed the change, the change was too much for my little nuke-brain. The Foundry have me by the proverbial balls.
@@AlfieVaughan because I abandoned the home working thing back in covid times and I don’t think that was an option 3 years ago… Also, I'm so used to NukeX that it just wouldn't cut it
Noticed you used the fusion tab inside resolve, for an apples to apples comparison maybe you should've compared nuke to backmagics standalone compositor🎉, Fusion Studio
Nice video. I’ve been in VFX for 20 years and the funny thing is that Fusion was a stand alone program and the industry norm before Nuke was ever around. That would be the main reason why Nuke is similar but a bit better, it came after Fusion. Fusion kind of went away for a while (at least you never heard about it) but Resolve has been bringing it back.
Nuke is slow compared to fusion. Nuke has much worse particle system and 3d engine. Timeline, and animation editor in fusion are better. Color correction in fusion is more complete and deeper than in nuke. Disadvantages of fusion - corrupted BM interface, memory leaks, customization and scripting path from Loader. 3dTracker, but track usually in other programs. Also switching 3dpasses could be more flexible.
Fair points but the cons you listed for nuke aren't really things I use as a professional compositor anyway. Stuff like timeline tools are handled in another software like Flame. So for me, Nuke is still far superior. But like I said in the video, it's all subjective.
Fair point but it's hardly worth doing. Natron is literally a Nuke clone. It has all the same nodes and more or less the same features. Nuke just has a much better development whereas natron is open source. They stopped developing it a while ago once Foundry released Nuke Non Commercial as that basically made Natron redundant
👍🏾 I find that you have demonstrated your points in this comparison very objectively, neutrally, and clearly. At the end, you left the option that Fusion could also do good work in your area. There are only a few professionals on RU-vid who can present things so cleanly and objectively. I envy your skills in this area and also admire your knowledge. It’s not enough to just know an app; you definitely have to understand the technology behind it as well.
True. All depends on the user! I bought resolve studio and also pay for nuke. Using it professionally I make that money back anyway so the cost doesn't bother me that much
I would have loved used nuke before... Because now I'm using fusion a lot, and I'd love to convert into Open Source world. And Natron is the compositor in the Open source world, which is kinda like Nuke, but way slower as I understood ^^' And last... There is way less tuto in natron than in fusion ^^' Ahhh and I'm a lot using fusion for motion graphic. So that I can't do it in natron..
Natron essentially a Nuke clone. It's exactly the same (although worse as you said it's slower etc) but they've stopped developing it now so I wouldn't bother. Just use Nuke Non Commercial! It's free
Yep, they're just tools at the end of the day. A good artist would be able to make something look good in almost any software. But equally... If you're carving a sculpture, you'd rather have a chisel than a spoon 🤣 the right tool is still very beneficial
@@AlfieVaughan true.. I am feeling it right now... Sculpting in maya bz our ZBrush license got some issues. Feels like making a feather using pickaxe ⚒️🪶
If you have to collab with another studio or artists, sometimes you need to be able send and receive formats. If others are using Nuke then you need to get inline with them. Also, when I worked in VFX we used Nuke scripts heavily. I have found scripting in Fusion to not be as strong.
And I am saying this as a Resolve Studio user. I love Resolve but with 15 years experience in VFX and animation I totally get having the right tool for the right job
Never understood the whole fanboy attitude over software. I started out with Davinci Resolve to do editing. When I started looking into vfx I went straight to Houdini. I have run into some roadblocks with Fusion so I'll take a look at Nuke.
The artist matters most but the right software can be the difference between using a chisel or a spoon. Nuke is really quite amazing compared to the competition
I'm using Fusion from Davinci Studio 18.5 for my VFX compositing in movie industry, and it's a quiet powerful compositing software, because I'm a video editor as well, Fusion make my work perfect.
Yes I can imagine it's very good if you're doing everything yourself as it's all in one software. My specific job is singularly compositing so I don't have to worry about editing timelines etc. so for me nuke makes sense as I think on its own Vs fusion on its own, nuke wins in terms of features and capabilities. If money was no object obviously. Which at a VFX studio it is sort of the case. They'd rather pay a lot more for better software than go cheaper and have artists not working to their full potential
@@AlfieVaughan yes, that why the industry put me as a VFX Editor. Not only to edit the movie shot, but it took me to composite the VFX as well and sometimes help the Nuke compositor to complete the remaining shots. Nuke and Fusion is powerful software, thank you for this video. It will help others to understand the differences. cheers!
Yes price wise fusion is a much better deal. This is more from the perspective of a freelancer or artist at a studio where software price is less relevant
Is getting into VFX worth doing currently? Whats the industry look like currently for vfx artists or editors in general? Hoping to change careers into something more creative
Definitely! It's a bit of a tough time right now following the writers strike etc but it's all picking back up. I absolutely love my job and I'm so grateful to be able to say that. It depends a bit on where you are etc but there should be work available
Why do you want Fusion to work exactly the same way as your Nuke muscles memory is used to? This is quite odd to want all software to work exactly the same way as the only one you know, isn’t it? I’m pretty sure a seasoned Fusion artist will said the same trying Nuke, and you might find that weird!
It's not really that I want it to. It's more that they're both node based compositors so the principles are very similar. It just takes a slight adjustment when things aren't exactly the same. But generally with things like the keyer I found they were identical and I didn't even have to Google anything
This is such a great comparison, thanks for sharing. About the problem you had in 06:45 with the color corrector affecting the whole image, you just need to connect the output of the spaceship node into the blue input of the color corrector node. Maybe this is too late now, but once again great video.
I feel both Fusion and blenders compositors have the advantage of being built it into other software, where doing some small comp work in resolve while editing can be quite convenient and the same would go for certain scenarios using render layers in blender, also fusion has a much better price tag for commercial use cases
Very true. I might even use fusion for the occasional small timeline comp. Probably more motion graphics than VFX. But just because it's built in and convenient doesn't always mean it's the better option. I certainly wouldn't use blenders compositor for anything. I've used it several times and it's dreadful. It lacks some really important basic features that make it hard to use
And when you check the Fusion price VS Nuke price... the majority of viewers will smile, and move on :) - Interesting to watch this and how you got on.
Surry but you are wrong for more than one aspect of fusion. You've stroggling in for fusion while all tools were there. For me, fusion is far more better than nuke.
I think Blackmagic bought Fusion in response to Adobe owning After Effects. I think everyone can agree that After Effects is a much better motion graphics package than Fusion as Fusion is more akin to Nuke than After Effects. It's not to say that you can't make cool things, Vito over at Pirates of Confusion was making ground breaking graphics years ago, but has since fallen off the radar. When you start to do 'Nuke' things in Fusion you see that the package hasn't been developed much by Blackmagic towards this market. The camera tracker in Fusion is now able to produce really great tracks, and I prefer it to Nuke, but where is the undistort node? STMAP reader node? Grain copy and remove? Model builder? Making complex geo from point clouds? Smart vectors? There are work arounds for most of these things, but really they should be included as functional built in nodes by now. Blackmagic has its eyes elsewhere. They haven't integrated the already existing AI masks into standalone Fusion for example. I think BM wished they had software better suited to motion graphics. Still, that all said, Fusion Studio costs half the price of Nuke Indie's annual cost.
I think trying to transpose everything you know in Nuke directly into Fusion may not be the best workflow. Plus, to color-grade or replace the sky, the AI tools in the color tab of Resolve are the best I have seen, also more intuitive than doing it in fusion.
Perhaps not. I just wanted to mirror the exact same process in both softwares. The same for the sky replacement too! I'm aware of the one in the colour page but wanted to follow the same steps in both pieces of software
@@AlfieVaughan Yes but you diddn't find the PlanarTracker node for some reasons, so it was biased since the beginning. This latter allows you to track and create a planarTransform node in the which was exactly what you were waiting for. With the "regular" tracker you user, you may have gone to mode > matchMove
I tried the planar tracker first actually before the point tracker. But I found it was really useless. Everything I used it on, the corners were floating around all over the place. Maybe it just wasn't the shot for it but I found it really bad
You know you can arrange all the elements (like the spaceship) in fusion and then output them to their own media out so you can do the final composite on the color page which has far superior cc tools.
All valid and correct criticisms. I like Fusion, but some of the things-like tabs for color channels, or shadows/mids/highs-are annoying because it slows you down. I don't use Fusion in Resolve-I mainly use stand alone-but I wish it had tools from Resolve's Color page instead for its CC node. I too am saddened there's no light wrap by default. And I still struggle with what nodes to use where sometimes, especially to combine mattes. My mantra has been, when in doubt, look for the pre-divide/post-multiply checkbox. 😂 One thing that is nice-and Nuke probably also does this-is that Fusion comps are text files. So I've been able to write Python scripts that can do things with Fusion comps, for example, for one client we have built a look for their 3D elements, and I need reflections comped to block out background elements in After Effects. So as long as we have the same passes, I can run a terminal command, and build an entirely new node tree with the proper image sequences and outputs ready to go for my project. One dumb thing is that Fusion doesn't save relative paths/won't convert paths between operating systems. But because of the text file thing, I can easily swap it from one OS to another with another Python script. tl;dr it's good, but it's not Nuke-yet.
Haha! I agree. Yes nuke also works based on text files. There's some cool tools for pipelines at work for smart copying people stuff on the network where you can just send it to their username and they can paste it into their script. But failing that, we just used to email each other node trees 😂
@@AlfieVaughan After Effects used to allow stuff like that too. Sadly, it no longer does. Glad to know Nuke does!. Thanks for the reply! Have a great weekend!
That's a pretty neat video, thanks for sharing. Fusion is an amazing piece of software, in fact most of people with more than 15 years in the industry has probably used it at some point, I started using it when it was Eyeon :) The menus are pretty configurables in Fusion, you can even create folders with different views, undock them, have different overlay spectrums and color calibration tools within the same view, etc... There are tools that will help you like the matte control, or the bright and contrast ;) Both are great softwares, and if you don't need deep compositing, there isn't a reason to use Nuke, unless you want to be a Nuke operator. As compositing freelance artist, non software dependent, Fusion should be the way. Regarding industry standard, it is Nuke, that's correct, but that could be down to many reasons that would also interest to investigate ;) When I'm working in a studio I'm using Nuke, when I'm freelancing I use Fusion. Did you have chance to look into 3D within Fusion? It has been mush more developed than Nukes one for ages, and that type of shot could probably be solved 100% within Fusion, just bringing the FBX, the textures, and create shaders and rendering from Fusion itself.
Thank you! Yes I agree with everything you're saying. I think the main and most compelling reason to learn nuke is simply that there's the most jobs going at studios of you're a nuke artist. Supply and demand i guess! As for fusions 3D system, only very briefly. I'm told by other fusion users it handles big 3D scenes very well and you can do some cool stuff!
If you have time, take a look at its 3D environment, you can get amazing things done, and so quickly. Its shader system can be pretty powerful, even limited, always depending on needs. Thanks for replying :)
I did try learning it a few years ago. I just don't have time. I don't do simulations enough to make it worthwhile. I can do 99% of what I need to do in blender. Also, even if I learned Houdini I'm not sure id feel comfortable making tutorials until I was really good at it so I could be sure I'm spreading the right information. But that would take years!
I started using Fusion a few months ago, and although I'm learning more and more, coming from After Effects, it just never felt that intuitive and a lot of the "simple" actions seem to require quite a lot node building. Plus animating and adjusting keyframes can be quite cumbersome. But I know a lot of people can make amazing things with it, so ima just keep on trucking, as it comes free with Resolve XD One other thing that irked me though is color grading in Fusion, like you said, feels like it's quite limited, especially with the Resolve color page next to it. Would be nice if they could bring over some of that smooth color page workflow into Fusion to help match scenes that you want to merge and things like that. Also thanks for the vid!
Hey As I wrote in my probably too long comment ;), as Alfie made a weird choice to work in yhe Fusion tab of Resolve instead of the Fusion Studio standalone, you can grade any mask separaretly in the Color tab by adding a MediaOut node after the mask you wish to grade, and assign an number to the ID parameter of this node. Then back in the Color page, adding inputs in the node flow will add these masks in the node flow...
Great video and it was nice seeing you showing the workflow and getting things done. I personally use Fusion when I switched from AE and there was a brief time period when I used Nuke before switching to Fusion permanently, but they are both great tools regardless and since I don't do VFX professionally, Fusion mostly solves all of my needs and it doesn't cost as much as a car haha. Few things, •Fusion has Reactor which is similar to Nukepedia but Fusion definitely doesn't have same range of plugins as Nuke. •There's a node for lightwrap in reactor I think. •There are multiple exponential glow nodes in Reactor but my fav one is Tintensity. •And the UI thing you were talking about is something I agree with as well as it wasn't the case with the old Fusion UI up until Fusion 9 It was all dockable and customizable and the node properties even had much better UI as well like the Nuke one before Blackmagic bought it and changed it to modernize it and make it more cohesive with Resolve's UI but it arguably made Fusion worse and many old time Fusion users mad.
Thanks for the info dude! It's a shame reactor doesn't ship with fusion. Sounds like everyone that's serious about it uses it but noobies like me don't realise it exists
@@AlfieVaughan yeah I wish there were more things that would ship with Fusion tbh but it's a community made tool and being maintained by community of users just like how Nukepedia doesn't ship with Nuke either (as far I know) and you have to download it.
Agreed, Fusion integration with Resolve was a significant regression in terms of UI. On the other hand the workflow between video editor and Fusion is way smoother.
We use it extensively on full-on TVCs. Doing most all the editing (after leaving premiere) within resolve and then VFX within resolve fusion studio. not as simple as the comp in your example. 1. Magic masks after being solved, break randomly (losing the solve) and then one has to re-track. 2. you can try to resolve this with a caching system but the caches are stored as low-resolution files. So if you were working on 4k footage by the time you've run it through a fusion comp and try to cache the heavier effects, one would be getting something that eventually resembles low res HD footage. 3. The Planar track ( a nifty tool) works until it doesn't want to. If you have more than one planar tracker within your project and you've fed in media (that you want warped according to the planar tracker solve), it randomly switches off - you then have to press a few buttons (on and off in the node) just to reactivate it. A terrible bug. Don't get me started on resolve studio as a whole. lol. But yea, we use this software extensively and I can definitely advise any compositor (or even an editor who plans to do a not within the software) who deals with more complex node setups and plans to use more than rotoshapes and keys, to steer clear of this software until these issues have been "resolved". And it does seem like they are more concerned with adding cooler and cooler features to wow potential users than actually refining the software to make it more robust.
Interesting! Yes I definitely didn't have time to test it comprehensively. Thanks for the breakdown. I won't be switching from Nuke anyway. I really like resolve for grading and editing. I wasn't blown away by the compositing features 🤣
I personally would love a follow-up video after a month or 2 after using it or fusion studio, and list out all the quirks & differences you've found (obviously on your spare time projects), they are 95% matched from my understanding & that gets closer with reactor, because it would help not just I but also BMD make a better product (alot of the quirks & missing stuff in my view are due stupid foundry patents... 😅)
A few people have said they'd like another one but unfortunately it's just not worth me investing the time to learn fusion properly. I have no intention of actually using it for any compositing going forward other than maybe some simple timeline animations. So as much as I think it would be a good video, I probably won't be doing it
@@AlfieVaughan I think a problem with that view is it lets nuke win & I am very much anti monopoly..., more places every year are considering resolve and I don't mean just youtubers, pro post houses & broadcasters too really except those who have RnD budget + haveing such a video helps point at BMD and get an understanding of what they can do to improve it. I get it tho it's easy for pros to stay in their comfort zone, where's the ones that last a longer time specialise yes but also adapt (don't get me started on how the industry loves gatekeeping through many formsXD)
Thanks! Flame is even more established than nuke, it has been for years! Although nuke is more popular now as it's much better for CG jobs. Where I work we have nuke and flame artists and I use flame myself for running the timeline on a job. I think it's really powerful but I don't use it for compositing
@@AlfieVaughan i know ! When you mentioned Nuke i was think, who’s still using? Only because of the workflow pipeline. Keep it up with the great work m8 !
Hey Is there any reason I don't see a long and specific comment I made a few hours ago... Disappointing, I wanted to elaborate on specific compositing WF things and took time to write it for you here...
@@AlfieVaughan Maybe too long :) Anyway it's very kind to answer here. I try in 2 seperate posts, cos I made the effort to be specific so now I'm too disappointed about the waste of time to drop it ;)
DVR interface is very clunky. You will try to click things and things don't happen. Keyframing is a NIGHTMARE. For a fun excercise, Try keyframing a solid color opacity on the Edit page.
I agree. Download Nuke Non-Commercial! It's free and only has a few limitations like the max render resolution is 1080p. But it's great. I have Indie but I'm using NC for all my RU-vid videos so I can share the project files and anyone will be able to use them as the software is free!
I dont think your wrong..I've beend doing vfx for over 20yrs..started with Chalice/shake/AE/Fusion/ then nuke. Used Fusion for 8yrs and still do off and on. One of my biggest gripes about fusion is its lack of channel controls. You cant make custom channles.But I've found away around it. I did a whole series of Nuke to Fusion videos for nuke artist trying to do some of the same stuff in Fusion. Also did a serioes of AE to Fusion. Like Shuffle /Copy in Fusion ..etc. As a freelanceer, I've had to morph into whatever program a studio wants me to use. Most of my AE clients have moved to Fusion mostly because they moved to Resolve from Premiere ,and Nuke was too expensive. But now nuke isnt 10k anymore, that may change in the near future. Fusion , like nuke, is just a tool, and its the artist who can weild it that makes an effect good/bad/effecient. Even AE is getting into the node base thing with that plug in called Magic Nodes..I've played around with that, and its really in its infant stage..but has the possiblity to be awsome. only time will tell.
Yep I agree! It's only a tool at the end of the day. The person using it will always matter more. I do get the feeling that even if I knew them both equally well, I could do things faster in nuke and get to a final result quicker. But I don't know if that's just me being bias... I think like you say some of the basics like controlling channels aren't quite there in fusion... And for some of the stuff I've done at work like full CG deep compositing, I just don't see fusion being able to handle it anywhere near as well as Nuke
That statement tells me you know nothing about being a professional. It's not about the tools. Also, I'm not a professional 3D artist. I'm a professional compositor using Nuke. I'm sure you've heard of it as you seem to know everything about professional software 😏
Thanks for the perspective Alfie. I would love to see if there was anything in Fusion that you don't find in Nuke. I have been told that the partical system in Fusion is better than what comes in Nuke but I have not worked in Nuke sense 2009. I used Nuke between 2004 to 2009. Right now I use AE and Fusion if I need any compositing I am also looking to get better at comping In Blender. Back when I was using Nuke I use the compositer in Softimage a lot as well as Cops in Houdini a fair bit. But because I live in Houston Texas I don't have the clientel that is picky about what tools I use and I don't want to spend the money it cost to keep up with Nuke. This is why I have been getting to know Fusion better. I think if you do this idea as a series of different projects you would have a good following. I mean its such a huge marked of potential users for Fusion. Anyway thank for the work and time you spent trying to help others. Its very appriceated.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'm glad you liked the video. I'm definitely planning on returning to this topic at some point. I've been using Fusion to do some motion graphics this week and am slowly getting the hang of it
