News on Fusion for the Mac updated
In a move that was't totally unexpected, Blackmagic Design has released two new versions of Fusion, one of which is free. The bad news? Only for windows at the moment, will that change at NAB?
When Blackmagic announced at IBC 2014 that they had acquired Eyeon, we all knew it wouldn't be long before they released a new version of Fusion under their very competitive pricing structure.
Fusion is a high end visual effects and motion graphics tool with a pedigree stretching back over many years and many Hollywood feature films. The new pricing by Blackmagic is going to create many ripples in the industry and straight away we can see this being a problem for Autodesk's Smoke, which is still overpriced on the Mac.
“Visual effects software has been expensive for way too long and it’s time that this changed. Consumers are screaming for more exciting movies and television programs and so we need to do everything we can to help our customers create stunning visual effects,” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “Now, with the free version of Fusion, everyone from individual artists to the biggest studios can create Hollywood calibre visual effects and motion graphics! When combined with DaVinci Resolve Lite, customers can get the world’s most advanced tools for editing, grading, 3D compositing, visual effects and motion graphics, all absolutely free!”
That last sentence from Grant is worth thinking about. Tools that once cost tens of thousands of pounds for colour grading and VFX can now be downloaded for free. DaVinci Resolve has been hugely successful and we imagine that Fusion will be popular too, you can't beat free.
We particlulary like a line in the press release which seems like a direct pop at Adobe & Autodesk:
'Unlike other software, Fusion 7 Studio doesn’t require annual maintenance fees, subscriptions, a connection to the cloud, or per node render license costs. That means customers don’t get tricked into hidden or on going costly payments for software they’ve already purchased.'
The free version has all of the features apart from plugins, multi-user, multi processing and stereoscopic functionality. The paid version is called Fusion 7 Studio, retails from their site at $995 and also includes Generation (project management) and unlimited render nodes.
The node based compositing structure will look familiar to those who spent many hours in front of Shake which Apple purchased from Nothing Real in 2002 and then EOL in 2009.
If you dig down past the first page of Blackmagic's Fusion webpage, you'll come across a section about Fusion Connection. This is an effect in Avid that you can apply to a clip or a stack of clips and Fusion will create a composition from those elements.
This is one feature we really would love to see in FCPX from Blackmagic, Apple or a third party. (Watch this space.)
Want to see Fusion in action? Make sure you check out the tutorials posted on the Blackmagic website.
So, some big news for a Monday morning and we hope that we shall see Mac versions announced at NAB 2015 with the same pricing structures. If the Windows version creates ripples in the industry, then the OS X flavour will produce waves that you can surf on.
UPDATE Grant Petty has posted this news on the Blackmagic Forum indicating that Fusion for the Mac is being worked on, but there are issues with Windows specific code.
We know there is an After Effects rewrite going on which we might catch sight of in Las Vegas, Motion hasn't had any real new features for a long time and Smoke never really got any traction. It will be an interesting April.
Here is the Blackmagic Design Press Release:
Blackmagic Design today announced that Fusion 7, the world’s most advanced visual effects and motion graphics software, is now available completely free of charge.
Previously getting access to high end visual effects tools such as Fusion cost thousands of dollars, so it was more restricted to elite Hollywood visual effects artists. Now with Fusion 7 being available free of charge there is no limit to block anyone from creating world leading visual effects. Blackmagic Design believes this will revolutionize the industry and consumers will be able to watch dramatically better feature films and television shows in the future.
Also announced was Fusion 7 Studio, a complete bundle of VFX and motion graphics solutions with collaborative tools and unlimited network rendering for creative teams and larger facilities. Fusion 7 Studio drastically reduces the cost of setting up multi user studios. Fusion 7 Studio will be available for $995 from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide.
Fusion has been one of Hollywood’s leading visual effects and motion graphic tools for over 25 years and has been used on thousands of feature film and television projects, including blockbusters like Maleficent, Edge of Tomorrow, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, The Amazing Spider-man 2 and The Hunger Games, as well as hit television shows like Battlestar Galactica, Orphan Black and many more.
The free of charge Fusion 7 is a fully featured solution and is not limited in it’s features. It has a massive visual effects and motion graphics toolset that can be used for both personal and commercial work. Fusion 7 features an infinite 3D workspace and an easy to use node based workflow for quickly building unlimited effects. Customers get advanced 3D compositing, paint, rotoscope, retiming, stabilization, titling, an amazing 3D particle generator and multiple keyers, including Primatte. Fusion 7 also lets customers import and render 3D geometry and scenes from other applications as well as create their own elements from scratch.
The $995 Fusion 7 Studio includes everything found in the free Fusion 7 software, plus adds extra high end features such as optical flow tools for advanced retiming, stabilization and stereoscopic 3D production, support for third party OpenFX plug ins, and distributed network rendering so customers can render jobs on an unlimited number of computers at no additional cost! Fusion 7 Studio also includes Generation, a studio wide multi user workflow and collaboration tool that helps creative teams manage, track and review versions of every shot in a production. Customers can also move projects from the free Fusion 7 software to a workstation running Fusion 7 Studio and take advantage of workflow collaboration and unlimited distributed network rendering.
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