Fusion 5.1

[jacksc02]

Hey guys,
Is anyone out there using fusion 5.1 yet?
We are stuck on 5 for a little while and im interested in seeing peoples thoughts on it

[dapeter]

'stuck on 5'... well, since it was just released yesterday I wouldn't necessarily say you're stuck.

I haven't had a chance to really put it through it's paces, but the new interface design is nice, the elbow nodes are a godsend for large flows, and some of the new 3d stuff seems like it would be real useful for arch viz.

I need to go play around with the new FBX import scheme and see how well it's working with Max. I bet you could easily bake maps, import the mesh into Fusion, and do the final animation render and any comp-ing in one pass.

[panthon]

Im finding fusion 5.1 more and more interesting, but coming from combustion, i dont see a way to use the gbuffer channels stored in rpf inside fusion...is it possible?
Plus, is fusion able to output to an external monitor via firewire, or u need some special SDI card?

And Dapeter, have u succeeded in using FBX info effectively to create animations inside fusion?

[jacksc02]

panthon- no sure you can use rpfs in fusion, but why use rpfs when you can use the full float glory of exr!
External monitors will need an extra plugin, we have a decklink card and there was a fusion plugin for the card.

[panthon]

panthon- no sure you can use rpfs in fusion, but why use rpfs when you can use the full float glory of exr!

Our current pipeline is all rpf-centric, but yeah, it wont hurt to try Exr for a change. Can u use the information stored inside an EXR, like zbuffer, velocity, etc inside fusion? That combined with FBX scenes would be really powerful!

External monitors will need an extra plugin, we have a decklink card and there was a fusion plugin for the card.

I've been reading about decklink cards lately and they look promising. I will look into it. Im interested in HD cards...any experience with that?
Edit: What about this one?: http://www.decklink.com/products/intensity/

[studioDIM]

Decklinks are good enough, provided you have the raw disk power to playback.
Signal quality is stable and clean, and it's full 4:2:2.

The idea i have about using exr versus rpfs is that to have all the channels embedded and layered like in the rpf with the EXR format, one needs a custom reader (as there is no saying, afaik, what channel will be second, which third and so on. that's fixed in the RPF format) or, i gather, nuke.
Otherwise, just save individual channels out, possibly (don't quote me on this) lose layers, and will have to recomp by hand providing the correct channels to the filters when needed.

Lele

[jacksc02]

we have a HD decklink card running a sony broadcast lcd with the help of a macpro workstation.......................niiiiiiice you say?!

[panthon]

I´ve been reading about fusion 5.1 clustering option lately and i was wondering if it works like vray distributed rendering, several computers rendering a single frame. Any experience with that?

Thanks.

[jacksc02]

havnet used the clustering, but network rendering is fantastic!

[studioDIM]

not to mention it's fully multi-threaded at the very core, and always has been.
If anyone can make clustering work, that's Fusion, in my own eyes.

Lele

[panthon]

“Fusion 5’s architecture was specifically designed to bring 64-bit desktop compositing to the visual effects market. With the new generation of multi-core processors, coupled with GPU acceleration, Fusion64 now gives our clients the resources to effectively produce the best possible level of content.”


Oh well, fusion 64! At last! yeehaaa!


"Building on the release of Fusion 5.2, Fusion64 includes OFX plugin support, a new Vector Motion Blur tool, enhanced 3D scene importing, 3D LUTs accelerated by GPUs, expanded metadata handling for DPX, Cineon and OpenEXR formats, Python scripting and Tracker’s new infinite sub pixel precision method."

Does that mean fusion 5.2/64 will be able to read extra channels inside EXR?

And no, i dont work for Eyeon.

[jacksc02]

yeah fusion 64 looks hot!
All channels in exrs will be read now.

(I dont work for Eyeon)