Nuke VS Fusion - free versions

[Morne]

Hi all

I just saw the comparison between Fusion free and Fusion paid. The main differences seem to me is that the free version doesnt have stereo support, no network rendering and output limited to UHD.
I don't see any mention of commercial work however. Also I didn't see any mention of different file types between the two.

On the other hand, Nuke free has most of the paid version features, but it's limited to HD output, the file type is different and it's NOT for commercial work.

Did I miss anything? Anybody care to elaborate on anything or share their experiences?

[Neilg]

Fusion free can be used for commercial work. I've used both and prefer fusion over nuke, it's faster and feels like a cleaner way of working.

[dlparisi]

Fusion free also doesn't support any plugins AFAIK. Not sure about Nuke though.

[squintnic]

fusion free has no ofx support and no network rendering and can be used for commercial work
the paid version is pretty cheap at around 1k USD
i prefer it to nuke as its faster and easier to use, however you might have trouble finding fusion freelancers as most use Nuke.

[Morbid Angel]

sadly nuke is seriously overpriced and is not that good out of the box. I've started from fusion but it's been years since I used it.

There is this other free one called natron, which is open source looks a lot like nuke, but by being free its kinda like blender vs max

[val2]

I have been playing with Fusion, Autodesk Composite (toxik)(it's free) and Blender as a compositor. I tried using Natron but I couldn't get it to read a vray multi exr file so I gave up plus it crashed on me a few times. Toxik has no limitations but I can't find any plugins for it, It's a bit quirky in searching for files on your machine but that is pretty minor. Blender, of course has no limitations and it's Blender so navigating is a little different but once you get your mind around how it works it fine. I find the three of them are all pretty easy to use. I haven't tried Nuke as of yet.

[Morne]

I've done a couple of Nuke courses on fxphd so it's my 1st choice, but as Dmitry mentioned, that's a very expensive tool for a freelancer!
I wanted to go Natron, but their 2.0 release had too many delays and they don't yet support full 3D.
I used composite a few times on jobs, but it crashes way too often on simple things. Tried blender (3D) few years back but my wrists are still recovering where I was chewing LOL

I will give fusion a try then it seems.

Any other suggestions or comments?

[m_hinks]

Natron 2.0 is now out, looks better. Still not full shuffle support, so you cant plugin a multilayer EXR and shuffle the RE's out and re-comp together as in Nuke. But you can make a simple template file to save remaking each time. I believe it has network rendering using Deadline etc.

Used Fusion recently and was good, but I have a preference for Natron with the similar look and shortcuts to nuke.

[Neilg]

Any other suggestions or comments?

Watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USS84b1iUp4

These:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...eYHfIbmJWd5j-v

And if you're up for it these are fun too:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...0F5C92269524D4

[Morne]

Watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USS84b1iUp4

These:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...eYHfIbmJWd5j-v

And if you're up for it these are fun too:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...0F5C92269524D4

Thanks these were very interesting.
Any more links to Fusion tutorials? Specifically for stills? (I want to replace Photoshop completely with Fusion)
While I'm at it, I want to fully switch to fusion for animation also.

On a similar topic, since it's from the same company, would it make sense to also replace Premiere with Da Vinci resolve? Then I'll have Fusion and Da Vinci. What you guys think?

[Neilg]

I had no idea they'd also made that free... I like premiere but it's color tools are absolute shit so we end up re-exporting the same shots over and over from fusion. Would be great if we can export in 16bit and do some slight adjustments in the edit.

Might be a bit late on this project to completely switch our edit over but i'm going to look into using that for the next one. If you give it a go i'd like to know if anything comes up and how smoothly you transition.

[instinct]

As usual it depends a lot on what you are doing. Fusion is faster in some cases and a lot slower in others. It excels in some areas an miserably fails in others. As all tools do.

For us fusion is a no go as it does not offer full multichannel workflows. With the type of work we do it's simply not possible to go without.

Now with that being said it's free after all. Go for it and give it a thorough whirl to see if it fits your workflows and requirements

Cheers,
Thorsten

[Morne]

As usual it depends a lot on what you are doing. Fusion is faster in some cases and a lot slower in others. It excels in some areas an miserably fails in others. As all tools do.

For us fusion is a no go as it does not offer full multichannel workflows. With the type of work we do it's simply not possible to go without.

Now with that being said it's free after all. Go for it and give it a thorough whirl to see if it fits your workflows and requirements

Cheers,
Thorsten

I hear you Thorsten! I'd much more prefer Nuke over anything else. I thoroughly enjoyd the fxphd courses. There's just no way that a I can afford Nuke! Very disappointed in their free version not being for commercial work. They could have put similar limitations on it like Fusion. There's always Natron, but who knows when they will add 3D support and multichannel exr.

So for now, I'm stuck with Fusion, unless Mackevision wants to give me a job, hint hint wink wink :- )

[crazy homeless guy]

Morne,

How is the Fusion for stills working out for you? I have been working with Fusion over the past few weeks to build a hybrid pipeline between Fusion and Photoshop to produce a high quantity of stills for one of our ongoing clients.

I have solved many of the workflow problems I have been faced with though I still have a few to work through.

[Morne]

Morne,

How is the Fusion for stills working out for you? I have been working with Fusion over the past few weeks to build a hybrid pipeline between Fusion and Photoshop to produce a high quantity of stills for one of our ongoing clients.

I have solved many of the workflow problems I have been faced with though I still have a few to work through.

I usually do as much cc using the VFB tools, save all elements to individial EXR then PS the rest in 16 bit (32 bit workflow too limited in PS).

I just started playing around with Fusion so havent explored much yet. So far:

I tried the multichannel EXR vs the individual elements EXR. I'm leaning towards individual EXR as it seem quicker. Multichannel you have to copy and paste, then change the channel and so it goes. Maybe there's another way I havent explored yet.
You probably got a lot further than me so far, but I'm slowly getting there. I also tried NO CC in the VFB and attempt EVERYTHING in Fusion but so far didn't get very far with that. I'm not sure how to use the CC nodes to bring down my highlights, or simulate a Reinhard kind of thing. It's almost like my stuff is clamped to 1 in Fusion because no matter what I do, it's just not as simple as using the VFB tools or setting reinhard burn to 0.2 for example. Probably just me using the wrong CC node.

I do want to push through though and learn it. I'm getting a LOT more animation enquiries nowadays so will be nice to have a cool tool for that. The breakdowns of some of the work I saw on YouTube is VERY Impressive.

I'm dropping the Nuke/Natron idea. Let's face it, Nuke is too expensive for freelancers and small studies and Natron is just too far behind Nuke to make any sense.

Fusion has a lot of pretty cool 3D features and I actually like the UI. Would love to see some new tutorials for version 8!