Blackmagic Releases Free Public Beta for VFX App Fusion 8

The compositing and 3D application used by a number of Hollywood films was purchased by Blackmagic about a year ago, and they released version 7 for free, along with a $1,000 studio version containing more advanced features and options. While version 7 was only available on Windows, version 8 is now available for both Windows and OS X, and the $1K studio version will be available for Windows, Mac, and Linux when it's finally released.

From Blackmagic, a description of the software:

Fusion is the world’s most advanced compositing software for visual effects artists, broadcast and motion graphic designers and 3D animators. With over 25 years of development, Fusion has been used on over 1000 major Hollywood blockbuster feature films! Fusion features an easy and powerful node based interface so you can construct complex effects simply by connecting various types of processing together. That’s super easy and extremely fast! You get a massive range of features and effects included, so you can create exciting broadcast graphics, television commercials, dramatic title sequences and even major feature film visual effects!

Here's a general overview of Fusion from Rick Young:

And a more in-depth overview from Alf Lovvold:

The public beta is not yet available for the paid version of Fusion, though there are some major differences between the two. Fusion 8 Studio includes:

...advanced optical flow image analysis tools for stereoscopic 3D work, retiming and stabilization. Fusion Studio also includes support for third-party OpenFX plugins, unlimited distributed network rendering, and Generation for studio wide multi user collaboration to track, manage, review and approve shots when working with large creative teams on complex projects.

For the most part these features aren't going to make a huge difference for users who aren't working in huge teams and aren't managing big feature film-style projects. Just like with Resolve 12, the free version of Fusion 8 has the vast majority of features that most users will need.

Head on over to the Fusion page here to download.

Source: Blackmagic