About Blackmagic Fusion 9.0

Fusion 9 is a VFX compositing and motion graphics application. This version is a major update of Fusion to operate on, and allow interoperability across, multiple operating systems and platforms.

What's new in Blackmagic Fusion

Blackmagic Fusion 9.0

• New VR tools & features
• New file format support, including Apple ProRes
• New keying tools and improvements
• OpenCL acceleration of many tools
• Improved script support for UI toolkits, memory handling, and more
• Many new additions and tweaks
• General performance and stability improvements

Details for 9.0

New VR tools

• Lag free, 90 fps smooth viewing of 360° images and 3D scenes.
• Support for both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets.
• 360° image viewer allows rotating the viewpoint of latlongs & cubemaps (same controls as rotating the 3D viewpoint)
• The Texture tool will now use red-green channels as a UV map, if UV channels aren’t found, for easier stitch mapping.
• Spherical Camera - renders 360° captures of 3D scenes as a cubemap or latlong/equirectangular image.
• PanoMap - converts between latlong/equirectangular and various cubemap image formats, and also allows spherical rotation.
• LatLong Patcher - extracts an undistorted 90° window from a latlong image for paint fixes etc, and applies distortion to map fixes or new elements back into latlong images.
• Spherical Stabilizer - smooths and stabilizes camera rotation in 360° clips. (Fusion Studio required)

Formats

• Fusion is now certified for Apple ProRes on all three platforms. The unsupported 32bit QuickTime framework is no longer used on Windows.
• Fusion Studio can load and save Apple ProRes on all platforms.
• Fusion (free) can load and save Apple ProRes on macOS.
• Fusion (free) can load but not save Apple ProRes on Windows and Linux.
• Render Node can load but not save Apple ProRes on all platforms.
• H.264 support on macOS and Windows.
• MXF file support.
• Improved DNxHD support.
• FFmpeg can be installed to further increase codec support.

Studio Player and Bins

Studio Player is a new playback engine in Fusion 9, giving artists a playlist, storyboard and timeline of multiple shots, version history of shots, annotations, and multi-user collaboration. (Fusion Studio required)

• A simple single layer timeline: gives the ability to play a number of shots, and set trim for each shot.
• Per-shot color adjustment controls allow for consistent display of shots from different formats.
• Annotation notes can be typed on each shot and version, as well as the whole project.
• Audio: Scratch track and audio per clip.
• Fully collaborative workflow automatically synchronises reel changes, annotations and colour adjustments across multiple workstations, allowing multiple artists or supervisors to access the same projects simultaneously.
• Remote sync allows multiple Studio Players follow the master. Actions performed on the master, such as Playback and Scrubbing will also be executed on the slaves, allowing the reel to be reviewed across multiple workstations or sites.
• BMD UltraStudio and DeckLink playback devices supported.
• Shot versions can be stored in the same project to allow for quick access to previous work and for comparison of progress.
• Guide overlays can be customised to show monitor/title safety and show crops to various output formats.
• Scriptable: Studios can automate tasks using the Fusion scripting engine to control features and clips of the Studio Player.
• Single, looped and ping-pong playback, with a definable loop range.
• Ability to view clip metadata, with live update during scrub/play.

Tracking

• Camera Tracker will track and matchmove live action camera’s motion and reconstruct the identical movement and motion paths into Fusion’s 3D environment. (Fusion Studio required)
• Planar Tracker tracks subjects and regions in a live action scene and calculates planes of motion. It tracks perspective, positions, scale, and rotation. Corner pinning a new billboard image onto a moving shot or a new sign on the side of a truck is an example. (Fusion Studio required)
• Planar Transform for Roto will output a Planar Transform node which is used to control roto shapes. (Fusion Studio required)
• Point Cloud has updated features.

Keyers

New channel difference Delta Keyer and Clean Plate tools as well as updates to Ultra keyer.

• Delta Keyer
• A classic channel difference keyer, with color bias and spill replacement.
• Supply a clean plate to improve shadows and separation from background (a background colour still needs to be selected to indicate the dominant background channel).
• Ultra Keyer
• Improvements allow a wider range of background colours (not limited to fully saturated blue and green).
• Separate solid and transparent garbage masks.
• Can use background subtraction rather than post-multiply to remove the screen.
• Clean Plate
• Build a clean plate for DeltaKeyer when a proper clean plate isn’t available.

OpenCL

Many of Fusion’s Tools are now processed on the GPU, and will chain together for faster processing, bypassing the need for bus transfers and memory copying. Color corrections, keying, optical flow, stereo disparity, masking and merging will all process faster on the GPU pipeline.

Scripting

• Improved Python scripting issues with isolation between multiple states and lack of support in modules. This should allow certain python extensions to work that previously had issues within Fusion, such as PyQt and PySide.
• Fixed some script functions that failed to get updated for 8.0, such as directory functions and clipboard support.
• Improved Fuse/JIT memory handling, removing the limitations on large numbers of Fuses in a single comp.
• Fusion now supports Python 3.6, rather than the ageing Python 3.3. Python 2.7 support is unchanged.

Other Features and Fixes

• Fixed 3rd-party plugin binary compatibility problems
• Fixed ARRI RAW color space selection.
• Fixed startup crash on macOS High Sierra
• Fixed crash using Replicate3D with point clouds.
• Fixed Bender3D not preserving object IDs.
• Load .scriptlibs when running external scripts.
• Fixed crash using Alembic on Linux.
• Fixed missing GlobalAlign tool on macOS and Linux.
• Fixed some 3D render failures
• Fixed local file caching
• Changed Fusion’s use of vertically-stacked stereo images to Left on Top, to better align with common usage. Saved tools from legacy comps will work as before, and their Swap checkbox labels will change to Unswap to reflect their behaviour.
• Limit excessive OpenCL warnings if a valid device can't be found.
• Studio Player and the Bin Interface can now be connected to via the script hostname “StudioPlayer”.
• The initial find after dismissing the Find Tools dialog on Linux was being ignored.
• The Render Complete dialog was failing to show reliably on Linux.
• Fixed missing background layers with masked transforms at least one tool upstream from the flattening concatenated transform tool.
• CPU devices and Intel Iris integrated GPUs will not be used for OpenCL, unless explicitly requested.
• Changing the OpenCL device now requires a restart of Fusion, with a message to that effect after changing the device in prefs.
• PointCloud3D set to Make Renderable now obeys the style, size, anti-aliasing and color options.
• Fixed crash using Replicate3D on Point Clouds
• Expressions, InTool Scripts and Fuses now have access to Path Mapping functions for both the Fusion and Composition objects.
• Fixed Bender3D not preserving object IDs.
• Cross-shaped cubemaps now default to expecting -Z in the center face, for consistency with other tools. +Z can be chosen if preferred, and legacy comps will work as before
• CineonLog tool no longer crashes when processing single channel mask images.
• Fixed some incorrect usage of TIME_UNDEFINED in bmd.scriptlib, which could lead to errors when using library functions.
• Fixed possible crash when closing preferences if a ColorCurves LUT control is visible.
• Fixed Loader local caching; now recognises caches newer than the source, and sets the copied cache file time to the original file time.
• Updated OpenEXR to 2.2.0, adding DreamWorks Animation compression method.
• Update RED R3D support, adding RED Wide Gamut RGB color space and Log 3G10 gamma.
• Fixed mouse pointer position issues when adjusting the magnet size in GridWarp.
• Updated ARRI RAW support, adding Rec2020 and Rec2100 color space options.
• The gamut control provides an option to show as CIE 1976 u'v' instead of 1931 xy.
• Fixed keying the Hue channel of integer images in LumaKeyer
• Add support for Ogg Vorbis encoded files.
• IUP is deprecated and no longer supplied with Fusion or officially supported. It can be copied over from a previous installation of Fusion for Windows.
• Windows installer now looks for a per-user install of Python
• Picking rotation angles from object normals now works from 2D as well as 3D views.
• Changed prefs profile and master prefs environment variables for Fusion 9: FUSION9_PROFILE_DIR, FUSION9_PROFILES and FUSION9_MasterPrefs
• Fixed a case where some malformed OpenEXR metadata values would cause a crash.
• Fixed an issue that could cause Saver’s legalize function to fail.
• Fixed the back face of vertical cross cubemaps showing incorrectly.
• pinghosts([app], [timeout], [host]) can now query a specific hostname or IP address for script servers. Default (or "*") will broadcast the query on the local subnet.
• The contents of the search field in the Find Tools dialog is initially selected.
• Fixed the initial search text not being the selected tool name.
• Find Tools in the flow view works when the view is moved to a different frame.
• Improved behaviour double-clicking on application package in the file requester on macOS.
• Improved Snap Guide management in Timeline and Spline views.
• StudioPlayer, which only loads a specific subset of plugins, can additionally load additional format plugins that are placed within “Plugins:Formats/”, such that third party file formats can be utilised within the playback system
• If the clipping mode is set to Domain and the DataWindow is less than the DoD, the area between the DataWindow and DoD wasn't being processed for many color tools.
• Brightness/Contrast wasn't doing canvas color processing during pre-calc.
• Fix incorrect initial expanded control window height in some rare cases, causing controls being cut off at the bottom..
• The OpenCL prefs will now be present, with a suitable error message, if no device is found.
• Fixed the size of multi-line edits. It wasn't quite tall enough, causing the vertical scrollbar to show with text on the bottom line.
• Integer tool control sliders snap to integers again.
• Fixed an inaccuracy in cache calculations that could affect macOS and Linux, which would sometimes cause a more important cache frame to be dropped before less important ones.
• Fusion now warns if unsupported OFX plugins with thread-unsafe render are used.
• Fixed some unnecessary OFX error messages that could occur when aborting processing.
• The position of an Individual PointCloud3D point can be copied, and then pasted into the Translation group in the transformation controls of another tool.
• Added "Create Aligned Shape" ability to PointCloud3D, which will create and align a Shape3D tool.
• PointCloud3D point locations are shown in the view with 3 digits of precision
• PointCloud3D has a new 'point' style, as well as the existing ‘cross’ style.
• Added OpenColorIO Look control to OCIOColorSpace tool and view LUT.
• bmd.direxists() and bmd.createdir() work again. Fixed bmd.readdir().
• Reimplemented bmd.getclipboard()/setclipboard(). Note that Linux requires /usr/bin/xclip.
• Fixed possible crash in VectorMotionBlur.
• Gradient control shows its label again.
• Keyer tools now have separate mask inputs for solid and garbage mattes.
• Use shades of grey for non-effect mask, mask inputs on tools, rather than them all being the same very light grey.
• Defocus was adding a small extra amount to the center pixel of a lens shape, which could end up accumulating multiple times depending on the number of threads used for rendering.
• Fixed possible crash with OpenFX plugins that request images during overlay interactions.
• Fixed performance when removing Gamma in Loader or Source tools
• Fixed saving of images made from combining fields with non-full data windows
• Fixed sorting of some tools in the main Tools menu.
• ViewLUT macros will now be shown in view menus and toolbar popups in a directory-based hierarchy.
• Most controls no longer produce overly-precise values when dragged.
• Fix view pixel snapping with polylines.
• Fixed crash deleting Paint tools with a large number of strokes.
• Is much easier to animate combo controls and Text+ font control.
• Fixed cases where the primary input of a macro tool not always behave as the primary input.
• Fixed return value from the AddTool script command.
• Erode/Dilate is substantially faster in box and circle modes.
• Added support for multi-part OpenEXR files. If the file contains multiple parts, an option is provided to choose the part to read from. Available channels are then only from that part.
• Fixed some issues ctrl+picking from the view to set/adjust pick area.
• Minimum required OpenCL version is now OpenCL 1.2.
• Added Option(Alt)+Up/Down arrows to scale paint overlays.
• Can use Shift & Ctrl with paint overlay rotation hotkeys (Option(Alt)+Left/Right arrows)
• Fixed some painting hotkeys not working.
• The Texture tool will now use red+green as coordinate maps, if no UV channels found.
• Highlighted/colored pipes in the flow are now a little more noticeable.
• Pipes connected to active tools will draw highlighted/colored, like the hovered tool.
• Added popup view sliders for quick tweaks to gain & gamma.
• UltraKeyer can now be used to pick the background color, instead of being limited to pure blue or green. Added background subtraction, which is now the default, as an alternative to post-multiply.
• Added support to Custom for mirror sampling functions, getr1m(), getg1m(), etc.
• Added a matte input to Custom, which is similar to having a 4th alpha-only input, except that connected masks will auto-size. Values can be accessed using 'm', getmb(), getmd(), getmw(), getmm().
• New “Add View” options in View Layout context menu.
• Arranging views is now more reliable.
• Fixed problem with masks on Text+ not responding to image size changes.
• Color picking from views now works with high DPI/retina displays.
• Custom tool would fail to process any negative scanlines, if they were within the DoD/RoI.
• Keyer tools now have the ability to restore matte fringe after thresholding.
• Defocus lens shape sometimes had the edge pixels cut off.
• Fixed issue that could cause CloneInput() in a Fuse to crash.
• Can ctrl/cmd box-select to add/toggle select point cloud points again.
• Can now read and write 12bit int and 16bit float DPX.
• Holding down the Alt key while drag-picking color from the view will now attempt to pick from the tool upstream of picking tool.
• Clicking on an already active settings button in tool controls could un-bold its text.
• Ctrl+clicking on a pipe in the flow view where the output is out-of-bounds of the view wasn't doing pipe duplication.
• Fixed buffer overrun crash when formatting time code with frame rates greater than 100fps.
• Fixed a case where the viewer channel toolbar button would toggle between color and color.
• Custom tool expressions now have 3 and 4 argument min()/max() functions, and a clamp() function that clamps to 0..1 or to the optionally passed in lower and upper limit.
• Custom, pCustom, pCustomForce have 4 more Setup and Inter variables and expressions.
• Pixel values in the status bar are no longer left stale.
• The pixel values for the viewed channel(s) are highlighted in the status bar.
• Space bar to start/stop playback is now ignored when already non-interactively rendering.
• Fixed cases where TimeSpeed would do static caching when the speed is 0.
• Some DeckLink devices now support 3D stereo output.
• DeckLink devices can now support 8 bit BGRA and 12 bit RGB formats.
• DeckLink devices can now output HDR, controlled by Prefs/DeckLink and metadata.
• Fix issue where flow group backgrounds were drawing incorrectly in HiDPI mode.
• RenderNode will behave as a ConsoleSlave when passed arguments on Linux too.
• Fix FBX import crash when texture coord indices have the value '-1'
• Tool rename dialog selects existing name
• Path map prefs are separated into categories, making it easier to see which ones are editable. Built-in path maps can be reset to default.

Minimum system requirements for Mac OS

• OS X 10.10 Yosemite or later
• At least 1 GB disk space
• Minimum 8 GB RAM, 16 GB recommended

Minimum system requirements for Windows

• Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit
• Microsoft Windows 8/8.1 64-bit
• At least 1 GB disk space
• Minimum 8 GB RAM, 16 GB recommended
• GPU with at least 2GB memory

Minimum system requirements for Linux

• CentOS 6.6 or later
• At least 1 GB disk space
• Minimum 8 GB RAM, 16 GB recommended

Additional Information

Some applications may use third party code under license. For details please refer to the included "Third Party Licenses.rtf" document.

© 2017 Blackmagic Design Pty. Ltd. All rights reserved. Blackmagic Design, Blackmagic, DeckLink, Multibridge, HDLink, Videohub, and "Leading the creative video revolution" are trademarks of Blackmagic Design Pty. Ltd., registered in the U.S.A and other countries.

Updated August 01, 2017.