Blackmagic just released Fusion...for free

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion

That’s right. After buying out Eyeon a few months back, they repackaged Fusion and the basic version is free. Not “non-commercial” free, not “training license” free, not “you-can-only-use-it-outside-of-business-hours” free, it’s just free-as-in-beer free. There’s also a paid “studio” version ($1k for a permanent license) that adds network render support, stereo 3d, OpenFX plugins, retiming tools, and a few other trappings.

Only downside is Windows only atm. :frowning: (Anyone tried it in a VM? If that doesn’t work, I’ll just run it on my old gaming box).

Neato! Interesting news, thanks for sharing :slight_smile:

WINDOWS ONLY!!! Oh, come on… :frowning:

This is the smart strategy: a 0$ time unlimited version for hobbyists (and professionals evaluating the product) and the payed version with the features that a professionals need for an efficient workflow enabled.

If the Linux community made a serious effort to make their OS as easy and as GUI-driven as Windows, perhaps they could increase their marketshare an appreciable amount and cease being seen as a niche market :slight_smile:

I’m left to wonder though on how much of these sudden offerings are due to the Natron effect (as in, they either see FOSS as competitive for the first time in the history of software or they want to make sure that FOSS won’t make it very far in this field).

Blackmagic also offers DaVinci on the same pricing model. They also sell a lot of video hardware; cameras, monitors, storage, and so on. It’s the same pricing model Apple uses, give the software out cheap/free to drive sales of your hardware to use with it.

really interesting. How might one use this on a blender project?

render projects to multilayer exr and do comp in fusion.

Thanks for this news! I downloaded and I’m reading the manual. I find this beast of a software being free very shocking.

Does Fusion work with audio?

Not to stray too far off topic, but you should do better research. In visual effects and animation (equally niche markets to sell to), Linux is quite well-represented on both the desktop and the server.

Again, more research is in order. Blackmagic is predominantly a hardware company. They have a habit of simply giving away high quality software that works really well with their [also very high quality] hardware.

That said, it’s still a pretty interesting move. A lot of people were wondering what would happen to Fusion after Blackmagic bought Eyeon. It seems that there’s good value in having a strong reference for a program that fully and effectively works with their hardware.

ok, just downloaded and there are 2d tracking tools, I must be totally wrong about doing 3D on it sorry
it’s a nice compositor anyway, only thing that looks disabled in free version are the stereoscopic tools

I was wondering when someone was going to post about this.

Mac users, they are working on a port. If you end up buying a windows copy of the pro version, it will also allow the mac version to work as well once its ported over.

This is a very very good piece of software. Between this and what Natron is doing, the compositing options (free or affordable) these days is staggering.

^ This is true. Many of the VFX supervisors down here in LA will prefer to use Linux if and when possible. Every OS has its presence in VFX.

I expected BlackMagic to pull a stunt like this after their acquisition of Fusion, but still - this move will shake the market awake again.

Staggering, and awesome. With this, Blender, and Resolve, you really do not need anything else for most vfx work on the cheap - and still outputting professional results.

So glad to see great alternatives to rental models in the market.

DREAMWORKS is working with Linux: http://www.redhat.com/promo/dreamworks/

There’s Linux native versions for Maya, Mudbox, Houdini, 3DCoat and software from the Foundry. I think Linux is doing great in that NICHE.

Eyeon always had a Linux version of Fusion available and presumably most vfx studios use the Linux version. Since BMD have a Linux version of Resolve available, there is no reason to believe that they won’t offer a Linux as well as Mac version in the future. In the meantime enjoy the free version…some of us paid good money for a license no too long ago!

Btw, It should work fine in a virtual environment on Mac or Linux…see this video:

http://vfxhaiku.com/2010/09/how-to-run-eyeon-fusion-in-mac-osx/

This is great and exciting news. The best thing is it can be used commercially. Many other providers are now using this type of model. The Foundry is coming up with a non watermarked noncommercial version of Nuke, NukeX and NukeX studio in early 2015.

Now its possible to use blender in conjunction with these industry standard softwares at free or very low prices. Very excited times ahead.

I have mainly used Fusion in conjunction with output from C4D, and haven’t had a chance to try exports from Blender yet. It should work well with multipass exrs out of Blender. The real power is in the full 3d space you have in Fusion, which will be unlocked for Blender users when Alembic output is fully supported. Theoretically fbx output should be fine out of Blender, for at least cameras/lights (not sure if this is supported yet out of Blender?) and basic geometry.

Since you can actually do some decent renders in Fusion (SSAO, shadows, shaders, volumetrics, environment maps), there are a multitude of options of mixing Blender renders and comping tricks in Fusion 3d space along with projections, 3d particles etc. There is an embarrassment of riches available these days for free with tools like Blender, Krita, Resolve, Fusion and newcomers like Natron. The sky really is the limit, while still managing to avoid the Adobes and Autodesks of the world :slight_smile:

Awesome! My uncle told me about it, I downloaded and I’m playing with it. I’m not sure if I like the whole interface, like the connecting nodes, and the fact that the nodes options appear on the side. I also find it weird to navigate on the 3d view with Alt Middle mouse button, but maybe it’s just 'cause it is different from blender, and it takes some time to get used to it.

Hahaha well almost every softwares : Maya, Mudbox, Substance Painter, Houdini, unity 3D… Are using the same ALT combo in order to navigate.
I had to choose the maya shortcut in blender in order to work correctly :slight_smile: