Blackmagic confirms continued support for Fusion with Fusion 16 Studio

Blackmagic Design was one of the most talked about companies at this year’s NAB, but its standalone VFX product, Fusion Studio, was still somewhat overlooked. NAB, but still somewhat overlooked was the major overhaul of its standalone VFX product, Fusion Studio.

There’s a lot of new stuff in this Fusion 16 Studio, but a lot of it was already quite familiar at least to Resolve users. Essentially, what Fusion 16 does is bundle all the improvements made to the version of Fusion built into Resolve and brings them into the standalone version for the first time (hence Fusion’s jump from v9 to v16).

The differences between the two versions tend to be a fairly common topic of discussion, especially given the price disparity between Resolve (free) and Fusion Studio ($299).

The two are quite similar, but the $299 Fusion Studio offers much of the professional functionality: primatte 5 keyer, network rendering and VFX editing functions needed for large-scale VFX work. A comparison between the integrated version and Fusion Studio is available on the Blackmagic website.

Therefore, the standalone version now features an updated user interface, plus, according to Blackmagic, much faster performance.

Certainly, Blackmagic has confirmed that all 3D operations are GPU-accelerated, while there are “dozens” of other GPU-accelerated tools such as timing effects, dissolves, 3D stereo tools, vector movement, corner positioning, color tools and more.

B-spline mask and bitmap operations have also been revised, along with the planar and camera tracker. Improved memory management makes large compilations with a high number of tools more reliable, making Fusion 16 faster and more stable.

Last year when there was no new standalone version of Fusion after the release of v9 in 2017, there were some fears that Blackmagic would stop updating it in favor of the version integrated into Resolve. This may have degenerated into many VFX companies not considering it as a serious tool, but rather as an add-on for Resolve users. We will continue to follow Blackmagic’s evolution in this regard.

Fusion 16 Studio is now available for download from the BlackMagic Design website.