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In the 3D world, shadows do not only fall
on planar or primitive objects. Fusion 5
supports the import of FBX objects and whole
FBX scenes, including lights, point clouds,
geometry and even texture coordinates. FBX
objects can cast and receive shadows, or be
used as extensions to existing 3D renderings.
Fusion 5 imports four different 3D file formats:
XSI, Maya, 3DS Max and Lightwave. Standard
3D tracking software exports track and camera
data in these formats, which can be imported
and exported. This covers camera data such
as focal length, far/nearplane and complete
animation data.
3D ENGINE: THE TEXT TOOL AND VIEWS
img01: Fusion 5 offers a real 3D environment with FBX object support
COMPOSITING MEETS 3D IN FUSION 5
With their previous version of Fusion, Canadian
software developers eyeon covered the entire
spectrum of compositing and visual effects.
Presently, Fusion is being used in production
and post production for television, games and
blockbuster films such as, “Sin City“, “The Last
Samurai“ and more recently, Roman Polanski‘s
“Oliver Twist“, which will come to a theater
near you in late 2005.
The widely anticipated version 5 offers a
number of promising innovations, including
a comprehensive 3D environment, the most
powerful new feature in Fusion 5. In addition,
eyeon software has revised the workflow
and converted the bins to be shared, so that
artists can work on the same project with
no confusion of file names, placement and
updates. In the process of converting Fusion
to a full bodied 3D compositor, eyeon also
ported the display views to take advantage of
a hardware-accelerated OpenGL, allowing the
user to benefit from the computing power of
popular graphics cards from NVidia and ATI.
For television graphics and trailers, the 3D
environment creates a whole new look without
the delay of tedious rendering. Furthermore,
broadcasters will be attracted to the extended
script capability. The compositions are now
stored in ASCII format, so that the exchange of
text and graphic elements can be automated
and managed from a database or scheduling
software.
THE 3D ENVIRONMENT IN FUSION 5
The most significant new development in
Fusion 5 is the true 3D space. eyeon has created
an environment far superior to anything
present in other compositing programs. The
core architecture of Fusion was rewritten from
the ground up.
3D compositions generally start with a 3D
image plane, a camera, and a light. Fusion
allows you to place image layers in the
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eyeon europe special reprint 10/05
3D space, in order to be able to develop
perspectively correct compositions. Examples
of this would be sky replacements and placing
a 3D character into real world scenes.
Fusion 5 supports texture mapping of
standard 3D primitives. For example, it is very
simple to map a background or any type of
image on a sphere and then import camera
track data from programs such as 3ds max,
Maya, PFTrack or Boujou.
Cubes, cylinders, tori, cones and planar objects
are also available. Each of these objects can
possess various material properties and cast
(and receive) shadows. Transparencies are
also supported, as are multiple light sources.
All of these parameters can be animated, and
expressions or modifiers can be connected to
one another.
The shading model in Fusion is incomparable
to most. In contrast to area lights found in 3D
programs, Fusion uses shadowmaps, which
offer a variable level of softness. The artist
can enhance and soften shadows without
enduring long render times.
img02: 3D-text is created quickly with a clean finish
The 3D engine is completely OpenGL based
and benefits from popular game cards and
high end graphics cards. When it comes to
rendering, the user can choose between
OpenGL and the software renderer, to benefit
from optimum speed and quality.
The creators of Digital Fusion 4 already had
one of the best text tools in a 3D environment,
which is further enhanced in Fusion 5. Text
is now completely 3D-based, and can be
extruded and bevelled with simple controls. It
has never been so simple to manage text in a
3D environment, and still be flexible,even until
the end of the shot. Like similar 3D software,
Fusion 5 offers one or even two quadviews.
These are needed in order to judge a 3D
scene correctly and have a simultaneous
view from more than one angle. As expected,
the Quadview in Fusion shows 3D Tools from
the front, right, top and perspective planes.
Different views can be adjusted at will, or
the Frontview can be quickly transformed
to an orthographic perspective view. Quick
keyboard shortcuts are similar to those used
in Maya, and are fast and easy to learn.
Fusion offers some very useful auxiliary
monitors, similar to those found in broadcasting and postproduction, which are only
available with expensive external hardware.
img03: Color tools – white balance and gamut control
img04: 3D histogram & waveform control monitors
There is a vectorscope and a Waveform
monitor with a 2D and 3D histogram. These
can be faded in and out, either as a Subview
over a normal 2D View, or fixed in the
Quadview as an independent Miniview.
Fusion 5 also offers a new 16 bit float color
processing mode. This mode uses only half of
the memory required by 32 bit floating point
color, while still providing access to colors
brighter than white and darker than black.
In Fusion 5, the artist can use an A/B Buffer to
compare between two versions of a shot, for
example, to wipe in a screen. Fusion 5 holds
individual color channels in the A/B mode,
which can be very helpful when checking
different Noise values or examining DV
material, among many other functions.
Existing color tools have seen some tweaking
as well, particularly the “Color Corrector”
and “Brightness/Contrast” tools. The Color
Corrector is substantially more sensitive than
the previous version, and holding the Control
key down while adjusting the color wheel
allows for the subtlest of colour changes.
An option to display separate color wheels
for the highlight, shadows and midranges
makes it much easier to use an input device,
such as the Spectrum from JLCooper. In this
version, sliders in the BC tool are arranged in
the order of color processing and the labels
are below the corresponding slider. In the
previous release, they were positioned above,
and some users may have mistaken this and
adjusted the wrong slider.
INNOVATIONS IN THE 2D-VIEW
There are some monumental changes to
the color management tools in Fusion 5. To
accommodate modern color management
and calibration the display Look Up Tables
(LUTs) now support a substantially larger
range. Previously, the LUTs used numerical
values from 0 to 1, but Fusion 5 expands the
range to cover -2 through 30, perfect for
managing extremely bright HDR pictures.
Since Fusion also supports this format directly,
it is easy to use one of the popular “Dosch
High Res HDR Sky” pictures for an animated
sunset. By decreasing the gain and gamma
values over time, the brightness tool in Fusion
can easily create this effect.
way for the artist to change the color space
of the image, converting from any number
of commonly used digital color spaces. The
Gamut tool is also capable of removing the
gamma correction applied by many digital
formats, allowing the artist to work with truly
linear images.
The color category is not the only section of
Fusion gifted with new tools. Version 5 also
adds a simple Noise Removal Tool (NRT),
long missing from the basic toolkit. This NRT
is not aimed at replacing any available plugins in the market, but can be a simple and
quick solution to rescue a few shots. The NRT
is channel-based allowing it to evenly soften
the individual color channels. The details in
the picture can then be brought back, based
on the contrast values in each of the color
channels.
Another new tool adds basic TV effects, such
as scanlines and roll bars.
WORKFLOW
The “Gamut” and “White Balance” tools are
two new additions to Fusions color toolset.
To use White Balance the artist selects two
pixels from the problem scene, a sample and
a reference. The reference pixel represents
the correct color for the sample. Fusion uses
this information to automatically correct the
entire scene. The Gamut tool provides an easy
Fusion 5 puts a lot of emphasis on workflow,
and facility management. Artists can all share
the same profiles for preferences, toolbar
layouts and other options, or each artist can
use a different set of profiles. The expanded
use of environment variables provides system
administrators and facility management with
img05: Scratch data-centric workflow allows export of shots to Fusion
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The conversion of binary flows to ASCII compositions allows the advanced user to have
full access to the structure of all Fusion projects. A simple text editor can access an entire comp, for example, when trying to locate
paths to change the location of the footage
after a hard drive has been exchanged. The
comps can also be stored and compressed to
prevent unauthorized access.
img06: Fusion’s find function allows you to easily find your tools in a large composition
better control over the paths, preferences
and plugins used by Fusion.
eyeon continues to refine the high-quality
interface design. Fusion 5 continues with
the darkening of the interface begun in
version 4, and controls are now resizable.
The flow view now gives the user a choice
of straight line connections between tools,
called ‚direct pipes‘ or the orthographic
connections used previously.
The flow editor also gains a navigator window, showing an overview of the entire
flow to simplify navigation. It was always
possible to add a comment to any node in
the flow, but Fusion 5 adds a comments tab
to the work area, where notes about the entire composite can be left. It is easy to see
how this could quickly become an informal
to do list or become integrated into part of
a larger asset management system.
For example, these comments can be read
and written by Assimilates “Scratch” by
means of a simple plug-in. Scratch2Fusion
allows visual effects shots to be sent back
and forth between the two programs so
that several users can work together in finalising a project. Fusion 5 is also tightly
integrated with the Velocity HD editing
systems from Leitch.
Adding expressions to a tool has never
been easier – simple expressions take the
complex system of modifiers used in previous versions and replaces it with an easier
script based method of connecting controls together. This technique is as simple as
clicking on any control and dragging a line
to the tool you want to connect it to.
Improvements to expressions will be welcomed by long time users of Fusion, but
both new and existing users will be astonished by tool instances. An instanced tool
is essentially a clone of another tool – any
changes made to either tool are automatically applied to the other. This makes it trivial to apply the same color correction to any
number of clips.
Though all the controls on an instanced
tool are automatically slaved to the value of the parent tool, it is still possible to
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eyeon europe special reprint 10/05
de-instance a single control. During our test,
we were able to color grade 85 shots at the
same time. With only a few clicks, you can
change the parameters for all instances.
Fusion 5 offers a completely new approach
to the collaborative workflow. Bins, which
contain links to media, compositions, tool
settings and macros, are no longer bound
to be local to any one workstation. Now
they are implemented as a windows service, which can operate independent of
Fusion. You can put the bins on a central
server so that artists can access them from any
of their workstations.
In the midst of project chaos, the bins system
offers a very simple structure. Fusion does not
require a data base to run efficiently on a team
project, but can easily be made to blend with
any existing project management scheme
you may have in place.
img07: Filters facilitate the workflow in the timeline
The ASCII format for the compositions is a
great starting point for automating a complete broadcast workflow where the format
and background of a trailer is used many times over. Since the compositions are stored
in an open, readable, xml-like format., you can
generate them from the scripting application
of your choice. Or let your inhouse program
change all the values and text-fields as required and save it out as a new compositon
which is ready to get rendered out automatically for the next sequel of your weekly show.
However, Fusion has a very advanced built in
scripting language, and all of this can be accomplished entirely inside Fusion.
BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY,
DOCUMENTATION AND FURTHER
IMPROVEMENTS
The cost of all these improvements is that eyeon has unapologetically broken compatibility
with past versions of Fusion. Flows, as compositions used to be called in previous versions
of Fusion, cannot be loaded or imported into
Fusion 5. Existing third party plugins will also
need to be modified and recompiled before
they can work with the new version of the
software. The SDK which allows you to do this
is available free of charge on eyeon‘s website
www.eyeonline.com.
With the release of version 5, eyeon has
expanded the already comprehensive documentation and innovative courseware. Each
licence is now accompanied by over 4 hours of
video courseware, comprised of more than 17
lessons in all. The tutorials cover everything
from setting up your preferences and render
settings to advanced compositing tasks. From
building a simple 2D or 3D composition up to
more sophisticated tasks like keying, masking
and various special effects as well as motion
graphics and particles.
Scripting is your ideal companion when it
comes to automation or other kinds of repeatable tasks inside Fusion. The documentation
for the scripting language now has an additional 200 pages PDF manual which deals
in-depth with the unlimited posssibilities this
gives you.
The motion blur for all tools and masks in the
composition can now be disabled temporarily with one single click of the mouse. This
will speed up rendering substantially. Cache
to disk has been simplified and now provides
data using the name as the composition, so
that the source material is easier to trace.
Fusion has excellent support for file formats,
which continues to be improved by the support for OpenEXR. On the downside, OpenEXR
is so open that every 3D software package produces its own flavor of it. The R, G, B and alpha
channels are of course assigned automatically,
but all other information from the source file
must be assigned individually. In the test, we
could open all submitted OpenEXR files and
assign all of its channels. In practice, it is better
to build your own templates, which work best
with your 3D application.
There are also templates and presets in Fusion
for many other tools, like its first-class particle
system. Since its conception, this modular particle system operated in 3D space and had a
Z-axis implemented. It has not only matured, it
has also been completely integrated into the
3D environment. With the right settings, you
can enhance your scene with beautiful effects
like snow, water spray or falling leaves.
server, so that others can access them. The
roto department can therefore work more
efficiently with the same material, and the
final compositor simply loads the masks that
are required for the shot from the bins. It’s all
there, organized and ready to go.
Another improvement made to the masks
are the double polylines. Every polygon can
now have a second independent set of control points, which is used to handle variable
softness between the internal and external
polylines. Points on the outer Polyline can be
made to follow the inner ones for ease of control. New points can be created at any time on
either line and new point pairs can be connected together if needed.
Rotoscopers will greatly benefit, not just
for variable motion blur. Those who prefer
B-Splines over Beziers, because they are easier
to handle, will also be satisfied. Fusion supports
both types of polymasks and can easily switch
back and forth between the two types.
RESULT
It has been three years since Digital Fusion 4
was released, which is a long release cycle in
this industry. In this case it is greatly justified
because the software had to be rewritten
from ground up, to move into the 3rd dimension and get OpenGL acceleration. In our opinion, the 3D environment alone is worth the
wait. With all the other additions and benefits
it’s a truly amazing update unrivaled in the
industry today.
The toolset is efficient and innovative, including the possibility of working with most diverse data independent of its resolution and
origin. The system is now as open as anyone
will want it to be and the support of various
plugin architectures and framebuffer cards
has been evolved. The already existing integration of Adobe plugins is of course still
supported and even Avid‘s OMFI interchange
formats are mastered in Fusion 5.
img08: Double polyline masks and
B-splines facilitate with rotowork
FUSION 5 REPORT CARD
• genuine 3D environment with FBX
support
• group orientated workflow
• very stable, open system
• SDK available free of charge
• node based with a comprehensive
interface
• modular 3D particle system
• hardware independent
• OpenGL 3D acceleration
• FBX object support
• UV textures support
• resolution independent
• outstanding and helpful community
and user group
Text: Sascha A. Haber, Eric Westphal
img09: New icons in the bins help for fast and easy access
Last but certainly not least; one of the most
important innovations are the new Fusion
masks. The masks used to be closely bound
to the tool that they masked, which was fine
for smaller compositions with only a few tools.
However it was difficult to cascade or re-use
masks. The masks are now situated freely in
the workspace like all of the other tools and
can be connected. The exact same mask can
now be used to mask several images, simply
by connecting it to several of the other nodes
in your flow. Masks can be stored on the bin
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5
Now add another Duplicate3D after the first
one. Again set the number of copies to 20
and give the Time Offset a value of 20, too.
The result should look similar to image 03.
If it looks completely different or if you have
something different in mind, this would be a
great occasion to give the various settings of
the Duplicate3D a try.
Now add a Camera3D to your flow, connect it
to the Merge3D and adjust it to get something
similar as in image 04. This is a good stage to
take some time and explore the 3DSpace in
Fusion 5. I find it handy to view the Merge3D
in both views.
The left one set to Camera and the right one
set to perspective. I then move the camera
and its target in the right view and monitor
the camera’s view on the left. To set the views
accordingly right-click in the view and select
Camera -> Camera3D1 or Camera -> Perspective.
img01: The trailer with automatically generated text
During my various assignments at broadcast
facilities I found that many of the repetitive
tasks in TV production can be easily automated using the built-in capabilities in Fusion.
In this workshop we will create a simple broadcast graphic making use of the new 3D-space
in Fusion 5 and its 2D-tools. We will then show
some easy methods to automate the generation of multiple slates for broadcast output.
In part two of the article we will make use of
the internal scripting language in Fusion and
the fact that compositions are now stored as
ASCII files. The comps can therefore be modified by external programs to allow any facility
to use their scripting application of choice.
Basic knowledge on how to operate a nodebased compositor is assumed in this tutorial.
as we will have about 400 of those cubes
later on, set the subdivision level down to 1
to save memory and increase render speed.
In the materials tab define a medium grey
for the diffuse color and set the specular intensity to 0.46. Admittedly, medium grey
isn’t much of an exciting color, but to save
time we will pre-render the background and
change its color later with the ColorCorrector.
So the medium grey is something quite handy
to start with in this case. In the 3D-Tab set the
X rotation to around 70 degrees and animate the Y rotation to go from 0 to 360 degrees
over 500 frames.
The task at hand is to create some broadcast
graphics for a television station. The look
should be consistent for every slate, but the color scheme of the background should change
according to the genre of the film announced.
This color scheme as well as the text information in the slates shall be automatically
updated and rendered to allow for a high
throughput. The information itself comes from
the station’s dispatcher as a tab-separated
textfile as shown in image 02. This file could
be exported from a spreadsheet or generated
by a playlist tool or a database.
Add a Directional Light to the flow and connect it with the shape using a Merge3D.
Unlike the 2D-merge, this tool is a multimerge
which means that you can connect as many
tools to it as you like. Drag the Merge3D to
the view and activate the “light”-switch underneath the view to see the result of your light.
Now add a Duplicate3D between the Shape
and the Merge3D. This highly creative tool
allows for the controlled duplication of either
single objects or entire scenes and is one of
those tools that are simply fun to play around
with. Set the copies to 20, the X Offset to 0.28
and the Z Offset to 0.5. The X rotation should
have a value of around 70, the Y rotation of
around -10 and the Z rotation of 75 degrees.
Your result should look similar to image 03
So let’s start with a moving background using
the new 3D features in Fusion 5. We start with
a blank composition and add a Shape3D.
In the controls-tab define it as a cube and,
Set your render range to 500 frames and press
play, just to see what happens and how fast
and easily navigable the OpenGL output in
Fusion 5 is.
If you found a camera position that fits your
needs, add a Render3D after the merge.
You can set the render to either OpenGL for
faster speed or software for better quality.
Make sure “Enable Lighting” is checked and
select your frame format of choice in the image
tab. I used HDTV 720 in this case. Add a saver
and render out frames 0-499 to get a nice,
loopable animation or continue with this
workshop by adding the next tools.
img03: The second Duplicate3D
img02: Automate.txt
job
time
genre
titel
091005_1800 18:00 Family The Cat in the Hat
091005_2000 20:00 SciFi
The Matrix
091005_2200 22:00 Horror The house of the living dead
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message
DDS DD ST
coming up next 0
tonight
1
nightshocker
0
1
0
0
0
1
1
WS SD
1
1
0
0
0
1
“coming up next” subline as well as the audio
and screen information.
To spice up the intro a bit more let’s add some
animation to our tools. Make sure that you are
at frame 50. If you haven‘t already done so, add
a rectangular mask to the Background, and
line it up vertically with the subline, then set
its x-position to 0. Give it a width of 2, so that it
runs over the entire image. Right-click on the
width slider and select ‘animate’.
img04: Two duplicators make up a nice, blocky mess
To generate some nice intro-motion we will
generate a Background in 3D space. Make
it 600x400 pixels in size and again choose a
medium grey with full alpha for the color. Add
a rectangular mask to it, set both width and
height to 0.9 and uncheck the Solid switch.
Give it a border width of 0.04 and a corner
radius of 0.12. Then connect the Background
to an ImagePlane3D and in the plane’s 3D-tab
set the size to 0.9.
Add a Duplicate3D, set Copies to 4 and Z offset to 0.4. Add a Camera3D, make it a target
cam and set it up at frame 50 to get a result
similar to the image 05. I aligned the target to
the lower right of the rectangles and camera
to it’s target, but with a bit of a Z Offset. As a reference you might have a look at the settings
in image 05.
Animate the six values for translation and target, go to frame zero and move the camera
between the second and third frame. The values for this are approximately: 0.08, -0.223, 0.6
for the camera and -0.755, -0.208, 0.583 for the
target.
Add a Render3D and merge its output in
screen mode over the Background you created in the first part of this tutorial. Now insert a
ColorCorrector between the Background and
the Merge. Rename it to CC_Back, as we will
reference this tool later on in our script. After
the ColorCorrector add a SoftGlow, view it and
set its threshold to around 0.07.
Now go to the Text Tab of your T_Time tool
and right-click on the WriteOn End slider. Then
select ‘animate’. Go to frame 0 and set the
WriteOn End to zero. Go back to the mask on
your Background and set its width to 0. Now
you can step through all the other text-tools,
right click on their WriteOn End sliders and select ‘connect to -> T_Time -> End’.
Add a saver and point it to the directory of
your choice. Remember to save your Composition if haven’t done so already. All in all it
should like image 06.
Congratulations!
We now finished our setup and it’s about
time to tell the computer to do the rest of the
work automatically. As I said in the beginning,
the composition you just saved is stored in a
readable ASCII format. You can take it into
the scripting application of your choice,
let your in-house program change all the
values and text fields as required and save it
out as a new compositon which is ready to get
rendered out.
However, Fusion has a very advanced scripting
language built in and all of this can be accomplished entirely inside Fusion. The next part of
our workshop will show you how to accomplish this goal.
img05: Our camera at frame 50
Automation Information:
• Fusion SDK available free of charge
• Compositions stored in ASCII format
• Scripting language based on LUA
The required scripts for the automation
in part two of this workshop can be
made available on request.
If you are interested in automating your
broadcast workflow, please contact the
author at [email protected].
Author: Eric Westphal
img06: Ready to go – our final composition
To complete our flow we need some Text and
another Background. So we add a Background
and four Text+ tools and merge them after
the recent merge. Rename them to T_Time,
T_Title, T_Genre and T_Message. Again, we will
reference to them in our script. T_Title is 90%
white and merged in normal mode. The other
text tools as well as the Background are again
medium grey and merged in screen mode.
For layout purposes and to position all tools
correctly, you could now enter some text
as I did in the layout. T_Time holds the starting-time for the program (18:00 in our example). T_Title gets the title of the movie
and should be set to Right/Top Justification
in the Alignment section of the layout tab.
T_Genre is Family Entertainment in our
example and is aligned on the right, too.
T_Message is left-aligned and holds the
eyeon europe special reprint 10/05
7
©2005. CAFEFX, Inc. Image courtesy Dimension Films / Troublemaker Studios
Today’s compositing drives production pipelines.
Fusion artists drive box office hits.
Copyright © 1988-2005 eyeon Software Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks, company names and products are the property of their respective holders.
eyeon Digital Fusion, eyeon Fusion and Digital Fusion are registered trademarks of eyeon Software Inc.
Your local reseller:
Published by: Business TV GmbH • Römerstr. 16 • D-82205 Gilching • +49 8105 271191
[email protected] • Design/Layout: Antje Küther • www.eyeonline.com
October 2005
Test of
Fusion5 – Compositing Meets 3D
3-D Space
New Flow Tools
Collaborative Workflow