With the major release of DaVinci Resolve at NAB 2019, Blackmagic Design has also brought Fusion into public beta. The update is primarily intended to harmonise the congruence between Fusion Studio and the DaVinci integration in order to make future updates faster and easier to publish for both software tools. Accordingly, the jump to Fusion 16 can now also be made using the Resolve dongle to run Fusion Studio. However, the free version is no longer available, more on this below.
The Fusion 16 innovations
Blackmagic describes the update as “one of the biggest updates” released to date – even if the new features are more under the bonnet: In addition to better significantly improved performance, the interface has also been customised, among other things
- New user interface, with a new, more modern look and some changes. However, there is already negative feedback from some users.
- Fusion Playback performance improvements
- GPU acceleration for all 3D operations in Fusion 16
- GPU acceleration for more nodes and tools, including Time Effects, Vector Motion Blur, Transitions, B-Splines, Bitmap Masks, Planar & Camera Tracker and more!
- Support for CUDA, Metal API and OpenCL
- Memory management for more efficient handling of larger compositions
- All details can be found in the release notes here.
Availability & Prices
The good news first: Contrary to many fears, the standalone version of Fusion will remain available. In addition, it is now possible to use the DaVinci dongle for the Fusion Studio version – before the update, this was only possible in the other direction.
However: As you can see, the old free edition of Fusion has been removed – instead you only have the option of using the free version of DaVinci Resolve. (This of course raises the fears again). The price for the Studio version is currently €325 and is available here. For a comparison of the free and Studio version you can have a look at this page.
Further information: For more information on the new release visit the BM website
