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For those who don’t know the tool: Mug Lab publishes tools for Blackmagic Design’s Fusion environment, where image-processing Fuses can sit directly inside compositing flows and Fusion-based Resolve effects. Mug Advanced Halftone packages halftone geometry, dot randomisation, colour reduction and deliberate RGB misregistration into one effect for stylised finishing and motion graphics, while availability through the We Suck Less Reactor package repository provides an alternative to manually placing the Fuse and Edit-page template files.
Dots without the detour
Mug Advanced Halftone is a halftone-generation effect for DaVinci Resolve and Fusion. Its purpose is straightforward and well parameterised: turn continuous-tone imagery into screen-based graphic treatments without assembling the effect from a collection of masks, procedural patterns, channel offsets and colour-reduction operations.
The developer calls it a tool for classic halftone dots, comic-style imagery, pixel-art treatments, retro-computer graphics and thermal-camera-like looks. Those labels describe intended aesthetics rather than separate simulation modes. The substance (hehehehe) lies in the controls underneath them.
The effect provides five dot shapes: Circle, Square, Diamond, Line and Crosshatch. It can arrange those marks on a straight grid or use a staggered layout – a honeycomb arrangement. Screen Density controls the fineness of the pattern, while Margin X and Margin Y alter horizontal and vertical spacing. Screen Aspect Ratio stretches the screen geometry independently of the final image dimensions. For artists who have previously built halftones from repeated shapes or procedural textures, that helps. The screen itself is adjustable rather than being a fixed pattern placed over the source.
Ink gain, minus the ink
Dot Gain changes the apparent thickening of the generated marks, while Dot Size Curve alters how dot size develops from source brightness. Cutoff Dot Radius establishes a minimum radius for rendered dots and Clip Dot Radius limits their maximum size. Invert Brightness reverses the light-dark relationship for subtractive-style treatments.
These controls make the effect more useful than a simple dot overlay. A conventional screened image depends heavily on the relationship between source tone and printed mark area. Mug Advanced Halftone exposes that relationship as artist controls, allowing highlights to stay comparatively open, midtones to grow more aggressively or dense areas to merge into heavier graphic shapes.
Antialiasing is switchable, so desired edge behaviour depends on the job. A comic-print treatment and a deliberately coarse digital-pixel treatment may start with similar geometry but do not necessarily want the same edge treatment.
The developer also provides Contrast before the halftone conversion. That gives the operator a way to change how aggressively the source image is separated into lighter and darker screen values without requiring another correction node purely for the effect.
Jitter with a job
A perfectly regular halftone grid can look satisfyingly mechanical. It can also look generated when the objective is damaged print, cheap reproduction or hand-made texture. Mug Advanced Halftone therefore exposes separate jitter controls for position, size, aspect ratio and angle. Jitter Noise Phase provides an animation phase for those variations. The important point is that the randomisation is not one undifferentiated chaos control. An artist can keep spacing comparatively stable while varying rotation, or disturb position while retaining consistent dot size.
Colour reduction joins the screen
The colour section extends the effect beyond monochrome print simulation. Use Original Color lets the generated dots inherit colour from the source. Dot Color instead provides a specified colour, while Paper Color controls the background.
Color Reduction limits the palette, which makes the same halftone structure usable for deliberately constrained digital graphics as well as print-derived looks. The developer specifically cites limited palettes such as 16-colour treatments among the intended uses. RGB Shift adds deliberate channel misregistration or chromatic displacement. This is especially useful for work trying to evoke imperfect colour printing, low-cost reproduction or old display aesthetics because the channel displacement lives in the same effect as the screen geometry rather than requiring a separate downstream RGB-split construction. Blend With Input composites the generated result with the original image. That makes the tool useful not only as a full-frame replacement treatment but also as a texture layer that retains more of the source underneath.
A Fuse under the hood
The core installed component is MugAdvancedHalftone.fuse. The repository also contains MugAdvancedHalftone.setting, which provides the Resolve Edit-page effect integration, and MugAdvancedHalftone.png, which serves as the effect icon. The developer marks the Fuse and setting file as required for the documented manual installation, while the PNG is optional. The Fuse goes into the Fusion Fuses directory. The setting and icon belong in Templates/Edit/Effects.
Inside Fusion, the effect is intended to operate as an image-processing tool in the node graph. On Resolve’s Edit page, the accompanying setting exposes it as an effect rather than requiring an editor to construct the Fusion graph manually. That two-level integration is probably the most useful aspect for mixed editorial and compositing environments. An editor can reach the treatment as an Edit-page effect, while a Fusion artist can work with the underlying Fuse as part of a larger node construction.
Reactor is the useful bit
Manual installation is not the only route. Mug Advanced Halftone is present in the We Suck Less Reactor repository, whose Atoms collection includes com.muglalb.mug-advanced-halftone. The developer’s own repository also includes a for_reactor package directory for the tool.
That matters because Reactor is a package-management route used by the Fusion community for distributing tools and related files. For this effect, it removes the need to manually copy the Fuse, Edit template and icon into their respective support directories. Reactor availability should not be confused with Blackmagic Design certification. It establishes distribution through the community package ecosystem, not formal certification by the Resolve developer. For artists who already maintain a Reactor installation, however, this is considerably more appealing than another README containing three operating-system paths and the timeless instruction to create the missing directory yourself.
The source is actually open
Mug Advanced Halftone is released under the MIT License. The repository contains the licence text and identifies Mug Lab as the 2026 copyright holder. The licence permits use, copying, modification, merging, publication, distribution, sublicensing and sale of copies, subject to its copyright and permission-notice conditions.
https://www.steakunderwater.com/wesuckless/viewtopic.php?t=8618
https://github.com/mug-lab-3/mug-advanced-halftone/blob/main/MugAdvancedHalftone.fuse
| Product | Mug Advanced Halftone |
| Developer | Mug Lab |
| Type | Halftone generation Fuse with Resolve Edit-page effect template |
| Host environment | DaVinci Resolve / Fusion |
| Dot shapes | Circle, Square, Diamond, Line, Crosshatch |
| Grid controls | Screen Density, Margin X, Margin Y, Screen Aspect Ratio, Staggered Grid |
| Jitter controls | Position, Size, Aspect Ratio, Angle, Noise Phase |
| Colour controls | Source colour, palette reduction, RGB Shift, Dot Color, Paper Color |
| Processing | GPU computation documented; specific GPU API not documented |
| Manual installation | Fuse plus Edit-page setting; optional effect icon |
| Documented install paths | Windows, macOS and Linux |
| Package management | Available through Reactor |
| Licence | MIT License |
| Commercial rendered work | Developer explicitly permits commercial use and does not require credit in rendered video output |
| Source code | GitHub |
About the author
Manuel Kotulla works as a freelance Creative Director, Motion Designer, and 3D / VFX Artist in Hamburg. Previously, he spent many years as Creative Director for Animation & VFX at the Serviceplan Group. He has a passion for Houdini, cinematic lighting, and his Fuji camera.
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