da vinci resolve for post on moho animations

[Mattyj]

just wondering if anyone has much experience using da vinci resolve for post production tweaks including adding extra effects, and if you have a work flow that helps you make any of these adjustments?

[Greenlaw]

just wondering if anyone has much experience using da vinci resolve for post production tweaks including adding extra effects, and if you have a work flow that helps you make any of these adjustments?

I use Fusion Studio which is the part of DaVinci Resolve that's used for compositing and FX work. If you've seen my first Moho short film Scareplane, the compositing and effects in it was done using Fusion.

Fusion is a nodes-based compositor, which is very different from a layer-based compositor like After Effects. It's very similar to Nuke (which I also use) but, IMO, Fusion is easier to use than Nuke and clearly a lot cheaper. The way nodal compositing works is you add images and image sequences (i.e., layers rendered from Moho using Layer Comps,) with Load nodes, connect them using Merge nodes, and at the very end you add a Save node that writes out your file. The result is a flow diagram, and if you construct it neatly, top-down and left-to-right, it's very easy to find anything and see how each piece affects your comp.

Additionally, you can feed masks you create directly inside Fusion, import from files or extract from images, and feed any mask or combination of masks to any node in the comp. Then you can add effects nodes anywhere in your flow. One of the biggest strengths of nodal compositing is that you can plug any node into any other node, so it's much more efficient because you're not duplicating so much data like you might in a layers based compositor. In fact, you can add multiple Save nodes to your comp at the end or anyplace within your nodes structure so you can write out different formats or different parts of your comp to use in other comps or other programs.

I like to use the standalone version of Fusion Studio but DaVinci Resolve Studio has a version of Fusion built-in. The standalone version has a few more features than the built-in one but the two are very nearly identical programs. The main reason to use the built-in Fusion is if you intend to use DaVinci Resolve for video editing. If you're not using the editor part of DaVinci Resolve, then it makes more sense to use the standalone Fusion for the extra features and to have more of your computer resources available for it.

BTW, when you buy DaVinci Studio, you get both the full version of DaVinci Studio with the built-in Fusion plus the standalone version of Fusion Studio, all for under $300. If you buy it directly from Blackmagic Design, you get it with a software license key (instead of the hardware dongle key,) which can be activated on up to two devices. (I have it activated on my desktop at home and on my laptop for when I'm away.)

IMO, this is a real bargain! I bought my first license of Fusion back in 2001 and paid $2000 for it, and that was discounted down from $4000! At $295, the current version is a small fraction of the original cost and it's significantly more powerful than the version I used 22 years ago. Plus now it has DaVinci Resolve too.

Besides Scareplane, everything on my Rhythm & Hues demo reel and much of what's on my The Asylum demo reel was composited with effects added using Fusion. So if you check those out, you'll see that it's very powerful and flexible. (My Demo Reels)

So how does Fusion compare to a layers based compositing program like After Effects? I use Ae as well and the main difference is that Ae uses layers instead of nodes for everything, and you place keyframes on each layer in your comp. It's basically Photoshop but with animation features. Ae is very straightforward and does a lot right out of the box, but for a lot of really fancy tricks you need to buy plugins, and that's where it can get very expensive. Ae is probably easier for beginners to understand, but it's also not nearly as efficient as a nodes based compositor like Fusion or Nuke.

In my experience, Fusion is better for compositing live action, cg and visual effects, but Ae is better for motion graphics. That isn't to say you can't do motion graphics in Fusion and you can't composite live action and cg in Ae--you can and both programs do it very well--but by their nature, certain types of animation are easier to do in one program than the other. (At my workplace, I use Ae and Nuke, and I often switch between these two programs when working on the same shots.)

Comparing the cost of DaVinci Studio+Fusion Studio is much cheaper than an annual Adobe Creative Cloud subscription for Adobe After Effects (for compositing and FX)+Premiere (for video editing,) and so far the DaVinci/Fusion license has been perpetual for as long as BMD has been selling the product. On the other hand, with a Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, you get 23 programs plus many apps for mobile devices, and a large font collection plus other assets. If you can use only a handful of these programs on a daily basis, it can be an excellent deal (I probably use about 11 programs regularly.)

As mentioned before, where After Effects can get expensive is with third party plugins like the Red Giant suite. Ever since Maxon bought them out, Red Giant has gotten ridiculously expensive and I had to drop them a while ago. This is one big reason I'm drifting back towards Fusion as my main compositing program in my personal work. I still like using Ae for quick or very 'graphicky' stuff but for more realistic fx compositing, I prefer using Fusion.

I know that was a little all over the place but I hope this helps.