Linking 3d geometry to particles in Blackmagic Fusion
One of my favorite things to experiment with in Fusion is its particle system. They are a fantastic tool to create things like smoke, sparks, and magic. Their u...
Category: Technical
Tutorials, case studies, and tools useful to visual effects artists.
The Downside to Blackmagic Fusion’s CustomTool: It’s slow
I took some time today to evaluate the efficiency of the CustomTool against a small collection of nodes to see which approach would be better for a particular m...
Some rather attractive compositing math
This morning, one of my coworkers, Dan, presented a problem: We commonly merge translucent elements such as smoke on top of themselves in order to thicken them ...
Pin Light blend mode for Blackmagic Fusion
Just a small offering this time: The pin light mode from After Effects is a conditional operator. For every pixel in each channel, if image2 > 0.5, display t...
Soft-Skinned 3d Geometry in Blackmagic Fusion
Muse VFX recently created visual effects for Robert Rodriguez’ From Dusk Till Dawn television series. The show involves a species of reptilian vampires wh...
Fractal Blocks for Blackmagic Fusion
Update: Version 2.0 of FractalBlocks is much faster, has better handling for out-of-range values, and features improved controls. Also, this tool can be found i...
Blackmagic Fusion: The Texture Node
While I was studying visual effects in college, one of my instructors ran us through an exercise where we recreated a simple chroma-key tool using basic nodes i...
Planar Tracking of Organic Shapes
An acquaintance recently quizzed me about whether planar tracking could be used for flexible, organic subjects. The short answer is “yes, I do it all the ...
FumeFX stair-step artifacts
I’ve had the pleasure of learning some FumeFX* at Eden. Recently I had a scene that gave me some odd artifacts that I couldn’t solve. My excellent c...
Hoffer’s Wake
This is the Hoffer’s Wake star system from the PC Game Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos. It’s in a style similar to the in game navigation system.