Blender VS. After Effects VS. Fusion: VFX Compositor Comparison
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ส.ค. 2024
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Hey Everyone. In this video I compare three common visual effects compositors; Blackmagic Fusion, Blender 3d's node based compositor, and Adobe After Effects. I compare the pro's and cons of each software and share some functionality differences between node and layer based VFX workflows. Maybe next time I will include The Foundry's NUKE in the lineup. Enjoy and let us know what kind of VFX tutorials or breakdowns you would like to see next on the channel!
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Hey Everyone. In this video I compare three common visual effects compositors; Blackmagic Fusion, Blender 3d's node based compositor, and Adobe After Effects. Let us know what kind of VFX tutorials or breakdowns you would like to see next on the channel!
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hey, whats name of the outro song??
I'm getting started in AE and have a little experience of working in Fusion as I started editing videos in Davinci. I always thought Fusion wasn't that great because it came bundled and AE would be superior. This video changed my perspective, thanks!
Awesome! Fusion is super powerful but AE way easier to get started IMO. Depends on the project which one I choose.
i don t think After effect is faster than Fusion ( or Nuke ) , it's more fast in your example because you have After effect in 8bit and fusion in 32bit float.
Hmmm. Good point. I'll have to retest this.
I will second that nuke is probably the fastest thing ever- hence the ridiculous and unfair pricetag vs functionality in the indie version
@@iluvyunie Thanks for the input. Currently learning Nuke as well.
@@dannybcreative that makes sense, I usually work with exrs and had no real issues until I started importing footage (in fusion)
@@iluvyunie Fusion used to cost thousands of dollars too, when it was the industry standard.
Btw you can click on any node and press 1/2 to preview them on the first or second view or you can click and flick to preview it as well.
That's a great tip thanks for sharing!
@@LightArchitect you can also right click on the preview window for more settings and you right can click on the side of the loop button on the blank space to turn off high quality/motion blur/auto proxy for faster playback since fusion works in 32 bit float by default and Ae works with 8 bit.
Very helpful overview and comparison. Not many of these comparison videos but very helpful for those of us who use one or the other and, from time to time, wonder about the current sets of features or a performance comparison. Your landscape of these, especially using a single project done in each, makes the important visual comparison also easy to grasp. Thanks.
Thanks for the informative comment! I'm glad this helped. I might try Nuke next...but I need to delve a bit further into the 3d aspects of it first.
Terrific overview. Blender's compositor gets a lot of hate from Nuke users. I personally love it. We did a film last year and brought in former ILM nuke artists for the comp work. Blender EXR files with cryptomatte worked flawlessly in Blender and Natron, but failed to work in Nuke. Very frustrating. I ended up doing the comp for the most complicated shot in Blender because it was easier to get the shot done there than Nuke. Fusion is a step up from Blender, and having Fusion Reactor expands the toolset nicely. I don't like that you can't see the inputs/outputs on the Fusion nodes like you can in Blender. Bringing in a multi-layer EXR into Blender makes it easy to see what channels are available. Not so in Nuke, Natron or Fusion. I also don't like that so many things are hidden in Fusion behind a right click in some obscure part of the interface. But its tight integration into Resolve makes Fusion a really natural choice for post work on films.
I sort of understand the hate but it's still a 10,000 dollar package; and staying in the pipeline of your 3d Software makes sense a lot of the time. Interesting that the EXR's don't work in Nuke. Someone else mentioned this as well. And yes Resolve is a powerhouse for sure. Lots of things can be done in that one software.
@@LightArchitect No question that Blender isn't perfect. It's slow, doesn't have a RAM cache, and is missing out due to its lack of OFX support. (Just having Continuum and Mocha access would really help.) But I found that by grouping nodes, you can quickly disable large chunks of the node tree and that speeds up things tremendously. Still a long way to go, and it looks like real-time compositing is on the list of things the Blender team is working on. Nuke is awesome. Natron is a great starting point, as it's basically a direct port of Nuke (sans the 3D stuff). I'm focusing on Fusion because I want my entire pipeline to be streamlined, and being able to cut, color and do VFX in one package makes for a great workflow. Anyway, thanks for the great video!
Seeing fusion without reactor is just like seeing Ae without FX console.
In response to the Fusion playback,
Fusion has auto proxy and render caching for nodes. Thisb speeds up performance. Also you want to disable HQ and MB for better playback.
Fusion studio has these settings as clearly visible togglable buttons.
But in fusion page, it is hidden behind a right click menu.
Good points. Thanks for sharing!
you can also generate optimized media for the part you are editing
Blender is getting a realtime compositor in next update and hopefully in coming updates there will be features to hand animate stuff.
I have heard. That's going to be a gamechanger!
@hjf4a2 I agree with. It's not industry standard yet. But imo blender is geared more towards independent creators. I am freelancer and my whole workflow starts from blender and ends at blender.
Personally, I wouldn't say it's a con to have the node properties on a different windows, among all the software I think only blender has info on the node, so yeah and also I don't think previewing in fusion is slow, AE by default works with 8 bit but fusion works with 32 bit float.
Fair enough. Just my take on it. And yes you are right about the previews. Good catch. Thanks for watching.
@@LightArchitect 🤘🤘✌️
Is there a way to make fusion work with 8 bit float?
@@raiidovfx Fusion at the top bar>Fusion settings>Frame format>color depth. And 8 bit isn't float btw.
Great video. Thank you!
Awesome! Glad you found it useful! Appreciate your support on our channel!
Thanks for sharing! I have been using Fusion and in general love it. Look forward to seeing your next videos, thanks for ypur work
You are welcome. I really like Fusion so far too. Thanks for watching!
Among the 3 I use fusion primarily, I started with AE and then moved to Fusion, it's the best middle ground because it has better mograph tools than Nuke and not $10k and it has a better workflow than AE for VFX because its node based, now that I'm used to node-based workflow, I can't go back lol. Layers seem like a waste of time to me now. I even do my photoshop in Fusion because it's so flexible. Also were you using resolve 15? I think you should use the latest version as there have been many updates to resolve and fusion.
I think its the best option when it comes to just compositing. And yeah the price point is great.
@@dannybcreative Being node based does make it automatically better for VFX. Nodes have been the industry standard for VFX since the dawn of VFX, at first it was Flame and then Fusion, Shake and now mostly Nuke. "When you look purely at ability and tools, Fusion just doesn't come close to AE" you have no idea about what you're talking about. Is that why AE was almost never used in big budget Hollywood movies and Fusion was used for almost 2 decades now for thousands of movies and TV shows. AE is a rotten core with millions of plugins hanging onto it. The stuff you can do with the built-in tools in Fusion, you'd need hundreds of plugins in AE. Fusion is fully 3D, AE isn't. Fusion has a fully-fledged GPU accelerated particle system; AE requires multiple plugins to get similar results. Fusion stock tools and workflows are way geared towards actual VFX and not just basic 2-3 elements compositing. Fusion was the first ever compositing software to fully run-on GPU and they did that back in 2011, AE still doesn't support program wide multithreading. You're welcome.
@@dannybcreative No, I've heard about fusion back in 2013-14 when they got accuired by Blackmagic but I was using after effects back then. Yes, I'm not old enough to know about the dawn of VFX but my mentors are, who are more experienced than you (based on your portfolio) and this is what I've heard from them as well as several articles and magazines on the internet.
Yeah, you're just projecting your thoughts at this point, I don't think you fully understood why I was saying which is actually more amusing because you're just making things up at this point. I'm not a Fusion fanboy but more like an After effects hater lol. Because I've been using it since like forever even before I started getting into 3D stuff and over the time it only got bloated, never innovated anything else, it just relies on Plugins so much, still 2.5D, slow, buggy, laggy and when I got into 3D stuff, doing multipass compositing, matte painting, projection mapping etc in AE was an experience of hell and that's just me barely scratching the surface because Fusion is better than AE for comp in every other way but it's massively underrated so anytime I see people telling other people to use AE for comp and not mograph, that's what I find amusing lmao. If I was Fusion fanboy then I wouldn't have been using both Fusion and Nuke for work.
I don't know what are you smoking that you're typing this lol, yeah AE has more popularity than Fusion, everyone knows that. Adobe has spent millions of dollars advertising for AE and the popularity of AE came from being integrated with Premiere pro and its popular becasue of the internet and the ease of use of it but meanwhile Digital Fusion have barely spent money in the past to advertise Fusion, close to none which explains why it was barely known by studios who've used it for decades to make movies and tv shows lol. Yeah, I'm sure AE was used to make mograph and HUDs and UI elements for movies and tv shows but 99% of studios run on Linux and they all used Nuke, not AE, you can disagree as much as you want but the percentage of studios use AE for VFX is close to none, go ask studios or the artists who are working in Weta, ILM, DNEG, Framestore, none of them use AE for actual compositing. The fact is you're saying AE is used in big budget Hollywood movies, it just pure entertainment at this point because if that's not being delusional, I don't know what it is lmfao. Nothing is more entertaining when arguing with someone while knowing they have no idea what they are talking about but they keep arguing like they are right lmfaoooo. At this point, you're just being an absolute example of Dunning-Kruger effect, keep going, this is top tier entertainment lmao.
Yeah, I don't think you actually read what I said, I said, the built it tool in Fusion are good enough to produce effects that would require bunch 1st party or 3rd party plugins in AE to produce, I'm not talking about effects that you can make in AE that barely has any flexiblity but the same effects might make you use few more nodes in Fusion which will not only give you more flexibilty but also it would be procedural which not the case with any of the FX in AE, I think you don't understand the points on Nodes lmfao. For example, the built in particle system in AE is very very limited and to create something like a good-looking ember you'd need multiple expensive plugins like trapcode, color vibrance by VC etc. I don't think you actually understand the point of node based workflows, the point is to not make something that looks okay asap, the point is generally to make something that can hold up in big screen and a setup where the comp artist can come back and make necesary changes wihtout digging though precomps and precomps lol and waste a bunch of studio time. Yes, doing simple basic things AE might require less time than Fusion but professionals or people who are doing CG comp, they aren't mostly doing simple basic stuff anyways, that's why using AE is similar to stomping your own feet because the moment the project gets complex it's only gonna be a hell from there, and being able to create simple things in AE requires less time than Fusion is an untrue statment from my personal experience, because doing any projection mapping, particle effects in Fusion now takes less 1/2-1/5 of the time it used to take me in AE before so saying something like that just proves you simply lack experience with Fusion. Yes ofcoure, every tool has advantages over other tools in some way or other but saying being node based doesn't automatically make Fusion better than AE is just pure ignorance and lack of depth in knowledge in VFX. If being node based wasn't a primary prerequisite for comp tools then Flame, Combustion, Shake, Fusion, Nuke all of them wouldn't have been node based. And this is why primality I made my comment because it was about VFX and if it means as professinal you're supposed to use the best tools then why on earth someone would recommend AE over Nuke or Fusion for VFX which just contradicts the whole professional point you made and that just makes you look a hypocrite. So I wonder who's more professional, someone who has used all of the tools and recommending the one perfect for the job or someone who's lacks experience with most of the others hence saying utter BS like " when you look purely at ability and tools, Fusion just doesn't come close to AE" which is just lightyears away from the truth and just lying about the tools that they are a fanboy of over recommending the one that's best for the job. Yeah man, I really wonder 🤣🤣🤣🤣.
Thanks for the valuable thought
You are welcome! Thanks for watching.
Cntrl, shift + click will Solo your node in Blender
Thanks for the tip!
Great overview!
Thanks!
Hey man Thnks for this! are you planning to create some video tutorial about Fusion in the future?
Hi Mirco,
Yes likely creating some more Fusion tutorials in the future as well. We have one on tracking lens flares but that's all so far. Thanks for watching!
Certainly, it was useful, I was thinking about moving to Fusion or maybe hitfilm for compositing.
Thanks a lot for this video.
Thanks Carlos. From what I know Hitfilm is layer based like After Effects. The learning curve is probably less but my gut tells me Fusion is probably better for the advanced comps. With your coding knowledge I would think you could grasp a node based system quicker than most.
@@LightArchitect thats a huge point. Didn think of that (about hitfilm being layer based 🤔) thanks even more now. 😍
Hmmm nice choice for me is blender and I will like to see a suit up vfx more like ironman or any other one
Thanks. Oh that would be a cool effect. I'll work my way up to that one.
Thanks man
What should I learn? After effects or fusion? Which is best. Please somebody tell me 🙏
If I had to choose one for VFX I would choose Fusion. For Motion Graphics and simple VFX composites I would choose After Effects. Thanks for subscribing!
@@LightArchitect thank you 🙏
@@3dartmaker483 🙏🙏
I am very new to this subject and for me Blender is the best option as its free. So in your opinion is Blender easier to learn than the other options? They all look great to me
I would say After Effects is the easiest to learn quickly. I would learn the free version of Fusion if you are just compositing and not going into 3d as well. If you plan on using 3d in Blender then use Blender's compositor as well unless you need something really specific.
@@LightArchitect Thanks for the advice. I meant i was new to the Animation side of Blender as I have just concentrated on car modelling prior to now. I will try to learn compositing in Blender first then see how I get on.
@@AFLAutoBlendz3DCarCreations fusion is better if you pay for it tbh, their stronger features (i.e. the auto tracker) are paywalled but it's nowhere near as pricey as nuke or AE. With that said, blender has perfectly good motion tracking that just takes a bit of patience to use sometimes.
@@iluvyunie Thanks for the advice. Will look into it
Have you used davinci resolve? If so, would you say it is a good way to prepare for nuke. ( when it comes to compositing)
Blackmagic Fusion is the VFX portion of Da-Vinci Resolve. I think Fusion is very close to Nuke for most projects. There are a few things nuke does better for example deep pixel compositing. Learning the node based workflow with Fusion is a great idea but there will still be some specifics you need to learn for Nuke.
im new to this and i wasn't sure if DaVinci resolve is worth buying the studio version compared to after effects or final cut! thanks for the video! now i just gotta shell out that 300 bucks and get to learning!😡👍🏾
You don't need the Studio version to get started. Unless you need certain features anyway. It's nice to test everything before you shell out the 300 haha.
*cough* say if you like to have a link *cough*
@@fabulamcafee ahem..
Blender and Fusion works fine for me! But the exr exports from blender are not accurate. Often wrong Color space! 🤔Png works! Can somebody help?
Set everything to ACES then.
Hmmm didn't notice this except when using After Effects but in that case I had to linearize my workspace. I'd have to do some more research on this topic.
@@xanzuls Thanks, i give it a try. In Davinci i work in aces cct, but the lut‘s in fusion have sometimes issues. In Fusion standalone that must be work perfect! Thanks!
@@xanzuls Hi, i tested everything. I rendered exr multi exr and png‘s in srgb and linear aces. After that i put everything in fusion studio for comaparison. The exr files are all in another color space. Srgb and aces. I put a gammut after all for output transform! The png‘s are much more accurate! The exr much more oversaturrated. I will check it later in Davinci, but their is a color Management.
@@WeareVRMUSIC It works fine for me, check this tutorial: th-cam.com/video/pLt1230dtYE/w-d-xo.html
Hello! What would make 'previewing slower' in fusion?
I think the bit depth has a bit to do with it. It is higher in fusion by default so more detail in each pixel. Hope this helps.
Please vid on fusion vs nuke for composting
I haven't tried Nuke yet and I think the learning curve might be even greater. I have some friends that have used it many times though....so maybe I'll have a guest video by them.
@@LightArchitect ya plz
They are more or less same, they both have node-based workflows but Nuke has more features but it's also $10k and the indie version is limited when the free version of Fusion is good enough for most people but $300 for onetime payment for the studio version is an unbeatable deal and Fusion is gpu accelerated.
Has anyone actually used Fusion studio 18? It's meant to compete with the likes of Blender.. I have yet to see anyone who has purchased it, it costs $295 and is the stand-alone version of what you get inside Davinchi resolve. (but no the same thing)
I haven't tried it yet but Fusion 18 looks insanely good. Looks like you can do a lot of 3d compositing in it. It's likely not going to do as much in 3d as a software like Blender though. The 3d looks sort of like what Element 3d is for After Effects(Except a bit better).
@@LightArchitect that's just it , what are it's limits? I still haven't seen anyone use it , just a few Node demos and one guy deleted a man from a short clip ... Is someone going to buy it / use it and put it up on TH-cam? , The app is an Internet mystery 😂
@@GamingPoliz1 It's being used in Studios just like nuke. You wouldn't see much vides of Nuke 14 which is the latest version on TH-cam much either but almost 90% of all studios around the world are using it. on the internet you'll only see after effects.
Did you ever try Natron, the free and open source compositor?
I haven't yet. Have you tried it?
Wowwww!
Haha thanks!
I found blender a bit cumbrsom , AE is the easiest to use. DF I've useds since v2...but Nuke its far superior as I've been using nuke for many years. I still used DF and AE regularly. but if I have a choice, I default to nuke.
Hi Jamie. Interesting input. I agree AE definitely the easiest for simple things but Nuke is way more powerful. Blender compositor is cumbersome but I've found the 3d workflow very intuitive. Have you tried using deep compositing in Fusion at all?
@@LightArchitect I used deep in Nuke, on Planet of the Apes the 3rd movie..I really like it. But my current place doesnt use deep.
Music at the start?
If you are serious about starting a career in VFX, then just learn Houdini and Nuke. If you are aiming personal projects and/or working for small startups, communities, stb. then Blender and Fusion is ok. Avoid After Effects except you are in motion graphics (animating text).
In finally blender its just made for 3d
Its legend to vs after effects
True. Blender is a complete pipeline in that sense.
Thanks. Please make a tut about Blender to Fusion. Exporting lights in groups to be modified in Fusion. 3d Camera - Alembic. Also, Cryptomatte in Fusion.
Edit: found this good tut - th-cam.com/video/mb0b83MML78/w-d-xo.html Thanks to Yori Visuals
Good idea. Thanks for sharing!
From what I know Resolve is BAD on linux and I don't have a gpu anyway so blender i guess
Studios run Linux and Resolve, It's not bad, it's just not all codecs are supported on the free version.
After effects really sucks in 2023 tbh, blender & Fusion team ♥
After Effects is ok but yes Blender and Fusion far better for advanced composites. Thanks for the comment!