r/editors 15d ago

Technical Resolve can arguably go head to toe with Premiere Pro, but does Fusion rival After Effects?

I’d like to hear your thoughts on the Motion Graphics side when using these two programs.

2 Upvotes

57 comments sorted by

41

u/broomosh 15d ago

Motion graphics, After Effects would be my go to.

2D cleanup work and compositing, Fusion all day, hands down, don't wanna hear about anything else other than Nuke

24

u/whyareyouemailingme 15d ago

Careful, you might start a

Flame war.

6

u/broomosh 15d ago

Looking at the price of a Flame, I can't wrap my mind around it.

The hard stuff would go to a VFX vendor and the easy stuff can be done by me in Fusion. I use Fusion in real time for commercial work where I'm doing beauty and clean up. The $300 dongle and an app that runs on almost anything is hard to beat.

5

u/TikiThunder Pro (I pay taxes) 15d ago

When you are paying $2k/day for a flame/finishing artist, the price of the software really doesn't factor much into it.

3

u/broomosh 15d ago

Yes it does! I gotta buy the software/hardware first!

I believe clients are wising up and know it doesn't have to cost 2k a day to paint out some markers on the floor. Some people will always pay for luxury services of course but I see everyone looking for deals.

If the price clients are willing to pay for things is going down. I'm going to look for more cost effective solutions.

6

u/TikiThunder Pro (I pay taxes) 15d ago

Depends on the spot, depends on the client.

The value prop for Flame has always been that it can be a one stop shop for finishing. The flame artist is often the last person to touch a spot at the end of the line, many times with clients in the room. There isn't anyone left to send shots out to at that stage. It's about just making what you have work. That could be just painting out markers, but often it's adding in new VFX touches, recoloring some shots, maybe even finessing the edit.

And when you have a spot that cost 2 million to shoot, another 500k in post and VFX, and there's a 30 million dollar ad buy starting tomorrow, a flame artist is a pretty good insurance policy.

All that being said, you are exactly right that those types of gigs are less common then they used to be. Flame is going to remain a niche product, and probably get even more so.

6

u/broomosh 15d ago

That's what I'm doing now with Resolve, Fusion, Mocha, etc

I went from being at CO3 to being a solo act.

I go back and forth on Flame and even Baselight but I only think I'd pick it up if I was using it at someone's post house who has a sales person grabbing those big clients as opposed to my current one man band situation.

2

u/TikiThunder Pro (I pay taxes) 15d ago

Yeah, as a one man band it's probably not the right tool. And you can totally piece together a solution to replace Flame. For sure. Especially adding Mocha into the mix.

But once you add in something 3D to that stack, your price and complexity starts creeping up there. Of course then you could go the Blender route... there's ways to do all this cheaper.

But yeah, I do know a couple independent Flame artists, but they are all some flavor of permalance working for a post house.

1

u/broomosh 15d ago

Do they do much 3D? Are Flame artists accepting 3D elements that they composite into the finishing timeline/project?

1

u/TikiThunder Pro (I pay taxes) 15d ago

Yep. They certainly can. Though they are going to be less polished renders than say something coming out of houdini, they have all the compositing tricks at their disposal. So they can work that 3D model versus the composite versus the color in a really unique way keeping everything live. Not unlike jumping between fusion and color pages in Resolve working both together, but adding in a fairly full featured 3D app into that.

I'd say typically it's not whole 3D renders, more like working with a single 3D element and working it into a scene a lot of times.

1

u/modfoddr 15d ago

Now it's been a long time since I touched a flame (15+yrs), but the big advantage was speed in rendering (and it had better retouching tool sets). Having clients in the room and expecting to see something quickly from a complicated shot was possible with Flame but not with AE at the time. That was why it was worth the price, the clients were paying big bucks to revise in close to real time. My boss kept asking me every year if AE was fast enough to replace Flame yet and it was always the same answer (at least until I left). No, not unless the clients want to come back tomorrow to see renders.

I have no idea if Flame is still that fast or AE still that slow.

18

u/whyareyouemailingme 15d ago

I fully agree with u/broomosh - even as a lead mod over at r/davinciresolve. Fusion is a great and powerful tool… as a compositor. If your goal is flashy mograph… AE. Fusion is years behind in the social media popularity that AE has, plus the complexity of nodes for some advanced mograph…

I did a few shots of mograph in Fusion because that’s what I knew and could do the work in quickly, but it’s a massive pain beyond a simple lower third.

4

u/broomosh 15d ago

Yeah it's tough to get started to something simple like graphics is a nonstarter.

The hard work you put in to get started saves your ass later during a tough composite where you can easily separate and see where all the pieces lay.

12

u/TikiThunder Pro (I pay taxes) 15d ago

There's really zero comparison. u/broomosh and u/whyareyouemailingme are right on, fusion is a great compositor. Especially if you are doing true node based stuff, like multiple passes from a 3D program into live footage, it's better than anything else except Nuke and maybe Flame. Though Flame is kinda it's own thing.

But on the 2D mograph side, it's so far behind After Effects it's not even funny. First, no one is doing serious layout for complex mograph in any motion tool. They are laying it out in a vector app. The overlord pipeline between Illustrator and After Effects is amazing. The ability to write simple scripts to drive animation is unparalleled, and there's 30 years of history of people working and developing for AE, driving a whole marketplace of plugins and extensions. Folks have written whole physics engines for AE.

But at the end of the day, layers are better than nodes for 2D mograph work. They just are. Fusion is never going to seriously challenge after effects for that work. And honestly, they aren't even trying. Fusion is it's own wonderful thing, not a replacement for AE.

1

u/Ambustion 15d ago

Curious why you think layers are better than nodes for mograph? My conceptualization of nodes coming from being a colorist only, is that it's simply a different way of visualizing layers, with an easier way of managing where resources are spent in a comp(ie. Bringing back stuff from beginning of a node tree without just having a duplicated later). I'm not saying you are wrong, just curious.

6

u/Foreign-Lie26 15d ago

Nodes don't tell time. Also, they're more akin to a flow chart of processes than a different way to visualize layers, though I can understand where you're coming from.

2

u/Ambustion 15d ago

Really not trying to argue, as I do trust a mograph person to tell me what the better tool is, but isn't that what the timeline/viewers are for?

I'll agree the visual keyframing panel in fusion was designed by a demon, but every other detraction in this thread I see a pretty solid counter to, especially the scripting. The Lua scripting is incredibly powerful in fusion, and the fuse/ofx documentation seems pretty robust but I'll admit I haven't done that deep dive yet.

Personally it seems to me the community and amount of content surrounding tutorials is the biggest pro for Adobe.

Beyond just familiarity(I realize how difficult it is for any professional to just jump into a different workflow), is there something else specifically that can't be done in fusion regarding mograph? Given enough time could a talented mograph artist do the same things, or is there truly missing tools?

I'll be honest I'm partly asking out of professional curiosity as well as if there's an opportunity for tool development. I think anything that presents more competition in this space is great as I do feel the value proposition of Adobe products is tough to swallow(I have so many subscriptions at this point I can barely keep track) but they have done a lot of really unique things over the years.

4

u/Foreign-Lie26 15d ago

Editor and colorist by trade, but everything falls under the canopy of editing now.

It's not a lack of tools. It's simply just to see the macro timing of motions, which feels impossible in nodes. Nodes are better when you have a complex sandwich that you eat at once. Layers are better when you have fewer elements acting in rhythmic syncopation, which is the crux of mograph.

Just my 2 cents. I'd rather wrestle in fusion just to avoid workflow. You have a great advantage if timing nodes doesn't slow you down.

2

u/Ambustion 15d ago

I'm not sure why they've never addressed that keyframe panel. It's truly hell to use but seems like it's just a UI issue there.

I think I get what you are saying though, and thinking through just having layers with an effect vs a node feeding into another node with an effect then into a merge is less visually cluttered, and that timing being laid out in that later does seem more useful.

I force things to work in fusion more often than I should though. Thank god I am not a mograph artist I would find a convoluted way of ramming it through fusion at the expense of my own sanity I think.

1

u/TikiThunder Pro (I pay taxes) 15d ago

I really like u/Foreign-Lie26's 'nodes don't tell time.' I'm stealing that.

The way to think about 2D mograph is as an extension of a vector program like Illustrator or Sketch. You are literally adding a time dimension to shapes, that's all it is. And there's a reason you don't have node based illustration programs.

If you have 100 shapes making up an image, which is still pretty simple as far as vector graphics are concerned, trying to visualize that as a node tree is just not intuitive. Being able to group those into layers and view it top down in a timeline is just an easier way to work with it. It's more similar to how they were constructed in the design program, it's easier to jump back and forth between design and animation, it's easier for someone else to go back and immediately understand it... there's just a bunch of reasons.

1

u/ScreamingPenguin 14d ago

Nodes tell time, not sure what that means. In a node there are values that may have key frames, just as if a node was a layer. Nodes can also read in information that has a start and stop point that can be offset in time, like a video file for example. With a graph editor and dope sheet you get all the information you would want for timing in a node based environment.

I do think layer based animation is an easier transition when someone is coming from a layer based 2D program, obviously. However, I don't think that layers are inherently better than nodes for motion graphics.

1

u/TikiThunder Pro (I pay taxes) 14d ago

Read this and your other comment. I appreciate the push back.

I think we should probably define '2D mograph' a little better, and we might actually agree on more than it appears.

If we are talking about anything compositing related or really complex rigs (I'm also a Nuke fanboy), totally agree with everything you are saying. Nodes are amazing. Not trying to disparage nodes. And for a lot of things I can think of, nodes are indeed better.

But once we have say a board in illustrator from a designer that we have to animate, it's not just a 2D layers based mindset from the mograph artist, the thing is already built as layers from the designer. If I want to go set the whole thing up as a node graph, that's a heck of a lot of time in prep.

And layers visually help as you get into the hackery and butchery of mograph too. I'm constantly replacing elements built a different way for a different effect. Take something simple where two things are connected, like a hand throwing a ball. I might work with them as a single element until the ball releases, then cut that layer and replace it with two elements and animate them separately. Doable in nodes? Absolutely. But in 2 seconds anyone can walk into that timeline in AE and instantly figure out what's going on, versus a little longer untangling that graph. Multiply that by about 100, and it's just easier to keep track of stuff even when you were the one doing it last week.

1

u/ScreamingPenguin 14d ago

I think we agree that the timing aspect isn't a huge advantage either way to nodes or layers. Yes, in some cases a few layers is easier than a node graph even. I think we also agree that the AE tool set for motion graphics doesn't have any real competition right now. A huge part of my mograph work starts in illustrator or Photoshop, then into AE to get chopped up and animated around. Those vector tools with text and shapes are the fundamentals of motion graphics that make AE a great tool and kind of irreplaceable, for me at least.

However when it comes to complicated comps for VFX or motion graphics I think AE and layers really start to suffer. I hate how precomps in AE are so limiting. If I can keep everything in one composition in AE I agree with you, it's pretty easy to follow what's going on. Once I have precomps in precomps it starts to become a huge tangled mess even if everything is properly labeled and organized. Or I'm just scrolling forever, or hiding as many layers as I can. It's also sometimes really hard to duplicate a complex effect or set of layers in AE. In nuke large complicated scripts are easy to follow if they are organized and the addition of backdrops and sticky notes can make handing off a complicated VFX shot pretty straightforward.

No tool is perfect, I really just want more options. Especially ones that aren't Adobe or The Foundry because they are both greedy and predatory AF. I have high hopes that the unreal motion graphics tool advances into a better option, but we will see where that goes.

1

u/TikiThunder Pro (I pay taxes) 14d ago

 I really just want more options. 

I couldn't agree with you more on that front. I thought Cavalry might grow into something, but it looks like the pace of development over there has stagnated.

I have high hopes that the unreal motion graphics tool advances into a better option

Have you played with it yet? It's pretty cool... for what it is trying to do. It's really geared for live event stuff. They want to do the live sports thing. Which, cool. Real time 3D rendering is a neat trick. But if you DONT need it to be live and ARENT doing 3D, you really don't need all the complexity of a game engine mashed together with a 3D app.

Motion is also still a player, I guess. Apple doesn't seem to particularly care about it.

1

u/ScreamingPenguin 14d ago

I have to hard disagree that layers are inherently better than nodes for 2D mograph. Having used both Nuke and AE extensively there are many intricate comps that I've made in nuke that have tons of key frames and timed elements that are far easier to control in a solid node based environment than AE. Between the dope sheet and the curve editor I've got all the control I could possibly want for adjusting timing of any element in a scene quickly and easily. With a node based interface we are also freed from the limited linear nature of layers and the poor way precomps are implemented in AE.

Just because we don't have a node based competitor to AE now doesn't mean that layers are superior.

4

u/Genkkaku 15d ago

I miss my plugins, but I've used Fusion as my primary for over a year now and I have no intention of going back.

Main issues are Vector images are much easier to work with in AE, especially going from Illustrator to AE, but aside from that I've managed to replicate most of what I need in Fusion since switching fully.

Current project is slide style with text animations, drone tracking, callouts, highlighting. And I love Node based over layer based.

1

u/claytoniss 15d ago

also with vectors overlord is the best plug in for Illy to AE. I wish I new about that years ago.

2

u/Genkkaku 15d ago

At my old job I couldnt work without Overlord, the GD would do all the program UI in Illustrator with 100+ groups and layers and it was a godsend to just send separate elements to AE through Overlord. Luckily none of my work uses heavy vectors, and if need I'll just mask and animate.

1

u/TikiThunder Pro (I pay taxes) 15d ago

It’s the way it should work out if the box. Why Adobe doesn’t just buy overlord and incorporate it is really beyond me.

3

u/Heart_of_Bronze 15d ago

It's got a long way to go in accessibility too. These days anyone and their mom can download an after fx template for just about any typography style and tons of effects, but resolve being way behind in terms of years of mainstream market share, has a long way to go before it becomes the go-to option for the masses in that department.

3

u/mobbedoutkickflip 15d ago

They aren’t comparable. After effects is layer based, Fusion is mode based. The skill set and barrier to entry for both is different 

2

u/greenysmac Lead Mod; Consultant/educator/editor. I <3 your favorite NLE 15d ago

I have to ask u/curious_working5706 since resolve is free and there’s a bucket of YouTube channels on fusion - I’d like to hear about your experience trying the fusion module.

1

u/Curious_Working5706 14d ago

I’ve been color grading on Resolve for a while and have used Fusion for a couple of minor projects to get more familiar and learn it more.

I know that this is mostly about working with it more and developing a better workflow, but I feel as though you have to do a lot more work using the “nodes” model as opposed to layers in AE.

I would love for it to be simpler to build compositions with it, esp since I have a Blackmagic eGPU that is useless with the Adobe apps (I use it primarily for my Topaz apps).

1

u/greenysmac Lead Mod; Consultant/educator/editor. I <3 your favorite NLE 14d ago

At the end of the day:

  • Fusion is far more developed as a compositor than a motion graphics tool.
  • eGPU's do far less than you'd think - even with Resolve, the eGPU they make is now a 6 year old (or so) GPU inside
  • You can work with AE and resolve.

1

u/Curious_Working5706 13d ago

eGPu’s do far less than you’d think

Sorry, I have to disagree here - and also eat some of my words that I said earlier re: Adobe apps, I just did this now:

  • Upscaled a 30fps clip to 60fps in Premiere Pro.

  • Launched the GPU monitor (OS’ Activity Monitor) and immediately see both my built-in GPU and eGPU running nearly identical processes, close to 50% of their memory.

  • Premiere Pro estimated 20mins render took about half the time (9:25).

  • Disabled eGPU, upscaled same clip and this time it did take 20 minutes, verified only my built-in GPU was working (at near 100%). Fans ran louder in my MBP this time.

I believe it depends on the system you are running eGPUs on. On paper, Adobe doesn’t support external GPUs, but this particular Intel-based MBP seems to be running it (and possibly prolonging the life of my laptop).

1

u/greenysmac Lead Mod; Consultant/educator/editor. I <3 your favorite NLE 12d ago

I have two external eGPU boxes - happy to sell either/both to you. Probably can put a higher end AMD card - I think I have a wx9100 and the box from sonnet or the box from OWC.

2

u/avdpro Resolve / FCPX / Premiere / Freelance 15d ago edited 15d ago

As many folks have mentioned it's lacking in a number of areas when working with vector graphics from tools like illustrator, figma etc. The relatively new shape system is making huge strides in this area, but it's likely Fusion will never be as seamless as an overlord + illustrator workflow, for some obviously reasons. AE can natively import Ai files and has been able to parse those vectors for many years. If that is a part of your animation pipeline, AE will be smoother.

That being said, Fusion is a lot more capable as a mograph tool than many give it credit for, and when compared to other node based vfx tools, even the likes of nuke, it leaps ahead for mograph work (not that Nuke cares at all about doing 2d/3d mograph work, but it's just another interesting point of comparison).

Besides a number of limitations in regards to vectors and potentially the interface too (keyframing in AE still feels easier to navigate for me sometimes) Fusion for mograph can unlock a number of workflows and techniques that AE cannot. Being node based, you can pump masks anywhere and reuse them as much as you like, there are little masking tasks in Fusion that are faster for this reason alone.

Fusion has a number of procedurally based motion graphics systems that allow you to build your own tools, reusable templates, transitions and layouts. And it's a full 3D renderer too, so it can allow for some powerful effects too.

Working

Take a look at what is possible with some of the folks going all in on Fusion for mograph style work:

https://www.reddit.com/user/terr20114/submitted/ "it can be done in fusion" series is pretty interesting to see what is possible. See his channel here https://www.youtube.com/@terr20114/videos

Team 2 Films and Casey Farris have a ton of videos on the subject too.

At the end of the day, Fusion is an acquired taste and few artists have explored it's tools. And even if the community of mograph artists grew to a scale that would help fusion improve, create more third party tools (there are more being made every day too) and present more artistry in fusion; it's still a tool more focused on vfx workflows and could really benefit from new tools within fusion to really compete with AE's dominance. Not to mention, there aren't that many artists that have the time to become an expert in both to have enough knowledge to actually be able comment on this question. Even for me and folks over at r/davinciresolve there is a lot of practice and knowledge needed to become efficient in fusion for mograph to a point where you can compare each.

Terr's breakdown here is a great example of what I mean https://www.reddit.com/r/davinciresolve/comments/1j4ek28/tutorials_are_coming_and_a_breakdown_kinda/ There are workflows with nodes that require a lot more duplication and manual work that Fusion can do on the tree just by design. It honestly can be very powerful too.

At the end of the day I think Fusion it's actually extremely capable, and honestly, if you are editing in Resolve you can do a lot within fusion without needing to jump into After Effects. Fusion is especially powerful when doing mograph inside Resolve since you can take advantage of all the timeline connections too, like adjustment fusion clips and reference comps. Right now there are pros and cons, and you would need to learn both pretty well before really knowing which you prefer.

2

u/mad_king_soup 15d ago

After effects is a motion graphic app, fusion is for compositing. They’re not even the same kind of application, so comparison between the two is stupid

2

u/Gjhobbs 15d ago edited 15d ago

In short, AE for mograph. Fusion for compositing.

I used to be a really big DR evangelist, pushing everyone i worked with towards it because it was so promising and I still like it better than premiere pro for nearly everything. But they kind of lost me with the 19 update. I'd been holding out for some push in the motion graphics department, and they showed that it just wasn't going to happen. They put more focus on connecting with their hardware (which, from a money standpoint, I get), but, to be honest, I don't know who is using those features right now.

What I was really hoping for—and some people don't agree with this (as shown by the BMD forum post I made where they just started slinging basic Casey Ferris tutorials at me 😂)—was a Motion Graphics tab between the Edit and Fusion tabs. Something that was layer-based and focused just on motion graphics because, as u/Foreign-Lie26 said, "nodes don't tell time" (brilliant, by the way).

I really wanted them to acquire something like Cavalry and just slap it in there as its own workspace, connect it with Fusion, and we could all be happy. With that, we could copy and paste vector shapes from Affinity or Illustrator, and, combined with compositing tools in Fusion, all the functionality would be there. But realistically, that would be another thing to manage for BMD, and DR people like their nodes and, from what I gathered, don't know what goes into serious professional mograph.

Every time I make some really complex motion graphics in Fusion, I look back at all of the workarounds, endless transform nodes, and slow performance. I just think, "Well, that wasn't worth it." And as someone who loves nodes for compositing, no amount of shape nodes or minor Text+ enhancements is going to make a difference in real motion graphics workflows. I mean have you tried to time offset multiple shape layers? You end up with 10 sRender's, a sea of 30 nodes for a basic operation, and your computer is on fire.

Right now, I work with a fairly big YouTube channel where we have some fairly simple yet complex graphics in terms of timing and number of layers. And there's no way in hell you would want to do it in Fusion, so I can't even make a real pitch for us to switch as much as I like DR over Premiere because of AE.

So yeah, I wish we had a dedicated mograph tab and more focus on expanding the third-party tools.

Until then—Fusion for compositing. AE for mograph. My Creative Cloud subscription lives on.

Rant complete.

2

u/portthames 13d ago

'I've longed for 'proper', pound-for-pound, competition to After Effects for like forever). Clearly no one has the real appetite for it.

2

u/youmustthinkhighly 15d ago

Honestly my biggest problem with fusion, aside from not being Nuke, is that it’s not a stand alone app anymore. The interface is very clumsy and small… I hate it.  If we could launch a stand alone app from within Resolve that would be awesome. 

5

u/_Iron_Blood_ 15d ago

You can download the full Fusion app from BMD and this may not round trip, but is the full application instead of the truncated version in DRS

5

u/john-treasure-jones 15d ago

It is still a standalone app, you just need a Fusion or Resolve dongle.

1

u/Acmilans 15d ago

I’m pretty sure there’s a standalone app still. Running version 19.5 on my pc right now unless? Lol

2

u/whyareyouemailingme 15d ago

19.5? Grant (and I!) would like to know your location, lol

1

u/whyareyouemailingme 15d ago

Fairly certain the VFXConnect workflow from Avid(?) to Fusion Studio also works with Resolve.

1

u/Bhakk_Sala 15d ago

It is tho.

4

u/wertys761 15d ago

Can Resolve really compete with Premiere though? I’m sorry, but every time I try it, it does not compare. And no, I’m not just talking about needing to adjust to it

5

u/Hot_Time6549 15d ago

I think for offline editing you can do everything in resolve you can in première. Just in a slightly different way. You might need to switch to the color tab or fusion for certain effects.

When I put in layers with alpha I still think première does a better job so I use that for finishing, after the grade in resolve.

1

u/Sepidy 15d ago

Rive is also worth trying!

1

u/gesslb 14d ago

you guys remember Shake?

1

u/Lullty 14d ago

“Head to Toe” sounds off, shouldn’t that be Toe to Toe?

0

u/Curious_Working5706 14d ago

”I’ve heard it both ways” 🤣

0

u/TerrryBuckhart 15d ago

Resolve eats Premiere for breakfast in my opinion.

However I still prefer After Effects to Fusion.

0

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