Fusion is a very powerful
compositing software but like any other tools, it is
very important that you learn how to make it work for
your needs and workflow. and while the Fusion page isn't
as flexible as Fusion Studio there's still a lot that you can do. Welcome back to an episode of Tips and in this video I am going to cover
some of the basic UI customizations that I'm using the most. Including custom layouts, the nodes panel, and how to create and manage
your own custom toolbars. Let's get started! Fusion comes with additional layouts that you can find inside
the Workspace menu, under Layout Presets
and Fusion Presets. For a single monitor setup,
you have the choice between: Default, Left Flow and Mid Flow which is great for building
your nodes tree vertically. for those with multiple displays and
the dual screen option toggled on you can choose between: Default, Big View, Big Nodes
and View Splines. Which one you end up using isn't just a matter of
taste or how it looks and can really make the UI better
suited for specific tasks. Let's say you often need to focus on animating elements
inside the Spline Editor. Well, instead of manually rearranging
and resizing your panels every single time you can simply save this
layout as a new preset and easily switch to it
whenever you need to. I am going to reset the UI
to the default settings and return to the Fusion Layouts
menu to load our newly created preset. This is super handy as you can quickly build
yourself a library of presets for different parts of your workflow that you can update and export
to use with another computer. Okay you are going to spend a lot of
time working inside the nodes panel so learning how to customize it is definitely going to
improve your experience. Let's start with some quality of life like learning how to arrange
your nodes inside this panel. right click in an empty space
and go to Arrange Tools. by default your nodes might be
aligned to that grid in the background but, you can also disable this
option to move them freely. Or, and this is my preference, only enable the
"To Connected" option. This way your nodes can
neatly align to each other while still leaving you a lot of freedom. You can even go one step further by hiding the grid inside
the Options menu if you have no use for it. Whatever you choose, the "Line Up All Tools To Grid"
option will come handy to quickly clean up your node tree. Auto Arrange can be both very useful
and a little bit annoying at time. The way it works, is that
whenever you add a new tool and there is not enough space it will automatically move
and rearrange your nodes. Usually, this is a good thing but it can also a time mess up
with a carefully structured layout. Well, not everyone cares about
building clean compositions of course. With the option disabled,
nodes will likely overlap but your nodes layout
won't be messed up. The "Line Up" option is again
a quick way to clean that up. Back to the options menu you can decide on the build direction by default this is set to horizontal but if like me you like to
work with a vertical layout you can set it to vertical so it speeds up your workflow
by adding the nodes vertically. Next, you can choose how the
pipes connecting each nodes are displayed inside the nodes panel. By default, it is set to Direct but you can also choose
an Orthogonal style. I very much like the later for how it makes your nodes layout
look clean and structured. There are situations though
that with a busy nodes layout those pipes can overlap and
become a little difficult to read. Ah! Well, that just happened! That's what you're getting for trying
to record during a heat wave. Actually had to wait two days to
continue recording. But let's continue In this kind of situation,
you can add routers to both direct and
orthogonal styles. Those are very simple
nodes that you can add by holding the [Alt] or [Option]
key while dragging a pipe. That's their only
purpose but trust me they are very useful to avoid
finishing with a spaghetti layout. When working with a
lot of media sources it can at times become a little difficult
to keep track of which one is which. And while you can rename your
nodes by using the [F2] key. Which I recommend It might not be visual enough. To make it easier right click inside the nodes panel and enable "Show Thumbnails"
if it's not already. Then, select all your media sources, right click on one of them select the Show menu and enable "Show Tile Pictures". This is super handy when you
add textures to 3D objects. And if one of your thumbnails
doesn't show up, make sure that its Global In and Out
points are properly set. Before we continue and if
you find those tips useful, make sure to like
and share this video to help spread the love
and support this channel. And if there is topics that
you would like us to cover make sure to let us
know in the comments Now when it comes to keeping track of which element of your
composition does what nothing beats some
organization and taking notes. Underlays are great for that, as they allow you to create
modules inside your layout. They also serve a different
purpose than the group function which is primarily designed for space
management in complex compositions. Select any number of nodes and add an Underlay tool to
create a group like element that you can easily move resize change color and rename. You can also very easily
remove or add nodes by simply dragging them
outside or inside the frame. Bonus feature! Each underlay comes with its
own automatic bookmark that you will find inside
the bookmarks menu. and unlike the manual bookmark for which the position is relative
to the nodes window those are automatically updated
when you move or resize the underlay Whether you collaborate
on your projects or not taking notes is super important to keep track of the inner
working of your composition. For example you decided to
use an existing merge node to resize an image source instead of
adding a dedicated Transform node. rather than wasting your time finding which node is responsible
for this transformation you can simply add a Sticky Note
and write down a reminder Just imagine how useful this is to detail complex operations
or custom tools. The default toolbar regroups
a selection of common tools that are just one click away. Most of the time though we
end up using keyboard shortcuts, the contextual menu, or the Effects Library to add our tools because
the toolbar is not enough. Did you know that just
like custom layouts you can create your own
library of custom toolbars to switch to depending on
what you're working on. Let's say I often work with shapes. Start with a right click in an
empty space of the toolbar and select Customize, Create Toolbar. Name it however you like and click ok! Ok for now, it looks like
nothing happened and this is because it created
a copy of the default toolbar. But one that can be
fully customized. Right click on an icon and
again choose Customize Here, you can either remove this tool
individually or the complete group Alright! Now... Open the Effects Library and find the tools that
you want to add which in my case are Shape tools. Simply drag your tools to
your newly created toolbar. Add Dividers if you
want to create groups and once you are done, select Locked to avoid
messing up with your icons. There you go! You can now very easily create and
switch between multiple toolbars. I hope you enjoyed this video. Thank you for watching and i'll see you... in next video! See ya!
