Which one is better? Nuke or Fusion

if you've seen any of my other videos you know we use a lot of fusion around here but I use nuke almost daily at work and I thought I'd take the opportunity to answer a question that gets asked an awful lot why use nuke when you could just use Fusion I've seen this question on multiple videos but the inspiration came from Alfie Vaughn's video a while back where he goes over his workflow he got tons of questions and comments about this Alfie actually just put out a video answering this question so serves me right for waiting six months to make this video link in description so in this video he covers a little bit of it comparing it to his normal workflow and nuke I'm going to cover everything I'm going to compare the strengths and weaknesses of both and by the end of this video hopefully you will know what's right for you to start off with let's talk about the overall interface both use a series of nodes and pipes to create what's called a flow if you don't know how a node differs from a layer based workflow Jacob over at inlight VFX has just made a great video comparing nuke and after effects nuke generally uses a downward flow meaning you start at the top and add things as you go down you can go any direction you want really but most if not all artists are going to use a downward flow and you have to keep this in mind if you ever end up working on a project with other people Fusion by default is set up with a left to right flow but this can be changed in settings and I prefer to do this just so that I'm consistent across softwares now I will mention that Fusion does have a standalone version but you guys will probably never use it it only comes with the studio version of resolve and there's a lot of benefits in using Fusion inside of resolve as far as organization and function go the two are pretty much the same you add in nodes most of which have similar if not the exact same name you can see node info on the right hand side Fusion uses the inspector which only has info for the current node more if you pin them nuke on the other hand will pin any node you've clicked on this can be handy or super messy depending on what you're currently doing you can change this in the nuke settings though or you can just hit Ctrl shift a to clear them you can use tab and nuke to search for nodes control space and fusion to do the same one big Advantage nuke has over Fusion is node shortcuts the most common nodes you use are tied to shortcuts on your keyboard so you don't have to search for them like T for transform B for blur or M for merge the advantage nuke has over Fusion is that it's built for Speed having shortcuts like this really makes the work a lot quicker Fusion on the other hand does not have the sponge function you can set keyboard shortcuts for pretty much any page except for Fusion this is one of the biggest missed opportunities Blackmagic has had shortcuts aren't even consistent across Pages you can use D to disable a clip on the edit page or fairlight sound page but alt D on the color page and you have to use the inspector to disable nodes in Fusion there are some shortcuts I'll leave a link to one by Baron from VFX study but these are primarily shortcuts for the viewer and not for the actual node workspace basically there's nothing for the node workspace and no way to set them up which makes no sense whatsoever I'm a little salty about this one because black magic missed a huge opportunity here I can do the same job five times faster in Nuke because I can click a button I don't have to go searching for a node or duplicate it over and over again which brings me to another quality of life Improvement that Newcastle or fusion and that's naming things when you duplicate a node a nuke it just uses the next number up but in Fusion you have a weird underscore system which I'm sure made sense when they implemented it but it's really more of a nuisance I don't need to know that's a copy of a copy I just need you to name it three also the nodes in Nuke have this handy note function to give more info about the node so those are nodes how about how they're connected together well this also goes to Nuke this might seem like a small thing but when you're working as a team organization really makes a big difference nuke makes it really easy to snap and align nodes you can press period to place down a pipe router and everything lines up really nicely so it's easy to see what's going on Fusion is similar but because of how the nodes are designed the pipes don't always is line up straight and the pipe router despite being a DOT actually connects to this little square so again everything ends up being shifted it still works just fine it's just really poorly implemented nuke also color codes its nodes and changes node shape for specific nodes like 3D this really makes it easy to look at a comp and tell what's going on at a glance which again is Handy if you're working on a team or just haven't looked at your comp in a month Fusion only color codes things with its little color bar you can use an underlayer background in both programs to help label areas though nuke does give you a few more options like changing text size and more color variety so overall you're just going to have a better time working with nodes and nuke than Fusion but let's talk about where we actually see the outcome of our nodes the viewer by default nuke only has one viewer but you can add more like Fusion you can click on a node and press a number to attach it to the viewer you can use any of the number keys so you can have multiple inputs Fusion just lets you do two sometimes four if you use splits Fusion by default has two viewers now you might think this is a strength of fusion because you have two viewers to compare nodes side by side but I've actually found it more helpful to have a single viewer and switch between inputs to do a b comparisons it rapidly lets you see the slightest change between them rather than looking back and forth to see a difference and unfortunately I haven't found a way to do this in Fusion I will say though that I do not like the viewer node in Nuke Fusion doesn't have this but nuke ties the viewer to an actual node which you can get in the way and inadvertently link to other nodes so you just have to drag it off to the side one other feature you might be interested in is the ability to create macros in Fusion they're called macros nuke calls them gizmos in either case it's a group of nodes that you can bring together to create your own custom node and as you might have guessed by now it's easier to do in Nuke it isn't hard to do infusion there are just some quirks you have to work around like selecting the order of your nodes before you create the macro and then usually having to update it using vs code you don't have to do any of that nuke it's far more intuitive and much easier to use so we've covered the basics but let's talk about how these programs actually perform and how you might use them up until now I've been pretty positive on nuke but here's where Fusion shines a little one of the best things Fusion has going for it is that it's integrated into resolve that means you have instant access to things like the edit page sound page and the color page nuke as an editor as well but it comes kind of as a different application there are a couple features that I use it for but it's not a great editor and I'd even take blender's editor over this one and nuke comes not as one application but like a bajillion all with similar icons and naming conventions which don't tell you anything about it we have nuke we have nuke Studio we have nuke X nuke X non-commercial who came up with these names this is probably an engineer nuke studio is nuke but set up with the additional editor tab again I would not use this for editing nuke non-commercial is the free version of nuke which is great however anything that you do in Nuke non-commercial doesn't transfer over to the commercial version so if you start a project and then it becomes a paid project you're going to have to start from scratch nuke Indie is the hobbyist version of nuke it's less expensive and you can do a lot of things with it but it's limited nuke is the formal version of nuke and nuke X is nuke but with a few extra nodes that you can use you can place the nodes in Nuke but the functionality is locked unless you open it in Nuke X I don't know why this is even a thing okay so besides the headache that is the nuke Studio Suite of software there's also no applications for color or sound you can color things with a color node inside of nuke but it's nothing like the color page in resolve and as far as sound there's no sound in the nuke editor you can hear sound but on the actual node page where you work you can't you can bring in an audio node which is supposed to let you hear sound I tried it on multiple occasions it just never worked for me this is a big deal because if you have a scene that relies on sound design for timing like a muzzle flash you have no way of knowing where you need to comp in the effect you have to bring it into another software that has sound make an annotation for reference and then bring it back into nuke Fusion has sound I don't even have to switch to the edit page making sound sensitive effects is way easier to do in Fusion another solid wind profusion is in playback speed even when Fusion struggles it is nowhere near as bad as nuke most of the time you'll spend a lot of time just waiting for your clip to Cache so it'll play back and even then it struggles to do it in real time so what about the other tasks like rotoscoping tracking Keen the things that you're going to be doing a ton of rotowork is more or less the same in either program the main difference you'll notice is that nuke conveniently has all its mask shapes built into a single node but Fusion separates them out meaning you'll use more nodes paint outs are pretty much the same use a clone brush you clone part of the screen and you just get on painting Keen is more or less the same in either program you have a lot of different options for doing keys but each tool will work differently in each program I do find tracking easier in Nuke I think it's more intuitive I can seamlessly do offset tracking or manual tracking if I need to Fusion is a little more clunky and its offset function is reversed for some reason and really isn't all that useful but you know what it doesn't matter because mocha is better anyway and has plugins for both color matching is definitely easier nuke due to the handy picker but you can always use a background infusion to do the same I learned using HSV to match color and I haven't yet found a way that's as intuitive in Fusion I'll leave a link for a video by VFX study that I found helpful both new confusion have at least some support for 3D and can now use USD file formats but you're going to want to use a real 3D software for CG stuff anyway these are compositors and they work best as compositors but with CG comes render later for compositing nuke is much better at this because you can have all your passes on a single node and shuffle them out as needed Fusion can have all the channels on a single node as well but you're only allowed access to one at a time thanks to the boys that stick Underwater Reactor has an exr splitter that does most of the tedious copy paste team for you and no the channel booleans note is not the same as the shuffle node channel booleans is a mathematical operator you can use it to manipulate channels but it doesn't split it out for you that's actually on the exr Node itself another thing you will run into constantly with high-end work is grain and while neat video has degrained add-on for both nuke and fusion I have not found an equivalent tool for nuke's dos grain this is a tool that allows you to add grain back in after you've done all the work although while making this video I did find that Emilio has a plug-in in reactor for regrain it's more manual than dos grain but it does do the job but speaking of tools let's wrap up this comparison with the resources available for each for nuke there's nukopedia this has a bunch of free tools to help with work in Nuke including the industry use dos green tool the fusion equivalent for this would be stake underwater and the reactor plug-in for Fusion for Education there are a lot of videos on YouTube for nuke and most of them are pretty good the ones I found the most helpful are by Tony Lyons at compositing mentor and rebelway Tony has an awesome Channel with lots of great tutorials and revelway has one of the best courses on compositing hands down I've taken it and it was fantastic you can watch the first week on YouTube it's five hours of the best compositing explanations you'll find anywhere even if you're not using nuke it's worth 100 other videos on the subject for Fusion there's definitely a lot more on YouTube but there's not a lot of expert or even intermediate level information even Blackmagic strains which I have gone through and attended are pretty basic it's slap a logo on a car do a simple paint out easy shots are not typically what you'll get if you're trying to do this for a living or even making your own stuff I'm not putting down any creators or any of the content they've made it's just really really hard to find professional level stuff for Fusion even courses are hard to come by a few that I found really helpful are VFX study Milo lab tuts Simon upstell and profitless and if you do need a course I think Casey's end-to-end training is actually really good for getting you started in a resolve infusion so what should you choose well as you might expect it depends on what you want to do if you're going into the industry you need to know nuke everybody uses nuke it's easier to use and you can just download nuke X non-commercial and just try everything out for free if you're just going to be doing your own stuff you could use either if you want to go freelance though instead of working for a studio there's always a price tag to consider nuke is not cheap it's very much not cheap and they've discontinued the permanent licenses Fusion on the other hand is 300 bucks for a permanent license if you ever want updates or anything like that and everything unlocked it's just flat 300 bucks or you can just go with the free version it's a very capable software it'll take a little more time and effort but it can definitely do the job and again it's integrated into resolve so we have all the tools you need in one software another thing to consider is Motion Graphics if you want to do Motion Graphics you have two choices you have fusion and after effects oh at her little no one is making mograph and nuke why because it doesn't have the tool set that Fusion has it has limited text functionality of the Roto that works so well for compositing is not great for creating shapes and you pretty much won't find a single tutorial on YouTube about nuke mograph you could use it in theory but it's not intuitive at all now I love Fusion it can do a lot of things it's like a Swiss army knife you can do a whole lot of things with it and it does it pretty well nuke on the other hand is like a dual box it can do a lot of things a lot better but in the end it's going to cost you a bunch so what's your tool of choice let me know in the comments if you'd like to learn more about VFX and compositing consider subscribing it really does motivate me to make more videos like this remember to do some dabbling of your own and I'll see you in the next video can't believe I recommended after after [Music] no hate fam all right no I think that's good [Music]

Channel: Dabbler Labs

Views: 15,312

Keywords: #nuke, #Fusion, #compositing

Id: cdtbIIYYBHc

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2023