Fusion 101 with Emmy Award Winning Artist Fred Pienkos

01 Introduction to Digital Fusion

02 The Background Tool
The Background tool is the most simple tool in fusion, but the power of the background tool is important to know for motion graphics all the way to 2k compositing.

03 The Loader Tool
Image sequences, quicktime movies, graphic elements, and still, all must be brought into fusion via a loader tool. But all of the handles and attributes available in the loader tool makes it a complicated tool able to save you a lot of time and energy when used to its potential.

04 The Channel Boolean
How can you add an alpha or a matte to an image when they are not embedded in a 32 bit image sequence in Fusion? Among many other things it can do, the Channel Boolean will be your friend when you get into dealing with separate mattes or combining mattes.

05 Merges
The backbone in fusion used to layer elements on top of each other, the Merge tool is used in just about every Fusion flow. It is also important to realize that the order of tools represents the order of your layers are being stacked on top of each other.

06 The Text-Plus Tool
Adding text to Fusion is a snap. But did you know that 1 text tool could handle anything from the scrolling credits at the end of a film? You can also use it generate some randomized running text for screen displays or an encryption type effect. All of which can be animated along motion paths, animate the size or kerning, everything you can think of doing is available inside this one tool!

07 Publish, Sharing and Parenting Attributes in Fusion
Parenting Tool Settings using the publish, connect-to: commands as well as getting your feet wet with the power of calculations used to drive attributes of a tool automatically.

08 Masks - Part I
Animatable masks, from ellipses, poly-masks, and bitmap masks can easily be used and animated to create interesting designs and effects. This tutorial covers combining multiple masks onto one tool and using different painting modes, or apply modes create alternative masking options.

09 Masks - Part 2
Using bitmap masks applied to color correctors, you can manipulate sections of your elements easily. There is a lot more power hidden inside of each of these tools, so explore both of these tools with the content provided!

10 The Tracking Tool – Part I – 1 point track
A simple 1 point track used to stabilize footage or to track something to your plate is very easy in Fusion. In this tutorial, we create a mock car commercial shot, where the stats of the car are tracked to the car that is driving through frame. Also covered is appended tracks when the object you are tracking leaves frame, but you need to continue tracking that object. I have seen this on several car spots lately, and although it is not a terribly exciting demo in of itself, the possibilities after you understand the tracker are endless.

Also included in this demo is a little more insight into some of the animatable functions of the text plus tool, as well as creating a ‘mosaic’ like effect that is tracked to the tracker as well to blur out the faces of the actors to “protect the innocent”.

11 The Tracking Tool – Part II – 4 corner Track
Using the 4 corner track option in Fusion with DV footage to burn an image into a monitor is just the beginning. This tutorial explains the operations built into the tracker tool, as well as some ideas for things we can use this tracking data for in Fusion.

12 The Tracking Tool Part III – Simple Sky Replacement
Use the fusion tracker, a polygon mask, and a digital photo to add a new sky behind a store in a hand held camera shot for a mock Circuit city commercial.

14 Bins, Plugins, and Conclusion
Some fusion users don’t know that many of the plug-ins available for Adobe After Effects also work within Digital Fusion. This Last demo goes over how to get those After Effects plugins installed and working, but also covers a couple of other small tools as well. Bins are looked at a little more closely as well as using one of the built in scripts that come with Fusion.