On the website of Eyeon now available for download a preview version of which will be the new Fusion 6, the popular Eyeon composition software. This is a version in "beta" so that subscribers can explore the program and Eyeon help to solve any bug or problem that can be found in the software before its launch.

Fusion 6 is a major update and includes major developments, especially in the 3D module, which includes the ability to create advanced materials with reflection and relief, work in stereo mode for 3D productions, multi-file support for EXR / SXR ...

It also allows the integration of files. R3d, RED cameras and other improvements related to performance and processing speed, enhanced by the new DOD / ROI
(Domain Of Definition and Region Of Interest System) much more versatile.

Here you can see some video with the new features in Fusion 6: Eyeon on Youtube

MAC users will have to wait a version for manzanita, Eyeon it refuses to take a Fusion for OSX. Meanwhile, Nuke is one of the options like Fusion to which lovers can use this software.

For those who have gone from a Nuke Fusion, took the opportunity to remember that our friendly blog Dimensión 2.5 has begun publishing a series of tutorials Nuke Introductory and will be easier to transit from one to another software.

Returning Fusion tutorials, this time we do a simple animation based on the composition before and then we will exit as quick time movie.

• 1. Open the composition of the previous tutorial .
  de Fusión. We will encourage the node plane with a simple linear motion to see how the Fusion system keyframes.
• 2. . Open the BIN and within the folder selected tools Transform> Transform. del nodo MERGE para que así la transformación tenga lugar sólo en la capa del avión. Drag this new node right at the end of the flow plane but before the MERGE node so that processing takes place only in the layer plane.

If we keep selecting the Transform node, once connected, we see that in the display are some new lines of control. These processing controls, you can try to touch on the viewer itself and so transform the scale, position and rotation of the object. con el vector de la derecha y la posición cambiando de lugar el dentro. The scala becomes stretched to the outer rectangle, the rotation by the vector of the right and the position by moving the inside.

Thus positioned the plane lower left, with some angle to make a path from here up.

Once positioned and while selecting the Transform node, we go to the control window on the right and making sure that we are in the first frame of the timeline, the parameters of the selected node "center" and we split on him with the right button. In the menu that appears select SET KEY.

The value changes color, which means that we've encouraged and any transformation we do it will create a new key.

• 3. Now, in the timeline, we are positioned in the frame 40 and move the aircraft position, describing an upward movement. I get a green vector joining the two positions, which indicates that we have encouraged the object correctly.

  In the central workspace select the tab Spline and here we can see how we created a linear interpolation between the two positions. This tab is the heart of the Fusion animation keyframes. Here you get every key lively and we can modify our choice: smooth slopes, moving keys, create loop ...
  At the moment we are only interested this simple linear movimiento.

If the play button we can see how the plane moves. Now let's add a little detail for you to do something more realistic.

• 4.Select Transform node again and within this select the tab with the yellow symbol "radiation." Here we activate the Motion Blur value that will blur the object as it moves, according to speed. We can vary parameters to make more or less pronounced that densefoque.

If we give play to see how the plane now has a motion blur.

If the way you move is not realistic we can try to improve it by changing the angle of the moves it to match the path.

• 5. y mejorar la sensación de desplazamiento. We can also add a new node will encounter in BIN> TRANSFORM> DVE, which can serve to modify a little perspective and improve the sense of displacement. Poor to modify the parameters to your liking.

• 6. Now let's take out of this mini animation and create our first clip well done in Fusion.
  To this end, the end of the chain we need to add a node, one of the most essential after LOADER node. SAVER This is the node that will save our clips, frames or previews.
  

  This node can be found in the top bar, named here as SV in red. This bar contains the most used nodes, represented by acronyms. It's completely customizable, so you will have no recourse to BIN añadais whenever a node.

  By adding SAVER ask us where we want to save the clip. The file type we can automatically select the window in side control. This control window contains all the necessary parameters to set the output: format, where you saved the file, etc ... In this tutorial, select a quick time in H264 format, but you can choose any otr
  oo even slideshow jpg, tga ...

  IMPORTANT: The range of animation that will be rendered is selected in the timeline.

  . To conclude we just have to give, then you get RENDER RENDER SETTINGS. Here we select the final render (top quality) or preview (the quality we want for our prior). In this case we select Stop and start rendering.
  

After a short wait we have our animation you can also download below, together with the composition.

• Material for the tutorial:
  
  
• tut04.com

• avion.mov

• 2. . We envision the new Color Corrector node dragging on the viewer, or by pressing it with the right mouse button> View on> Left (or Right). Now look at the controls of this node to the right.
  If you are familiar with some color retouching tool other software, you will know what these parameters are shown to us here.
  We will not go into details in this regard, we're just going to touch the node desaurarlo heaven for a bit. general. We do vary a bit the value and saturation LEVELS general.

  As we change the values, we see in the viewfinder image is changing. We left at the point that our favorite.

IMPORTANT: We can enforce several methods to switch the display between the retouched image and the image "virgin."

1. Selecting Color Correction Node press Ctrl + P (off node) thus alternately enable and disable the touch to see how it is running.

2. The keypad on the display press the button A / B. This button divide the viewfinder 2, the Buffer A and buffer B. You can drag the node you want to each buffer and move the center slide to see the difference between each image.

• 3.Visualizamos merge node 1. We now see the node on the image plane of the clouds retouched. Let's do a similar touch to air travel is now too contrasted condolences to the clouds. We perform the same steps as with the node clouds Corecctor add color and touch settings, and saturation levels to be as we want, more like heaven.

  It is important to select the right color choice airplane predivide / postmultiply the tab option. This avoids the halos around the image due to problems with alpha (I recommend that you read the article on this blog about premultiplied images.)

• 4.Vamos to improve the contour of plane that still has some halo despite having selected the option predivide / postmultiply. We do this by adding a new Node: BIN> Matte> Matte Control. This node add it just before the plane Node Color Corrector.

Matte Control is an essential node usareis often used to control the blurring masks and alpha channels, plus expandiéndlos, contracting or other more advanced features. Now we're just going to get a bit alpha channel of the plane touching the parameter Matte Contract / expand.

• 5.Vamos to improve the combination of the two images retouched and adding a third node Color Corrector at the end of the chain of our composition.

  This Color Corrector drag a window to the composition and output Merge1 connect to this node.
  We visualize and touch the taste parameters to achieve the effect you want.
  In this case we compared the composition a little more complete. We can see in the picture below, in which we see as a buffer and have the Merge1 Color Corrector another post, so we can compare the two results.

The following tutorial will encourage simple way to introduce the plane and the animation parameters in Fusion.

Here is the file of the composition. Only you have to insert the images provided in the previous tutorial, in the pre LOADER:

• tut03.comp

We continue with a new lesson for beginners Fusion.
We start from the previous tutorial where we learned to create and view it LOADER. Now let's add another node LOADER and create a simple composition with the two.

LOADER 1.Añadimos to a new composition in the footsteps of previous tutorial.
The image that it will introduce avion.tga (obviously not generate incompatibilities accent), available at the end of the tutorial, resources for download. Also available is the video clip of the previous tutorial.

Previously we avion.tga image saved to disk and load it as a new LOADER. In Fusion, also operates the "drag and drop", ie if you drag an image from the browser to the main window ended, we automatically create a Loader with the corresponding image or video inside. You can try it.

2. Once we have the two images, select the node avión.tga. We look at the control window to the right and observe their values. We combrobar that, being a single image and not a sequence or video, just one frame.

A single frame is of little use when composing, so I checked the LOOP (bottom, marked in yellow) so that the frame is reproduced indefinitely and will be present throughout the composition, lasting as long as we want.

3. We envision avión.tga node (see previous tutorial).

sobre el visor o sobre la ventana de composición. More pressing the + and - on the numeric keypad can zoom on the viewfinder or on the composition window. para disminuirlo. Another option is to press the central button while right mouse + button to zoom in or middle button + left button to decrease it. Press the center button serves to move the frame, both in the viewfinder and the composition window. This is very useful usareis often, so try it.

In the viewer window, which shows our plane on a transparent background (ie an alpha implies), there is a bar with buttons that are controls that display. We'll see what each one. At the moment we press the button with the tricolor RGB or Channels.

Here we can select the channel of the image you want to see: red, green, blue, alpha channel and z. Pressed the alpha channel and see how our image has an alpha and implicit as we had supposed. This allows us to compose the image with other nodes. So let it.

4. y lo arrastramos junto a los otros nodos. We need another node to allow us to compose the two images. So let our toolbox or BIN, which we saw in the previous tutorial, and paragraph COMPOSITE select MERGE and dragged along with the other nodes.

Now we have three nodes, but no connection between them.

Let's analyze a little. Then press the right button on the window of composition and the extensive menu that appears select the option Force all tile pictures. This allows us to see a small preview of what is in our nodes (if they overlap each other you can move them).

Each node has its points of connection which will perform Through the relationships between nodes. The following image explains those in our project (click on image to enlarge)

Let's look more closely:

-Entry of masks (mask effect) is the point through which we connect our image masks, whether vector or bitmaps. Will use the luminance value, or another channel, the node connected by this post, to "cut" or save parts of the primary node and create a "transparency." In this tutorial we will not treat it.

-Output (output): all nodes have an output which is what allows, view them, save them to disk or network with other nodes.

"Fund and" background "(input-background or foreground) are connectors own MERGE node, which allows adding two images, performing a background and another superimposed on this background. The bottom connector is also, as we see in other nodes, an entry or input of other connections.

5. The first connection
we're going to do is connect the node clouds as background, the MERGE node. To do this drag the red connector for an exit or output "node connector clouds to the" background "of MERGE. This creates an arrow linking the two nodes.
Now do the same with the "output" node avión.tga, but in this case toward the "foreground" of the node.

6.Visualizamos MERGE node, dragging on the viewer. We return to press on the button bar of the viewer to select and view CHANNELS 3 channels RGB (tricolor button). We see we have a core membership that has helped us to understand the system of nodes and connections of Fusion.

In the next tutorial learn how to substantially improve this composition, correcting the color of the elements to integrate with each other and adjusting the size of the foreground (in this case the plane), so it looks more believable.
Subsequent deliveries will see how to animate the plane more or less realistic.

Resources:

• avion.tga
• nubes.mov
• tut02.comp

, previamente filmada en cine o grabada en vídeo. The technique of rotoscoping is the manual redraw a contour frame by frame, based on a sequence of images of real action, previously filmed in film or videotaped. This will generate a silhouette that moves realistically and you can use as a mask to compose with other images or reference system to animate a character.

ORIGINS

The rotoscoping is rooted in traditional animation back in the early twentieth century and specifically the hand of Max Fleisher , a pioneer of animation. Fleisher, came up for the first time the bright idea of filming real actors on camera and then use their movements and contours as reference to create cartoons and try to improve and the early cartoons, which at that time lacked realistic and natural movement.

In 1915, together are his brother Dave, who was acting for the camera as a model, created the rotoscoping first character of the story: Koko the Clown.
Once filmed the actor, was used rotoscoping machine, invented by Fleisher, who projected the image onto a transparent screen and drew it, frame by frame, the character. Betty Boo, Popeye, Gulliver's Travels ... are some of the first living creatures to benefit from this technique.

Gradually, the technique was perfection and spreading. Thus, already in the 30s, was taken by the competitor Fleisher Studios, Walt Disney. Disney first used in the movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and continue using it intermittently throughout his career.

But despite its benefits, the technique of rotoscoping also had detractors. Some even claimed that it was a process suitable only for leaders without sufficient talent and producing images too "literal"

APPLICATION TO SPECIAL EFFECTS

varias capas de imágenes. Away from the controversy, the rotoscoping technique established himself as mature and jumped into the world of special effects in film, which adopted as a resource to create masks and layers of images composing. Thus, the rotoscoping was used (and used) to save and cut out parts of the frame which then overlap with other outlets. It opened a field of possibilities for special effects: replace funds cut characters and change of place, remove excess objects in a scene ...

CURRENT USES

(1983) de Ralph Bakshi , con una fuerte base de rotoscopia. Meanwhile, in the world of animation, would feature emerging as the Lord of the Rings (1978) or Tigra, Ice and Fire (1983) by Ralph Bakshi , with a strong base of rotoscoping. Bakshi has come to recognize that "hates" the rotoscoping, but that was the only way to tackle scenes of some complexity in the time when he made his feature films. Now all these processes are done with CGI (computer Genaros images), but the basis remains the same: the real motion capture, in this case, not manual rotoscoping, but with emitters and sensors that recognize the movement of the actor and send it directly to the machine.

Today, some people still get to give a twist to the already almost one hundred rotoscoping. (2001) y Scanner Darkly (2006). This is the case of Richard Linklater , director of Walking Life (2001) Scanner Darkly (2006). With these two films, in particular with Scanner Darkly, Linklater gets a surprising comic aesthetic and real mixed picture, never seen before in animation. Its foundation is pure rotoscoping, aided by current techniques (wacom tablet, mac G5 ...), lots of patience, and almost despair, as the director himself has come to recognize, due to the slow progress.

Because, even with the help of software Rotoshop, interpolating the strokes, the process still involves a large scale factor and the right hand of the animator who must review their work frame by frame.

, Fusion o Nuke . If you're starting in the world of video post-production probably will ever have wondered what the difference between a software such as After Effect, based on the composition of layers in a timeline, and those strange programs based interface nodes as Shake , Fusion or Nuke.

The system working in After Effect, similar to photoshop, is based on the edition of layers are added simultaneously in the same timeline and individually, we can apply effects, expressions and transformation. It's an intuitive system and that any publisher who have used programs such as Premier or Final Cut, it easily. Here the timeline is always present and a glance you can see what is happening at every moment, what layer goes into why certain frame, etc. ..

Programs that use nodes that are interconnected like Shake or Fusion, are characterized precisely the timeline goes into the background. Of course it still exists and remains vitally important, but you will see that is always hidden in a secondary tab. , trackers … elementos que todos juntos compondrán al final un todo, una sola toma con una duración determinada de frames. These interfaces are designed to treat individual shots, ie a sequence in which we compose multiple items as chromakey, 3D integration, trackers ... elements that together make up the final one, a single outlet for a fixed frame. The nodes here give us a lot of fluidity and speed when working because we can quickly change the interconnections and view any node at any point in the flowchart. We created and a "spider web" that flows logically, but not visually intelligible.

In general, more complex effects, the integration between 3D programs generedas sequences (CG) and film material from the trackers, the rotoscoping and chroma that require several passes, etc, are addressed with this type of program.

However, to generate animation, motion graphic and generally any other type of effect involves greater control and ownership synchronicities timeline, it is better to use layers based programs such as After Effect.

Anyway, the election is free and is the composer who will decide which tool to use at any time, be it common to use several of these programs on the same project.

Fusion is the evolution of the previous software Digital Fusion, developed by Eyeon. It is a composition and post-production software based on nodes, a working system much more flexible and appropriate systems timeline effects and image compositing. A professional level productions of some complexity, the workflow nodes is usually the best choice.

We will conduct a series of basic tutorials that teach us to understand the workflow nodes in general through a first approach to Eyeon software and its interface.

The interface
First, obviously, we start the programa.Podemos download a fully functional demo on the website of Eyeon.

The Fusion working window is divided into:

1-Toolbar: contains shortcuts to frequently used nodes and is fully configurable. In principle we will use the more button will be the "BIN" (Ctrl + b) to open our toolbox where it will be all we need.

2-Viewers: although they can open many image viewers, the Fusion launch, only two.

3-window nodes: add is the space where the different nodes that will be linking together to create our compositions.

4-Timeline: is our reference frame to see what we are working, going to render that rank, how long a clip, so ... it is configurable in frames or seconds

5-window control: to select each node we add will appear here relevant controls and switches

Beginning to work. The first node.

1-Open the BIN (Ctrl + b) and search tools section. In the left column we see a lot of tools but for now we are only interested that puts I / O. When you select appears in the column on the right BIN two nodes: red and green SAVER LOADER.

LOADER 2-selected and dragged to the window of nodes that already know. Immediately open an explorer window to select the file you want to add to Fusion.

LOADER node is essential, through him add the different materials that we will work: sequences of images, movies. mov,. avi etc, in general, any type of editable material Fusion.

Select a file, in this case a quick time movie.

3-accepted and see as it appears in the window of nodes. When selected node controls appear in the control window to the right.

4 - Now we will try to watch our node. As simple as dragging on one of the viewers. Displays the image at 100% of its resolution on the display while the lower timeline indicates a range of frames, which is exactly what takes our clip.

If we look at the controls of our right while the node is selected, we see certain information: the directory where you are and the frames that hard. Here we can trim the clip (In Trim, Trim Out), invest the time (Reverse), do a repeat indefinitely (loop) and other advanced functions not currently contemplate.

5-We will adjust the interface to work. We can enlarge the display by dragging its bottom edge and side. When we put the size you want to do right-click, APEC an extensive menu but we stayed with the first option: scale> scale to fit. Now our image is adjusted to the viewer and can view it in full.

This is a first very basic approach to interfaces
z Fusion. The next lesson we will add another node and a composition with them, mixing and applying effects.

Next Lesson: Basic composition with multiple nodes