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What's new in Digital Fusion
4?
Digital Fusion
4.0 represents over a year of development, and is a significant
advancement over previous versions. This page lists the major
changes that have taken place since version 3.1 of DF.
Improved Interface
· Darker interface color tone
· Small display view replaced with a layout for two side
by side large displays
· Collapse tools into persistent groups for better organization.
· Color pickers have a more intuitive and attractive
color wheel.
· Merge and transformation tools now display on screen
controls for interactive scaling and to more clearly show the
extents of a frame.
Split A/B Wipe
The A/B split buffer which debuted in Fusion 3.1 has been further
enhanced with 'Split Wipe' capabilities in Fusion 4. This feature
allows you to view the images in the views, 'A' and 'B' buffers
simultaneously. An adjustable splitter bar separates the images,
and can be positioned freely to compare images at any position
or angle.
Floating Point Color Depth
Floating point processing means never having to clip the highlights
and shadows in your image. Stay at the highest possible color
fidelity, no matter what tool you use in Fusion. With Fusion
4 you can now choose to process color with Floating point accuracy,
fully supported by every single tool in Digital Fusion. In addition,
due to the file size requirements of floating point images,
both on disk and in working memory, Fusion also provides the
ability to process different color depths at different layers
or branches of the flow.
Interactive Playback / Ram Caching
Since the day of it's first release Digital Fusion has always
had superior caching abilities, automatically detecting static
frames and optimizing memory usage on the flow for optimum balance
between memory usage and raw performance. But that cache has
been for a single frame only, the current one. Now caching 'remembers'
frames it has previously rendered, and hangs on to them for
the future. Not only does this offer fantastic performance gains,
but it also means that hitting the play button will cause Fusion
to play back the current cache - in real time!. Play your project
forwards or backwards, and navigate through time in your flow
with the enhanced playback buttons now present in the time ruler.
The cache is
dynamic, and adaptive, so if your flow suddenly needs more RAM
to process a complex tool, Fusion will release lower priority
items in the cache to free space. The RAM cache does not interfere
with the proper operation of other applications on your system,
even other memory hungry programs (like 3D animation software.)
(P.S. : Did we
mention that the RAM cache is also able to play back audio with
your flow?)
Background Rendering & Clustering
Once Fusion 4 had the ability to create and play RAM caches
(see above) the next logical step was to introduce background
rendering. This mode allows Fusion to detect and use spare CPU
cycles to fill the RAM cache in the background. You can enable
background rendering from the File menu. Whenever Fusion detects
a change in your flow it will trigger a background render, invisibly
rendering your flow and placing the results into the RAM cache
whenever it detects that the CPU is idle. Stopped for a second
to answer that question from the artist next to you? Fusion
keeps on working if background rendering is enabled.
Once background
rendering was possible, it seemed obvious to extend the ability
so that remote render slaves could fill the cache over the network.
So we also implemented Clustering for Fusion 4. Remote slaves
which are part of the cluster group will be notified whenever
the tool changes, and t hey will immediately begin rendering
the tools result directly into local memory on your workstation.
Network Rendering
Fusion 4 includes a completely redesigned Render Manager which
offers new and powerful capabilities. Slaves can now be organized
into groups. Flows are submitted to one or more groups for rendering.
Any slave which is a member of the group will immediately start
rendering the flow. Slaves can also be a member of more than
one group, with the first group in the list having the highest
priority.
Previously slaves
would wait for all frames in a flow to finish rendering before
moving on to the next flow in the queue. Fusion 4 now allows
slaves to start rendering the next flow as soon as no other
frames are available for them to render in the current flow.
As a result your queues are no longer held to the speed of the
slowest machine in the render farm.
Macro Tools
Macro Tools make complex, often-used parts of your flow into
a single tool by collecting groups of tools into a single macro
tool. Expose only the controls necessary while hiding the complexity
of the underlying operation, perfect for slate generation, format
conversion, and more...
Concatenated Transformation
Concatenated transformations are a simple concept, but you will
wonder how you managed to work without them before. A concatenated
transform is one where the application of scaling, rotation
and positioning of a layer is 'put aside'. Each subsequent transformation
is added to the previous, and the actual transformation of the
image only occurs at the end of the sequence. So instead of
applying several transformations, only one transformation is
applied. This increases the overall quality and sharpness of
the resulting image, since sub-pixel processing is only applied
once instead of several times. Concatenation of transforms also
improves render times, often significantly.
Integrated Scripting and Automation
Compositing in today's world is so much more than just image
manipulation. With every passing day it seems less and less
of an artists time is spent working with images, and more of
it is taken up with the tediousness of converting file formats,
copying files from place to place, removing pull-up and other
mundane repetitive tasks.
What if you could
identify and eliminate those tasks, freeing up your own day
for other more important things. DFScript might just fit the
bill.
Scripting is
not just for the command line anymore. Scripting is now an integrated
part of your flows. Fusion 4 provides the ability to launch
and edit scripts from the Scripts menu, from a tools context
menu, or even from within a tool itself. Scripts can even display
customized interfaces to obtain user input, and even control
remote copies of Digital Fusion through TCP/IP.
Grid Warp Tool
Fusion 4 introduces one of the more commonly requested tools.
A simple to use 2D grid deformation tool, with surprisingly
advanced features. The new Grid Warping tool is almost assured
to bring a smile to your face....
Two independent
meshes accompany each Grid Warping tool, providing control over
source and destination grids. This unique approach provides
the ability to produce UV mapping co-ordinates that simplify
the act of complex organic deformation. Using the source grid,
the artist defines what region of the image to affect with the
warping grid, and where the points of the grid should lie. No
deformation is applied to the image by the source grid. Deformation
is defined by mapping the points on the source grid to the destination.
Both the source
and destination grids are capable of independent animation,
so there is no need to fear motion in your shot - straightforward
spline based animation takes care of that.
Tracking Enhancements
At the most basic level, tracking is a deceptively simple operation
- find a pattern in an image and follow it from frame to frame.
Fusion has provided a simple to use, powerful tracking system
with unlimited patterns for several years now.
It was well past
the time that Tracker in Fusion got the same attention tools
like Text and Color Corrector have received in the past. With
Fusion 4, the tracking interface has been completely revised.
The functions of the old Tracker, Stabilize and Corner Positioner
tools have been collected into one easier to use and more dynamic
Tracker tool.
You can now track
many patterns within a single tracker tool, then use the data
from those patterns to perform stabilization, match moving,
and corner or perspective positioning. Each pattern produces
a small flipbook which can be played back within the tool controls
to verify the accuracy of the track. patterns can be solved
forwards or backwards in time, and patterns which leave the
frame are seamlessly blended out of the solution.
Stabilization
has been improved with better axis and rotation handling. New
abilities have been added so that an image can be stabilized
without losing the original character of the motion, making
it trivial to remove jitter and noise from a camera pan or tilt.
BRAND NEW TOOLS
Scale Tool
· This new tool is like resize, but the controls specify
a percentage by which to scale the image, rather than an exact
pixel size. So this tool is used to create resolution independent
resizes.
Change Depth Tool
· A new tool that can be used to change color processing
depth between 8 bit, 16 bit and float.
Fast Noise
· A complete reworking of the Perlin tool which is dramatically
faster, with more flexible control over the noise map. In addition
to the expected controls for a noise generator, this tool supports
brightness and detail masks for advanced control over the appearance
of the noise, as well as gradient colour options.
Erode/Dilate Tool
· A new filter tool to erode and dilate an image.
Particle Image Emitter
· The pImageEmitter produces particles at a given density,
with their colours based on pixels from a source image. If a
z-buffer is present, the particles can be positioned in Z according
to that information.
OPTIMIZATIONS AND TWEAKS
Flow Independent
Preferences
· Flows now maintain their own set of preferences - which
avoids conflicts that would arise when two separate flows were
open with different frame format settings.
Audio
· Added audio during flow playback. Plays the wav file
specified in a Saver's Audio tab. If a tool is selected, it
will look for a Saver downstream from that tool. If no tool
is selected, it will pick the first Saver it can find. The audio
system now supports non-PCM WAV files as well.
Error Reporting & Console Tab
· Errors are now explained in more detail in the console
window. Things like missing footage, and insufficient disk space
can easily be determined and corrected.
Spline Editor
Selection
Tree
· Spline view now has a tree menu for more efficient
polyline selection. Polylines can be marked as visible and editable,
visible but locked, or invisible.
New Looping Modes
· Added several new spline modes, accessible from the
toolbars and context menu including Relative Looping, Ping-pong
Looping, Loop 'X' Times and Pre-Looping.
Wand Mask
· The wand mask is a new type of mask in Fusion - like
a hybrid cross between the magic wand tool in a paint program,
and using a chroma keyer as the source for a bitmap mask.
Paint
· A 'copy polyline' mode has been added, providing a
'copy and paste' style of image cloning. · A 'wire apply'
mode has been added for wire removal, which samples the pixels
surrounding the polyline and uses them to cover the area inside
the polyline. · Two modes of wire removal are available;
cross fade and edge blend. · Multiple paint strokes can
be grouped together as a 'Paint Group' , after which they share
common center, size and angle controls. · Clone now has
a Source Time control. Set the Time Offset from current, or
turn on Still Source to clone from a still frame. · The
standard soft brush is now softer, and can be made even softer.
· New flood fill option.
Text+
· Text+ now has a library tab, where swatches of commonly
used styles can be maintained and rapidly applied.
Shared Bins
· The Bins now dynamically watch the Bins directory configured
in prefs, and automatically re-load whenever there is a change
detected, which means that multiple people can now use the same
Bins directory without conflict.
File Formats
· RLA format now supports loading float data, and also
has support for 8 and 16 bit integer Z buffers.
· TIFF format now recognizes .tif3 extension.
· Cineon Format now recognizes .kdk extension (ie. Kodak).
· VPB Format now recognizes .qtl extension (ie. Quantel)
· PICFormat now recognizes .si extension (ie. SoftImage)
· In PSD Format, if the "flattened" image data
contains an alpha channel, but the layers don't then the background
most layer will now load with that alpha channel. All other
layers will have a solid alpha. Previously the Alpha channel
was lost.
· Added Radiance HDR Format support.
· Can now load video from DPS .dva files as well as .DPS
files
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