Blackmagic Design Fusion 9 is launched at SIGGRAPH 2017. BMD Fusion is leading software for video production needs of VR, 3D Compositing and VFX for Animation and Visual Effects industry.

Blackmagic Design Fusion 9 was long awaited update, as Fusion 8 was launched in late 2014. Since then, there had been tremendous amount of technical developments occurred in the Media and Entertainment sector. To sweep them all in one gush, finally BMD introduced Fusion 9 at SIGGRAPH 2017. The best part – it was not first look or preview of the software, Official Blackmagic Design site was live with download link of Fusion 9 at the same time. It is surely a great achievement. Kudos to entire technical, management and marketing team of Blackmagic Design Fusion 9 for this perfect launch.

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Fusion is one of the leading software for broadcasting, commercials, TV series, motion pictures and many other video content creations like visual effects, motion graphics, 3D and compositing. Blackmagic Design Fusion 9 is power packed with many upgrades on various fronts. Performance power is increased multi-fold to meet client requirement in stipulated timeline, completely in-sync with tight production schedule. Development of Fusion is fully in accordance with Blackmagic video assist tools. Check out technical notes in detail.

Now, it’s time for the best news.

As promised by Blackmagic Design CEO Grant Petty earlier, Fusion 9 is also commercial output ready like the earlier version. Free Blackmagic Fusion 9 is more than enough for start-up studio, freelance artists and small scale post production studio. Blackmagic Design Fusion Studio 9 will give access to advance features including stereoscopic 3D, third party OpenFX plugins support, optical flow tools, unlimited distributed network rendering, retiming, stabilization and Studio Player.

Studio version price has gone through mammoth cut. In 2014, Fusion 8 Studio was priced at $995 and in 2017; Fusion 9 Studio is available at just $299. Read more for official detailed comparison between Fusion 9 and Fusion 9 Studio.

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Some of the top new features of BMD Fusion 9 are as follows.

1) Fusion 9 VR Tools:

Virtual Reality (VR) is getting integrated into various entertainment, medical, automobile, gaming, architecture and many other professional applications on a giant scale. Blackmagic Design is not behind to catch the ride. VR toolset is the biggest upgrade from BMD Fusion 8 to Fusion 9. Majority of VR functions and workflows are available in free Fusion 9 version. It gives 360 degree true 3D workspace inside Fusion without any third party plug-ins.

Working in VR with Blackmagic Fusion is completely seamless as Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) support for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive provides interactive VR experience. Due to headset integration of VR gears into Fusion, the artist can directly edit the software workflow and pipeline in realtime. No need to render to see the preview. It is a huge time saver in production pipeline. You can render complete VR scenes, in single pass through new 360-degree spherical camera. All these are equipped with a new panoramic viewer. In fact, BMD added ‘VR’ in the hero image of official Fusion 9 download page after 3-4 days of release. The name got stylized as ‘Fusion 9 VR’.

Some of other major tools in free Blackmagic fusion are VR color correction, VR motion graphic and titling, VR paint, live action VR playback and real-time 90fps viewing. Only Stereo VR and Stabilization of VR live action scenes requires paid version Fusion 9 Studio.

2) Camera Tracker and Planar Tracker:

The new camera tracker converts the shooting camera data into motion path which can be used by Fusion’s native 3D camera system. It will greatly enhance the matchmoving work. New planar tracker tool can solve camera movement shots having complex rotation, position, scale and perspective changes. It can be used on roto shapes apart from clean plate, texture fix, replacing unwanted shooting data and much more. It also allows to use camera metadata for accurate calculations.

3) Delta Keyer:

Written in conjunction with advanced image science algorithm, Delta keyer is the latest keying technology. It will be very useful to separate background and foreground element. It features various matte options to extract perfect mattes, even from non chroma shots. Delta keyer can easily provide fine details from complex shots of hair, motion blur and clothes.

4) Planar Rotoscoping:

It is extension of planar tracker, like roto through tracking. Planar tracker can be applied to roto splines to give perfectly aligned motion.

5) Clean Plate Tool:

It works on chroma plate, not on character plate. It eases out all blue / green chroma color variations, which outputs even luminance of the live action footage. This plate is used for chroma removal from traditional keyer tools or Delta keyer.

6) Studio Player:

Blackmagic Fusion has provided one solution for various playback operations. It is optimized for remote handling. So, like virtual meeting, multiple artists can collaborate together online and can access same project from their own system. It increases productivity as it don’t require rendering. It allows all required actions like trimming, editing, scrubbing with annotations without sacrificing quality. It is exclusive product of Blackmagic Design Fusion Studio.

7) GPU Acceleration:

GPU enabled processes are now must in every visual effects software. Fusion 9 VR is equipped with GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and OpenCL (Open Computing Language) acceleration for increased speed.

8) DaVinci Resolve Support:

Now, Fusion and DaVinci Resolve belongs to the same family of Blackmagic Design. It looks like; BMD has huge plans for tight integration of both the packages. They are developing tools for the same very steadily, without disturbing different objectives of both the softwares. Formats including ProRes, DNxHR and MXF can be used for lossless data transfer between both the visual effects softwares. Fusion is becoming the key player to work with various Blackmagic video assist tools. It is just one of the examples of multi user collaboration tools from Blackmagic Design.

These are just tip of an iceberg. Check out the official Fusion 9 page for much more in-depth knowledge of Blackmagic Design Fusion 9 VR. With new vibrant golden color logo of Fusion 9, it is all set to mark new benchmark in Media and Entertainment industry.

Take a look at amazing visual effects gallery of Blackmagic Fusion 9. All images are from official website of Blackmagic Design and all copyrights belongs to them only.