Blackmagic Design released Fusion 16 Studio, the latest version of compositing software, in open beta. The beta version was demonstrated at the NAB 2019 conference along with the beta version of post-production software DaVinci Resolve 16.

The update includes improvements made in the Fusion version of DaVinci Resolve, a stand-alone application, and also allows DaVinci Resolve to run Fusion Studio as a plugin. However, since the free version of Fusion will no longer exist, the developers have decided in favor of the free version of Resolve itself.

New UI, extended GPU support and better memory management

Despite the name, Fusion 16 Studio is actually the successor to the 2017 Fusion 9 Studio. It seems that the version numbering was done in accordance with DaVinci Resolve. The Blackmagic Design press release describes it as "the biggest update we ever released for
Fusion." Although in practice the added features are not completely new, they are just new to the standalone edition.

The update introduces the changes made to the Fusion compositing toolkit when it was included in DaVinci Resolve 15 last year. As well as an "updated and more modern user interface," meaning more advanced settings for accelerating the GPU.

All 3D operations, along with key features, include temporal effects, dissolve, motion blur and stereoscopic 3D tools and colors are accelerated using the GPU. GPU processes now support Nvidia's CVA and Apple Metal API, as well as the OpenCL standard, which should improve the iron performance of these companies. Existing OpenCL add-ons need to be rewritten before they can work with the new architecture.

There are more general performance improvements: Blackmagic Design’s add design highlights, planar camera tracking and tracing, as well as masking operations and improved memory management for large-scale compositions.

Blackmagic Design выпустили Fusion 16 Studio, последнюю версию софта для композитинга, в открытой бета-версии. Бета-версия была продемонстрирована на конференции NAB 2019 вместе с бета-версией софта для пост-продакшена DaVinci Resolve 16.

Обновление включает в себя улучшения, сделанные в версии Fusion, встроенной в DaVinci Resolve, в автономное приложение, а также позволяет DaVinci Resolve запускать Fusion Studio как плагин. Однако бесплатной версии Fusion больше не будет, разработчики приняли решение в пользу бесплатной версии самого Resolve.

Price and availability

It will no longer be possible to download the old free standalone version of Fusion, but almost all the same tools are in the free version of DaVinci Resolve. After the release of DaVinci Resolve 15 last year, the keys for the commercial version of the Studio license can also be used to launch Fusion Studio.

Fusion 16 Studio is available in beta for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. A new license costs $299.

Also, OpenSoonz 1.3 — open source software for 2D animation — was released recently.