I recently finished third in Renderosity's Halloween Animation Contest. One of the prizes I won was Fusion Studio 7, a compositing program from Black Magic Design (after the acquisition of eyeon Software in Sept. 2014). The program is also described as a "visual effects" (vfx) and "motion graphics" application. It is similar to Adobe's "After Effects", which can be thought of as a video layering program (similar to Photoshop's image layers). However, Fusion uses "nodes" (also called "tools"), rather than layers.

You can learn more about Fusion and download a free fairly full featured version (I think) of Fusion 7 (Fusion Studio is a $1,000 product) here: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion

Here is a very basic overview of Fusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsiC4bmaWZI

Here is a press release from Sept. 2014 about the Black Magic Design acquisition of eyeon Software: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/press/release/20140912-02

If anybody has any experience with Fusion, please let me know. I have used After Effects, so I think I can understand it, but there's always a learning curve.

Many thanks to Renderosity and Black Magic Design for a great prize. (3rd Place!)

Congrats! Fusion does look very cool. I have seen one person use it for compositing their render, I will see if I can find it if you have an interest. I wonder what the largest still image it could work with is.

Xerxes0002 posted at 8:38PM Sat, 28 November 2015 - #4241387

I will see if I can find it if you have an interest.

Yes, if you have time ...

Sorry we headed out for a bit.. so here is one of his images from his gallery http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/79577 his site is http://elementsvfx.blogspot.com/ he has in his signature a link to his files he has several but the rain one from that image he has the stills, and the fusion project https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4V0tbmTYNaSNVA1NHJLZmFKalU&usp=sharing lastly here is a post when he started playing with fusion http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53615/carrara-and-fusion-compositor-so-far-so-good

actually it looks like he has 7 fusion projects in there

Xerxes, thanks for the links, very nice stuff, especially the video. I have typically used the compositing tools in my video editor (Magix Movie Edit Pro), and Particle Illusion for FX. Base on the excellent video in the link you provided, Fusion looks interesting enough to spend time with it.

Digital Fusion is an excellent program -- a node-based compositor (like Nuke) as opposed to a layer-based compositor (like AfterEffects).

A little Googling seems to show a difference between "motion graphics" and "compositing". In the past I have learned some pretty nice AE motion graphics procedures from books by Trish and Chris Meyer, like this.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0240814150?keywords=after%20effects%20trish&qid=1448831467&ref_=sr_1_2&s=books&sr=1-2

But for my short animations, I think I need more compositing tools, which Fusion seems to offer.

It is going to see how I can fit Hitfilm into this as well, since it is now allowing 3d and amblec (sp?) and does rendering in the application, but its layer based not node based. What I want to find out is something for stills what size can Fusion go up to might make a nice alternative for some things if it could do print resolution files :) though not what it is aimed out.