DaVinci Resolve Fusion Tutorial - Expressions & Macros

An easy-to-follow introduction to using basic expressions and creating a macro in Fusion - along the way we look at creating a chromatic aberration effect with these techniques. For a more in-depth guide to expressions in Fusion, here's a new tutorial: • DaVinci Resolve Fusion...

[@AryMir]

Simon, your 2 years old tutorials are still THE BEST! Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

[@KingZero69]

bro... you're the LITERAL king... keep it up my man 💪

[@AbrEvig]

Unbelievable. Your tutorials are phenomenal. I find myself watching again and again, aiming to get a grip on this stuff. Thank you so endlessly much. Keep the Fusion tutorials coming!!!

[@SimonUbsdell]

Thank you very much.

[@love92935]

this is crazy!!!!! Should have found this channel 2 years ago!!!! it is really helpful, inspiring and fun to learn all the skill from this tutorial!!!!! thank u~~

[@MalyanDrum]

My god this helped me so much. I was so so bored of trying to do this all one colour at a time one frame at a time. I KNEW there was a way, and I'm so glad I found this. THANK YOU!!!

[@TransformX]

I really like these technical tutorials about Fusion (especially those with expressions in them)! They are great... we need more of them 😁 I watched this one last year, but I have a better understanding of how Fusion works today and it makes so much more sense for me now. I finally tried this tutorial myself (while understanding what I'm doing and not just copying what I see in your video). Thanks for your work

[@SimonUbsdell]

That's great to hear, thanks.

[@rabihghannam5721]

Thank god i found my channel.. i'm switching from adobe to resolve and i was afraid that there are not so many advanced tutorials online on fusion.. thank you!

[@TelekinesisStudios]

Thank you Simon! Just learned a thing that's going to make some VFX possible for a screen replacement.

[@jimgsewell]

Thank you, this helped me figure out what I've been doing wrong. Very helpful

[@DKIBUI]

Thanks Simon! Your tutorials are always an eye opener, incredibly well done.

[@rikvanschaaik8443]

I was familiar with most of the concepts but I learned a thing or two! Loved the video, loved the presentation style! Good work ^^

[@MechNominal]

Excellent tutorial!

[@rathoquarter]

Great tutorial. Thanks!

[@chanruzzi]

I can't express enough how thankful I am for this tutorial. (no pun intended) :)

[@SimonUbsdell]

:)

[@PatrickGaoBummerAfterSummer]

Love your tutorials! Easy to understand, and very thorough. I've been transitioning to node-based compositing (migrating from After Effects to Nuke, but am now picking up Fusion), and your tutorials are always a pleasure to watch.

[@SimonUbsdell]

Thank you. I hope you enjoy working with Fusion - it's not quite at the same level as Nuke just yet but I think Blackmagic have some very interesting developments planned quite soon. It's a very good time to be learning it.

[@PatrickGaoBummerAfterSummer]

Simon Ubsdell agreed, Nuke may be light years ahead of other compositing softwares, but Fusion does appear to be a very comparable, and powerful software for it's price (especially the free version). Cheers Simon, looking forward to your next tutorial.

[@SimonUbsdell]

There's an interesting discussion here on the Foundry Nuke forum that relates to Fusion, and the fact that some independent Nuke artists are not feeling that Foundry is giving the support that they'd like and hence they're looking seriously at Fusion as a replacement: community.foundry.com/discuss/topic/130065/nuke-vs-nukex Obviously the big VFX houses, and there aren't that many left now, are pretty much all geared around Nuke, but that may start to change in time.

[@offchristianamr]

Thanks so much! Such a cool and well-explained tutorial.

[@tombeew]

Awesome. I learned a lot! Thank you

[@mahdishirvanieducation]

You are the best Master in the world...very much thanks my master

[@SewonSon]

One of the best tutorials out there. Any plan to use the fusion with Davinci 15? I only knew this fusion because of Davinci and more people would be interested, if you use DR 15. Thanks for the great tutorial!. Subbed and liked.

[@ArkbLT]

Thank you! It is very useful!

[@rufuscollis303]

Brilliant. Thanks!!!

[@arin_faraj]

Thank You, you are a legend!

[@RisingOne2See]

Thank you for your time and effort. FYI this does not work with DR 16 as the channel booleans nodedoes not have "black" as a choice within fusion.

[@SimonUbsdell]

I've just had a quick check in R16 and Black in Channel Booleans is still there - you just need to scroll down the list of options.

[@RisingOne2See]

@@SimonUbsdell Brilliant! Thank you. I did not see the scroll bars. Thank you!

[@moniquepascaud7223]

Many thanks!

[@NihilQuest]

Thanks for the tutorial. It's great as always.

[@naveenchandran]

Thanks for the tutorial Simon, would love to see rain on glass tutorial using fusion. :-)

[@burhan7260]

Hello Simon. Is Fusion a good choice for Motion Graphics? Is there anything that can be done with Fusion but not with Apple Motion?

[@juliandarley]

first looked at this a couple of years ago (i pointed out below in comments where to find the stock shot if you want to follow along exactly). still fantastic! thank you. this will help me figure out how to alter an existing macro (a slice tool by pixelfondue similar to that in nuke). is there a way to reverse engineer a macro and show the original nodes that make it up?

[@mohanpugaz]

great tut. but i couldnt understand how the numberout controling the n1 when u just put 100 in it . it was controlling the blur . where is it linked?. it might also control n2 n3 etc ?

[@billbillbillbill]

Great tutorial but I am having an issue with the abs(n2−0.5)*n1*100 expression within the Blur node. I set the blur amount to 500 and played around with it and there is no blur at all. I currently use DaVinci 16. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[@lenny_Videos]

great tutorial mate :-)

[@Astlaus]

As for macros: can you can you create a macro with associated splines that would make it easy to put the macro on selected place on the timeline? Normally you would need to adjust all those associated splines, which is really tedious.

[@SimonUbsdell]

I'm not sure what specific task you are thinking of here, but I certainly would not try to create Macros with embedded keyframed animation - that's not what they are for. You probably want to try using the Group function which would allow you to assemble a complex set of animated nodes and then reposition the Group on the timeline as required with no need to adjust individual keyframes.

[@lelkaitis]

Simon, thank you very much for your tutorials. By the way, which program Fusion or Motion has brighter future?

[@SimonUbsdell]

I'd really like to think Motion has a future, but it's pretty clear by now that Apple have no plans for it other than being a helper application for FCP X. Fusion, on the other hand, is definitely going places, I think, and I'm really excited to see what they do with it next.

[@edwardnixon1782]

Very useful tutorial. Thanks. Am I correct in thinking that the renaming you did for example on the n1 value component is simply a label and in the context of that screen only. In other words, the renaming can't be used within the expressions themselves; you must use 'n1' as the... variable name (for want of a better term) in the actual expression implementation. I could see myself getting a bit confused in an expression heavy project. An artifact of combining GUI and coding paradigms I guess.

[@SimonUbsdell]

Yes, that's correct. In the expression itself you have to use the n1 ... nomenclature. you can't assign a different variable name. It's not a problem once you get used to the convention but I realise it's all a bit confusing initially. What I didn't show here and should have, is that you can move the Number controls to any tab that you want, so in many cases it helps to put them on the Channels tab, for instance. Use the Page menu in Edit Controls to select where it goes.

[@edwardnixon1782]

@@SimonUbsdell Thank you, Simon. Very helpful. This series is among the most coherent and disciplined I've run into on any software topic, e.g., Max/MSP/Jitter or TouchDesigner. Very well organized and articulate and... no wobble -- if that term can be used meaningfully. Or drift.

[@SimonUbsdell]

@@edwardnixon1782 Thank you so much. That's very nice to hear.

[@christopher8116]

Great tutorial, I've primarily used node based compositors, except Nuke. N1 is a variable name for a control ?

[@SimonUbsdell]

n1-9 are blank slots that you can fill with any value that you want to use in your expression. They can v=be values in their own right (where you are simply using them as sliders to control the expression parameters); they can be calculations (e.g time *.5 or whatever); or they can reference the values of other parameters (by using the equals sign and entering the parameter to reference).

[@sebp400]

amazing!

[@JoshFromPerth]

Hey guys, could anyone point my in the direction of a class attribute list for all Fusion tools? I'm guessing here as to what I can use - I've searched high and low but found no record of this? Transform.Center.X for example, cheers!

[@SimonUbsdell]

You can see the attributes of any parameter of any tool by hovering over it and looking at the bottom left hand corner of the display.

[@JoshFromPerth]

@@SimonUbsdell Thanks so much! I didn't realise this showed up outside of the fusion tab / app. Whoops! Having said that, is there a list somewhere for things which don't have a GUI input value, but that might still be addressable so you don't need to hunt for the corresponding gui attribute to find the name of it? For example an object ID? I don't know where that's found in the gui?

[@abdoo89]

Hi Simon. Great tutorial. It's really helpful to see someone going a bit deeper with the expressions. Just wanted to ask you, what is that program you used to explain the 'abs' expression.

[@SimonUbsdell]

Thanks. That's a little app called Soulver - really useful, I highly recommend it: www.acqualia.com/soulver/

[@abdoo89]

Thanks, Simon. I really appreciate your help. Unfortunately, it's Mac only, so I will have to find an alternative for Windows or Linux since I don't use MacOS.

[@SimonUbsdell]

Lots of similar options for PC: alternativeto.net/software/soulver/?platform=windows

[@abdoo89]

Was just looking at this link :) Thank you very much

[@timbeaton5045]

and just in case anybody doesn't get it... ABS is short for Absolute Value... which is why it always returns a positive number.

[@luca_catino_yd]

Hi Simon :) amazing tutorial!! Can I ask you how to remove a key on the timeslider ot to move keys from one frame to the other? Thank you in advance

[@SimonUbsdell]

I'm not sure I understand the question. Could you please email me at [e-mail] and I'll try to answer.

[@nssdesigns]

excellent stuff, what wast the calculator app you used in Apple?

[@SimonUbsdell]

Soulver

[@mikiemapo]

any chance you could show us how tracking works

[@matiasgoinheix366]

What language does Fusion use for the expressions?

[@TransformX]

LUA and Python

[@juliandarley]

fascinating! if anyone would like to use the same corvette in tunnel shot, it's available here: www.pond5.com/stock-footage/33004114/beautiful-low-angle-shot-corvette-c3-driving-through-tunnel.html - if you don't mind having POND5 written in the middle of it and 360p, you can even use the free preview version!

[@ilkkarosma5528]

Hi, if I were to add the alpha channel to the effect, how should I go about doing that?

[@SimonUbsdell]

You shouldn't need to to anything extra - if your source has an alpha channel it will be preserved using this process.

[@ilkkarosma5528]

The thing is, once the color channels have been recombined through the 2 Channel Booleans nodes, the alpha channel of that composite has values of 3.0 where the color channels overlap. I assume this is not preferable. Now, one could have a BC node clip the white values of the alpha channel back to 1.0 but I was wondering if there’s a better/more sophisticated way to remedy the issue…?

[@SimonUbsdell]

It really depends on what you want to do with the transparency. Could you give me an example? Clamping the alpha value is usually going to be fine but without knowing the effect you are going for I can't say for sure that it will do the trick.

[@ilkkarosma5528]

Well, in my case the problem seems to be that if I feed an image, let’s say a semi-transparent square with an alpha value of 0.5, to the effect, when it comes out it has an alpha value of 1.5 so it’s no longer transparent. It’s as though the alpha channel should be divided by 3 (red, green and blue) while the channels are being separated so that when they get recombined, the original alpha value would be restored.

[@SimonUbsdell]

OK. Why not take the alpha of all three through the Custom Tool, divide each by three, then add them together?

[@rogmag74]

Will the in-depth guide (kzbin.info/www/bejne/aGTKeYmpl66BgM0) be made available again? It's a private video right now.

[@SimonUbsdell]

Yes, sorry about that. I am updating it to fix a couple of errors and will upload a new version shortly.

[@SimonUbsdell]

The new, amended version is now available here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/g6nImoKqjpychtE

[@rogmag74]

Thanks, already watched and learned! :-) Great presentation of the basics of expressions.