Fusion 5

You can tell Fusion 5 is a high-end compositing system – just look at the price – but on paper at least, it looks like the perfect tool for film, broadcast or creative work.

Visually, Fusion’s interface is sleek and uncluttered, giving you full access to an impressive suite of tools, and this is where this software’s power truly lies. Included are colour correctors, keyers, trackers, effects, transforms, text tools and a fully integrated paint system. Fusion’s masking toolset includes B-Splines, Béziers and Bitmap masks, some of which can support variable edge softness for the simulation of motion blur, among other impressive effects.

One of Fusion’s more powerful toolsets is its 3D system. You can create full 3D primitives, such as image planes, spheres and cylinders, which can then be textured and lit by the multiple-shadow-casting lights. You can then composite these elements together and render them out for direct use.

As if this isn’t enough, you can also import .fbx files, along with camera data and point cloud information, from packages such as Maya, Boujou and Monet. And you can do it much faster: in a like-for-like test, Fusion performed over seven times faster than Maya 8 when rendering a 3D cylinder with a sky texture map and imported camera data.

Yet with all this, Fusion remains extremely interactive, giving you real-time feedback in most instances at the mere click of a button. This is an extremely flexible, robust and powerful compositing system, dented only by its wallet-crippling price.