Blackmagic Design product duo turn 18

Fusion Studio and DaVinci Resolve Studio get updated with a host of features that mostly improve the speed of users’ workflow and cloud support for remote collaboration, respectively.

**Blackmagic Design’s Fusion 18 provides true 3D compositing, fast motion tracking, and robust keying options. (Source: Blackmagic Design)**

Blackmagic Design, known for its large product updates and rollouts, is shipping new versions of its Fusion Studio and DaVinci Resolve Studio, both offerings now in release 18 and more mature with lots of new features and tweaks. And it’s not even IBC yet!

Fusion Studio, Blackmagic Design’s VFX and motion graphics software, has infused release 18 with GPU acceleration for Fusion paint, new composition blend modes, as well as improved speed and playback performance for text, text+, and shape templates, and more.

Compositions created on the Fusion page can now be saved as a template and used on the edit or cut page. New animation curve modifiers can be used to automatically retime animations when their duration is changed in an edit. Audio playback with waveform display makes it easier to create precisely timed animations, and there are shared markers with the edit page. In addition, 27 GPU-accelerated Resolve FX have been added to the Fusion page, including the noise reduction and sharpening tools from the color page. And, new node view bookmarks make it easy to navigate large comps, while the toolbar can be customized with the user’s favorite tools. Vertical layouts are supported in the node editor, as well.

DaVinci Resolve Studio 18’s GPU acceleration allows paint brushstrokes to be generated and displayed in real time for a more intuitive approach to cover-up work or graphic design. (Source: Blackmagic Design)

The other major update was made to DaVinci Resolve Studio, Blackmagic Design’s editing, grading, VFX, and audio postproduction software, which is also in release 18—a major new cloud collaboration update for working together remotely. There are a number of key updates and others spanning the areas of media and editing, color, Resolve FX, Fairlight, Fusion, and codecs.

Among the new capabilities available for users is the ability to host project libraries on the DaVinci Resolve Project Server using Blackmagic Cloud and share their work and collaborate on the same timeline, in real time, with multiple users—editors, colorists, VFX artists, and audio engineers—no matter their location.

The new Blackmagic Proxy Generator App, meanwhile, automatically creates and manages proxies from camera originals. Users create a watch folder, and new media is automatically converted into H.264, H.265, or Apple ProRes proxies for accelerated editing workflows. Customers also can extract proxies into a separate folder for offline work, and switch between camera-original footage and proxies in a single click.

There are also new Resolve FX, such as ultra-beauty and a new 3D depth-map effect for instantly generating a 3D depth matte of a scene to quickly grade the foreground separately from the background, and vice versa. Improved subtitling for editors, GPU-accelerated Fusion paint, and real-time title template playback are among other some of the other features. There are new tools for colorists, as well.