Eyeon:Manual/Tour of the Interface
From VFXPedia
The Fusion Interface
The following graphic illustrates the main Fusion 5.0 interface as it appears when the software is started.
Main Interface Areas
The Fusion window is divided into the following main areas:
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Tools Toolbar
This displays shortcuts to the tools available in Fusion.
View Toolbar
This displays additional commands for polylines, text and motion paths.
Display View
The Display View is used to view the images produced by tools in the flow. The view can be configured as a single view or two separate views located side by side, using the layout buttons in the view toolbar. Additional floating views can be created on demand from the view menu.
Work Area
The Work Area displays the Flow, Console, Comments Tab and Timeline and Spline Editors. For more information, see the chapters on Flow Editor, Timeline Editor and Spline Editor.
Controls Area
The Controls Area displays controls for the tools in the flow. Additional tabs in this area reveal controls for any masks or modifiers attached to the currently selected tool.
Time Ruler
The Time Ruler displays controls global to the project, such as the current frame, render range, proxy and quality modes and so forth. Buttons for playing, navigating and rendering the flow are also located here.
Transport Controls
Transport Controls are visible at the bottom right of the Fusion window whenever a clip can be played. Use this to play and shuttle images or audio.
Status Bar
The Status Bar displays various bits of information about whatever is beneath the mouse pointer, the time to render completion and render status, and memory in use.
Adjusting the Interface
The display views and work areas are complementary; the more space used to display the work, the less space available to show the work area. Click and drag the separating line between the two areas to rearrange the distribution of space between the two windows.
Place the mouse pointer over the display view or work area and press the F4 key to quickly maximize that region of the interface. Pressing F4 again will return the interface to its original distribution.
The top of the tool controls area can be aligned to the bottom of the display view or to the top of the screen. To toggle between these modes, click on the small arrow button in the top left corner of the tool controls. The display views will adjust their width to compensate automatically.
The display views can be configured to show one or two separate image displays. A new installation starts with both of the displays visible. Click on the vertical separator bar between the two areas to adjust the width of one relative to the other.
Several common layouts can be quickly accessed from the layout toolbar buttons at the top of the screen.
The Bins
Fusion's Bin Library System provides a visual means to add, select and delete components for a project. Organize clips, tools and plugins in any way suitable to the project or working requirements.
To toggle the display of the Bins window, select File>Bins (Ctrl-B). Resize the window by dragging the bottom right corner or add, rename, and delete bins to suit the project. Drag footage, tools, plugins, flows and saved tool settings into bins from the file browser or toolbar. In addition, drag a tool or tools directly from the flow into the bin to save that tool's settings for later re-use. Right-clicking in the Bins window displays the menu from which the bins' items can be viewed, sorted and arranged.
Toolbars
There are several toolbars used throughout the Fusion interface. Each is described briefly below.
Tools Toolbar
Normally found at the top of the interface, the Tools Toolbar is used to rapidly access commonly-used tools for use in the flow. Each button is labelled with a short abbreviation of the tool's name. The full name of the tool is shown in the status bar at the bottom left of the screen when the mouse is over the button, or in a tooltip when the mouse pointer stays over the button for any length of time.
For example, clicking the green button labeled BG places a background tool in the flow. If a tool is already selected, the new tool will be added immediately after the current tool, and will be automatically connected to the selected tool.
Alternately, click-drag a button from the tools toolbar directly into the flow or display view. If a toolbar button is dropped into a display view, the new tool will be added immediately after the tool that is currently viewed.
Right-click on any button to display a dialog used to customize the buttons shown on the tools toolbar. The configuration of the toolbars is stored as a text file in the Fusion>Profiles>Defaults folder.
Display Toolbar
The Display Toolbar runs along the bottom of each display view, providing options for displaying individual color channels, adding masks, scaling the view, showing controls and aspect correction.
Right-click on this toolbar to display a menu that provides options for customizing the toolbar's appearance.
Tool Toolbar
This toolbar is also shown in the display view. The Tool Toolbar runs vertically along the left side of the left view, and the right side of the right view. It provides access to additional options for polylines, paths, and various tools. Specifically, the text, paint, grid and tracker tools will show additional options in this toolbar when these tools are selected in the flow.
Right-click on this toolbar to display a menu that provides options for customizing the toolbar's appearance.
Display Areas
View the output of any tool in the flow on either one or both of the display areas. Also view the output of any tool in a video monitor using a supported video I/O board (for example, Leitch's Altitude or any of the Bluefish444 cards).
To display a tool's output in a view, left-click and drag the tool to a view window. Alternately, use the 1-9 hotkeys to quickly select a view. The 1 key accesses the left view and 2 for the right view. Numbers 3-9 are assigned to each additional hardware device or floating display. The shortcut for each view is listed beside its name in the tool's context menu under View On. Create additional floating views by selecting Window>New View.
Flow Editor
To display the Flow Editor, click the Flow Tab in the Work Area or press F5. The flow editor is the primary representation of the composite. A project is displayed as a flowchart, with the connections between layers and tools shown as lines or pipes leading from one tool to the next.
The interface is called the flow because the progress of images can be monitored through a project by following the lines that connect the tools. All images are brought into Fusion using loader tools that are placed in the flow. Additional tools are then connected to the loaders to process the image.
Layers are combined with merge tools, and the final result is saved to disk using a saver tool. For more information, see the chapter on the Flow Editor.
Console Window
To display the Console Window, click the Console Tab in the Work Area or press F6. The console window displays error and status messages, the output from scripts, and the statistics from completed renders. It can also be used to enter scripts interactively. For more information, see the chapter on Scripting.
Timeline Editor
To display the Timeline Editor, click the Timeline Tab in the Work Area or press F7.
The timeline editor displays each tool's duration as a horizontal bar. Adjust the timing of tools and animation splines connected to them by click-dragging on the bars and keyframes shown here.
Guides can be added to help align key frames with important events in the footage. Audio waveforms are displayed, and multiple effects can be shifted in time together.
Click-drag on the yellow bar to update the current frame of the project. Hold the middle mouse button down and drag to pan the displayed region of the project, or hold the middle mouse button down and click the left and right buttons to scale the display.
For more information on using the timeline, see the chapter on the Timeline Editor.
Spline Editor
To display the Spline Editor, click the Spline Tab in the Work Area or press the F8 key.
Animated controls, paths and modifiers in Fusion are controlled by splines, which are curves that describe the relationship between time and value for the animation. The spline editor is used to edit and compare one or more spline curves.
Adjust the timing, value and shape of individual keyframes in an animation. Set looping on animation segments and even scale entire splines over time. Segments of animation can be copied from one section of the spline to another, and set to smooth or linear interpolation between keyframes.
Click-drag on the yellow bar to update the current frame of a project. Hold the middle mouse button down and drag to pan the displayed region of the project, or hold the middle mouse button down and click the left and right buttons to scale the display.
For more information on working with the spline editor, see The Spline Editor chapter.
Comments Tab
To display the Comments Tab, click on the tab labelled with the small `i' icon or press F9.
The comments tab is used to enter notes for the composite. This could contain a to do list or information that may be useful to other compositors who are working on the composition.
Tool Controls
Whenever a tool is placed into a flow, a control header for that tool appears in the controls area at the right of the screen. There are two tabs of information in this area of the interface.
Tools Tab
This shows the controls used to adjust the settings of all tools in the flow. All of the tools in the flow are shown here, unless the Auto Control Hide option is enabled in the flow's general preferences. Click on the Tools tab in the Controls Area or press F10 to display this view.
Modifiers Tab
The Controls Modifiers Tab shows controls that are used to adjust the settings of any paths, expressions or modifiers attached to the tool currently selected in the flow. Click on the tab in the Controls Area or press F11 to display this view.
To expand the control header for a tool without selecting that tool, click the triangle button to the left of the tool's name, or double-click on the Control Header to both select the tool in the flow and open its controls. Click-drag a tool's Control Header into a display to view that tool's output.
For more information on using the Tool Controls, see the chapter on the Tool Controls.
Time Ruler
The Time Ruler is displayed at the bottom of the Fusion window, beneath the work area. Use the time ruler to control the render start and end times of the project, the position of the current frame, the total duration of the project and the quality of interactive and proxy renders.
In addition, change the current frame, start and stop playback of a flow, mute audio associated with the flow, and start final renders from the time ruler.
The ruler across the top is used to quickly scrub through the frames of a project. A small grey bar in the ruler represents the position of the current frame. The current render range is shown in the ruler as a yellow bar or highlight.
Change the current frame of a project by dragging the grey current time indicator, by clicking directly on a spot in the ruler or by typing a new value in the text box to the right of the Time Slider control.
Below the ruler are four text boxes, two on the far left and two on the far right. These are used to set the Render Range and Global Range for a project.
Global Range
The Global Range is the total length of a project in frames. This should be set to the overall length of the final rendered result. Set the global range for a project by entering a start frame in the edit box to the far left of the time ruler and an end frame in the edit box to the far right of the ruler.
Render Range
The Render Range represents the frames of a project's output for final and preview renders, as well as the frames played when the play button in the time ruler is enabled. Set the Render Range by entering a start frame in the edit box to the far left of the time ruler and an end frame in the edit box to the far right of the ruler.
The render range can also be set by holding the Ctrl key and click-dragging the ruler. Click-drag on the little arrows at the ends of the yellow highlight in the ruler to adjust the render start and render end, or click-drag the double arrows in the middle to shift the entire render range.
There are no labels for the edit boxes in the time ruler, however, hold the cursor over any of the boxes and a description of the function will appear in the status bar in the bottom left corner of the screen.
Render Button
The Render Button is used to start a final render when the results of the composition can be commited to disk. The composition must contain a saver, otherwise, the render will be wasted. Click on this button to display a render settings dialog, unless Shift is held down when clicking on the button.
Playback Buttons
These buttons can be used to start and stop playback of the composition, either normally or backward. They can also be used to step through the composition one frame at a time. Right-clicking on the frame advance and frame back buttons will display a dialog to select different frame offsets for the buttons.
Audio Button
Click on this button to mute or enable playback of audio associated with the composition. Right-clicking on this button will display a menu with options for adding audio to the composition and for setting an offset for the audio.
Audio can also be associated with the comp via the saver tools.
High Quality (HiQ) and Motion Blur (MB) Buttons
Normally, Fusion will show a low quality version of the composition, skipping anti-aliasing, motion blur and other computationally expensive processes to provide faster interactive performance. Use these buttons to force Fusion to re-enable these features. When MB and HiQ are selected, the image shown in the displays is exactly what is seen during a final render.
Proxy (Prx) and Auto Proxy (APrx) Buttons
Fusion can automatically process in Proxy mode by using lower resolution versions of the composition for faster interactive performance. Fusion is also able to degrade the image as the controls are adjusted, rendering with a lower resolution version of the footage while adjustments are made. Once the control is released, Fusion renders the full resolution image for display.
Right-click on either button to set the amount of proxy and auto-proxy used in the composition.
Some/None/All Button
Fusion normally renders only the tools that are required to display the image in the views. Use None mode to prevent all interactive rendering of tools, and All mode to force all tools to render.
Context Menus
Without Context Menus, the Fusion interface would be so cluttered with buttons that there would be no space left to display images and tools. Context menus appear by right-clicking on an object or portion of the interface. The items listed in the context menu are specific to whatever was beneath the mouse pointer when right-clicked.
For example, right-click on the tile for a tool in the flow. The context menu that appears contains options that are specific to manipulating tools. Right-click on an empty area of a flow and the options shown are specific to the display and manipulation of the flow editor.
Whenever you are unsure how to accomplish something with Fusion, try right-clicking on the control or region of the interface to accomplish the task.
