All language subtitles for 5. Fusion Nodes Part 1 Fusion Kolder Creative

So learning the node workflow

infusion to me is very similar
to learning a whole new language.

Now, when I compare the workflow infusion
to After Effects, I would say

that the learning curve with infusion
was definitely a lot harder.

At first it was a lot more frustrating
and things just didn't

make any sense to me because I was like,
What the hell is a node?

But once I understood the foundations
and the rules that you have to play by

within the node workspace, everything
started to make a lot more sense

and I started to enjoy it
even more than after Effects.

So it's really about overcoming
that initial learning curve

for you to be able to start to go in there
and then start to experiment.

And once you're able to experiment,

that's when you start to grow
and learn on your own

and through the process
of experimentation.

So really, it's about learning the rules
of the playing book, understanding them,

and then freely going in
and being able to experiment.

It's similar to learning a language.

When I was learning French back in school,

the teachers would teach me
how to conjugate verbs first.

I would learn how to conjugate words
for masculine or feminine,

or if it's targeted at a group of people
versus one person.

I learned how to conjugate words like that

first before actually learning the words.

So it was a rule we had to learn

before diving deep
into the language of French.

Now, looking back, I don't really remember
much of that at all

when it comes
to conjugating verbs in French,

because that's not something
that really interested me.

But learning the workflow with infusion
is similar.

It's important to have a solid
understanding of these rules

so that you can start executing
on your ideas without having to waste time

trying to understand

why something isn't working the way
you think it should be working.

So like I've said before, nodes
are really just individual instructions.

With each node we make,

we are creating an instruction
for Da Vinci, whether that's import

my media into this composition
or brighten my image 10%.

Or blur the image,
but only to the masked area.

Each one of those instructions
would be represented by its own node.

The way that we connect these sets

of instructions or nodes determines
what our final image will look like.

And here's the thing.

It might sound complicated at first,
but I promise you, once

you start understanding the rules
of node based compositing,

the node based workspace becomes
a playground of limitless possibilities.

So we're in fusion.

And the first thing that I

want to talk about when it comes to nodes
is where can we find these nodes?

Well, we've talked about this before.

We can find the go to nodes right here
in between our preview and nodes windows.

So all of these are nodes here.

And we can see that there groups
between these lines over here.

So over here we have some generator nodes.

So this would allow us to generate
a background.

We could generate fast noise text.

We can also paint.

Next to that,
we have some modification nodes

so we can modify our media or whatever
we connected to with these nodes.

Things like color correction, color

curves, u
curves, brightness, contrast and blur.

Next to that,
we have another group of nodes over here.

And one of these nodes

that we're going to using all the time
is the merge node over here.

This is primarily used to merge
one piece of media over top of another,

and we'll be learning all about that
in the Merge nodes video.

But for now, just know that that's one
that we're going to be using a lot.

And there's a bunch more over here
that will be using.

The other one that I use all the time
is the transform node right here.

That's to make transform changes
to anything that we attach to this node.

Next to that, we have our mask node
so we can make a rectangle

mask, ellipse mask, polygon
mask, and B spline mask.

These are all different options
that we'll be diving into deep later on.

Next to our mask nodes, we have particle
emitter nodes, which is not important

for you
to understand what this is right now.

But it might be interesting

for you to know that we have the ability
to generate particles

with infusion and with that ability
to generate particles.

You can actually do a lot.

And next to that,
we have all of our 3D related nodes.

So we can create things like 3D shapes, 3D
cameras, lights.

We can work in the 3D space here
within fusion.

And those are kind of the
go to 3D nodes over here.

So all of these nodes are very
conveniently placed here and grouped into

their own little sections.

Now, of course,
we can find all of our nodes

available to us inside the effects
window over here.

So feel free to explore this area.

You can simply just go to any of these
nodes, any of these effects or tools.

Click on it
to add it into your workspace down here,

and then you can play with the controls
inside of the inspector.

Blair Node is pretty basic,
but there's tons of different things

that you can bring in from here

and play around in the inspector scene.

Delete that.

Now there's one more way

that we can bring up all of our nodes,
and this is another method

I use all the time, especially if I know
exactly what node I'm looking for.

So the way to do
this is to press shift and spacebar.

And now, because I'm using three monitors,
the pop up for this

actually comes up on my laptop
monitor and not here.

So I'm going to drag it over here

and we can see that we can also scroll
through here and look at every single

possible node that we can bring in
to our node tree here.

So if there's one that we have in mind,
for example, Blair Node,

we could just type it in Blur
and we can add it in and it will add it

to our chain of commands here
because we had this clip selected already.

If we don't have any clips selected,
we do the same thing.

We add a different node,
it'll just add it into the workspace,

but not attach it
to the chain of commands down here.

So I'll just like that and delete it.

Now, also, one thing I want to mention is
there are some shortcuts

when you are pulling up your nodes
in this way by pressing shift in spacebar.

So you can see what these shortcuts are
next to those specific nodes.

So for example, transform is Zeph

and I already know this
because I use it all the time.

So instead of typing in Transform,
every time you can just hit Zeph

and you can pull that up just like that.

Now I've actually created a shortcut

on my custom function keys
at the top of my keyboard to pull up

the transform node by itself,
simply by just pressing F three.

So I press f three and it brings it up.

And if you're interested in how I did
this, I actually use the Logic Hub

for Logitech Hardware so I can control
things like the buttons on my mouse

and what they do, and also the custom
function buttons on my keyboard

that basically executes
the keyboard commands shift spacebar

x, F, and then enter.

All of that happens when I press F three,
so it's a quick way to generate

a new transform node.

And I'm going to be doing this for all of
my go to nodes that I use within fusion.

Now I'm just going to create

a bunch of nodes here, so let's just click
on a bunch of random ones here.

We're just making a ton of these

and you can see that it's,

it's adding these on to the previous node

because automatically when you generate
a node, that node is selected.

So if I press something else, it's

going to add it after the previous node
that was just created.

So if we take a look at all of these nodes

that we've just created,
we can see that they are different colors.

Now these colors represent
what kind of node it is.

Now, this is great to know
because as you work

with nodes, more and more
you'll be able to quickly know

what kind of node something is simply by
just looking at the color.

Now, let's zoom out here a bit more.

Let's keep zooming out
until we can't see the text anymore.

You can see that the color of those nodes
fills the entire node.

So when you start to work
in a much more developed workspace here,

there's a lot more going on
and you want to zoom out.

You can get a better idea
of what these nodes are.

For example, I know that the brown nodes
are mask nodes, so if we zoom in on these,

we can see that we have a polygon
mask and a rectangle mask.

So I'm actually going to provide

a little cheat sheet for you guys
as to what nodes are what colors.

But I'll just read this off to you
right now.

So blue are media nodes, so we can see
that this is a media node over here.

We can see that also the media out
node is the same color as well.

Next we have green,
which is generator nodes.

So any time
that we're generating something,

so in this case we can see that
we've generated a background

and that's more of a dark green orange
we have blurred.

So blur nodes
are going to be orange by themselves.

So next, like the more neon green,

the brighter green
those are going to be adjustment nodes.

So if we add brightness and contrast
over here, we could see the same color,

same with this,
all of these nodes over here.

So any kind of adjustment node
is going to be this brighter green color.

Next, we have pink,
which is the paint node right here.

We can see that that one is pink.

Next we have dark orange,
which represents our tracking nodes.

So if we pull up a tracking node
so we could just type in track.

Let's do camera track,
bring that up and zoom out.

We can see that it's more of a darker,
truer orange than the orange.

Really.

This is more the blur is more of like
almost like a yellow orange.

But the camera tracker, any tracking nodes

are represented by this darker
orange color.

Next we have the tan color,
which represents transform nodes.

So if I drag this transform node down
here, we can see that it's this tan color.

All the transform nodes
are going to be the same color.

Next, we have the warped node,
which is this brown color right here.

Gray nodes are compositing nodes
plus a few other ones.

So emerge node is a compositing node

and that is the gray color.

Purple represents
any of these particle nodes.

Over here, you could see
they are this purply color.

And next we have these dark blue nodes,
which are any 3D nodes.

So any of these down here towards the end

and we have the light brown,
which represents our masks over here.

Now, if we take a look
at any of these nodes over here,

we can see that each one has at least one
of these little triangles around it.

Now, these triangles represent inputs,

and some nodes are going to have different
inputs than others.

Now, for example, mask nodes
only have one of these triangles,

and that's basically to send
the mask information into another node.

So that's represented by this blue
triangle.

The blue triangles on
any of these nodes are mask inputs.

So if we wanted to input a mask node
into another node, say a media in node,

let's say we wanted

to create a new mask node over here
and input it into this media node.

We would take the output of this mask node
and bring it into the mask

input for this media in.

And we can see that we have now applied
this ellipse mask to our media in

and we can see that

this information is being passed down
all the way to our media out,

which is being played in both
this second preview window

and our main preview window over here
that you guys can see in the camera view.

So the blue triangle is our mask input.

Now we can see that most of the nodes in
our workspace here have those mask inputs,

but some of them don't like these 3D ones
right here.

And as you learn more about how nodes work
and how individual nodes

work, you'll understand

why some nodes don't have a mask input
or why some nodes have more inputs.

For example,
this color corrector one has a gray

input over here,
and I know things like tracking nodes.

So let me bring up the planar tracker
node over here.

We can see that it also has one of those
gray nodes here as well.

And as you learn about specific nodes
like the planar tracker

or just the regular tracker or the color
corrector node, you'll get a better idea

as to why they have certain inputs
and why they don't have certain inputs.

It all depends on what kind of node
you're creating, but for a lot of nodes

they will have this little blue input,
which is the mask input.

And I'm going to get a little bit nerdy
right now.

But the cool thing about these mask inputs
is you can actually

take the output from something
like another media source,

put it into the mask,
input of another piece of media

and you can set
what aspect of the original media

you want to use as a mask
for this second piece of media,

for example, maybe you'd want to use
something like the Alpha Channel

or the luminance of the previous clip
in order to make transparency changes

to the second node, which is something
we'll dive into later on.

But it is cool to know
that we have that functionality.

And don't worry if you don't understand
anything about what I just said.

That was just me being a complete nerd.

But it's cool and it's powerful

and there's a lot of different things
that we can do with those mask inputs.

Now I'm seeing all this stuff up here
because it could be

a bit distracting right now,
especially if you guys,

you know,
are just getting into masks over here.

So I'll delete this ellipse as well.

And now I want to bring your attention
to some other inputs.

So what I'm going to do
is just copy over this media in nodes, I'm

going to hit command C click
outside of the chain of commands here.

So nothing is selected here, Command V
and I'm going to paste that in over here.

Now I'm also going to delete this
blurring out over here.

So all we have is our original piece
of media going to the media out

and then we have a copy of that
original piece of media.

Now, the way that you would stack
this media

on top of another
piece of media is with a merge node.

Now I'm going to save all the information
about merge nodes in the next video,

but for now I'm just going to generate a
merge node, which is this one right here.

And we've created a merge node.

So we're sending the second piece of media
into the merge node

and I'm going to place this merge node
in between both of these over here.

Now, the way that we can do
this is to break this connection over here

and send this original media
into the merge node

over here and then send the merge node
out into the media out.

That's the longer way to do it.

I'm just going to command Z and
that's not a method that I would ever do.

So I'm not going to even bother teaching
you guys that method from the start.

All you need to do is take this merge,
hold shift and you can bring it into the

the chain of commands
just like that very quickly.

So if we take a look
at our chain of commands here, right here

we have our media in
we are telling it to go into our merge

the merge is just telling fusion to merge
something on top

or below this clip and then export it
in back into our timeline.

So let's attach this clip over here
on top of our merge.

So now what we're telling Fusion
is to merge this clip with this clip

right here with this merge.

Now, how do we know what clip is going
to be on top of the other clip?

Well,
that's where these inputs come into play.

So we have a green input,
which is the foreground,

and we have orange or like yellow input,
which is the background.

So this original media
is going to be our background.

And why don't
we just add a blur node to this

so that we know the difference between
both of these media inputs?

So I'm just going to crank that blur.

And what I could do is just preview
this blur in the first node

so we can see that
I am blurring this original media a lot.

So it looks a lot different than this
media here.

So now we know that this second
piece of media is on top of this one.

Let's just rename these
so that we can stay a bit more organized.

So over here
we can call this one clear shot,

just for example sake,

and this one will call it blur,

even though that the Blur is happening
afterwards, right now, it doesn't matter.

It's just so that we can get
an understanding of which shot is which.

So now we know that the clear shot
is sitting on top of the blurry shot.

So what if we change these inputs
so that the clear shot was connected

via the orange input and the blurry shot
was connected via the green input?

Well, we can disconnect these by clicking
the second part of the connection point.

And now what I can do is connect
this one to the Orange

input, connect
this one to the green input,

and now the blurry one sits on top.

Now I'm going to show you guys
a bit of a time saving hack.

This one's really important.

If you want to

quickly change the inputs on a merge,
you can command t on your keyboard

and it will quickly
just change those inputs.

So now we have the clear shot on top,

which is represented by the green input,
which is the foreground input

and the blue one is in the background
and we can quickly switch those inputs.

We can see that the color
of those connection points is changing.

When I hit command t

So if I wanted to see both of these clips

at once,
I can add a transform node right here.

Change the size of the upper node.

And just like that,
we can see both of those clips

at the same time
inside of our preview window over here.

And with the transform node selected,
I can move this around.

So I'm not going to dive into merge nodes
anymore.

Right now
that's a separate video in itself.

But what's important to understand
is that the green connection point,

the Green Triangle, that is the foreground

input and the orange one
is the background input.

So like I've said before,
it doesn't matter where our nodes sit

within this space
in relation to each other.

It's the way that we connect our nodes
together with these connections

and these inputs.

So just a little recap.

Yellow is the background, green is
the foreground and blue is the mask input.

So that's part one of fusion nodes.

I'll see you guys in the next lesson.