With the DaVinci Resolve 17.2 upgrade Fusion Macros and Templates got a nice little upgrade. You can now create custom icons for Resolve templates, use media that is saved together with the template, and you can share templates with others via template bundles.
DaVinci Resolve’s Media management is not very suitable for Fusion templates, since everything that is loaded from the Media bin links back to the database. Fusion templates on the other hand should work across projects and databases and ideally be easily shared with others. Now all of this is possible.
To use media in Fusion templates, you can use the Fusion native loader node or you can even load 3D assets from the FBX Mesh 3D node. Move the assets into the same directory where you will save your Fusion template and then use the “setting” path variable in the file path of any node that loads from the disk.
For example if you have a template called “Template” saved on windows under:
C:\Users\bernd\AppData\Roaming\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\Support\Fusion\Templates\Edit\Generators\Template.setting
Then you can place an image “image.png” into the same folder and enter “setting:\image.png” into the path of the loader node.
You find the correct file path for your templates if you open the Effects Library from the Fusion page and right-click on any folder in the Templates section and choose “Show Folder”.
In the same folder you can place a PNG file that has the same name as your template, but with *.png ending rather than *.setting. This image will be picked up by Resolve as a preview icon for the Effects library. The recommended resolution for the icon is 104×58 pixels.
Custom preview icons were actually already available in the bin manager of Fusion Studio. It’s a feature that somehow got temporarily lost in the Resolve integration, but now it got back for Resolve users.
Finally, you can bundle all your templates and assets into a DaVinci Resolve Template Bundle. This is nothing but a ZIP file with a different file ending (*.drfx) and it needs to include the correct folder structure that mimics the folders inside the Fusion Template Folder.
This tutorial covers the added features in Resolve 17.2. If you are just getting started with Templates, you may want to look at these tutorials as well:
- Control and Reuse Fusion Elements from DaVinci Resolve Edit Page
- Build new Fusion tools with Macros and Templates
One recurring topic for Fusion templates is the ability to make animations flexible to cover the duration of the final effect as it is used in the edit page. In this tutorial, I show you a short trick with the keyframe stretcher. An alternative method is the Anim Curves modifier which you see in this lesson from the course Fusion VFX with DaVinci Resolve (part of the free preview).
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.