VR Nodes

You can create and fix spherical (360°) video, often described as Virtual Reality, or VR, using Fusion’s set of VR nodes. Dome productions, planetariums, and other special-venue theaters have utilized the flexibility of Fusion and its 3D system to produce and deliver special content for years. The equirectangular (lat-long) format often used for 360° video is similar to how a globe is represented by a flat world map, with the poles at the top and bottom edges of the image and the forward viewpoint at the center.

Fusion supports several common spherical image formats and can easily convert between them.

• VCross and HCross: VCross and HCross are the six square faces of a cube laid out in a cross, vertically or horizontally, with the forward view in the center of the cross in a 3:4 or 4:3 image.
• VStrip and HStrip: VStrip and HStrip are the six square faces of a cube laid vertically or horizontally in a line, ordered as Left, Right, Up, Down, Back, Front (+X, -X, +Y, -Y, +Z, -Z) in a 1:6 or 6:1 image.
• LatLong: LatLong is a single 2:1 image in an equirectangular mapping.

You can display both spherical video and live 3D scenes from the comp directly to headsets, including those from Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

Fusion’s “Fix it in post” tools for VR make it easy to perform several important tasks that are common in these types of productions.

VR Nodes Common Controls

Nodes that handle VR operations share a number of identical controls in the Inspector. This section describes controls that are common among VR nodes

VR Nodes Settings Tab

The Settings tab in the Inspector can be found on every tool in the VR category. The controls are consistent and work the same way for each tool.

Apply Mask Inverted
Enabling the Apply Mask Inverted option inverts the complete mask channel for the tool. The mask channel is the combined result of all masks connected to or generated in a node.

Use GPU
The Use GPU menu has three settings. Setting the menu to Disable turns off hardware-accelerated rendering using the graphics card in your computer. Auto uses a capable GPU if one is available and falls back to software rendering when a capable GPU is not available.

Hide Incoming Connections
Enabling this checkbox can hide connection lines from incoming nodes, making a node tree appear cleaner and easier to read. When enabled, empty fields for each input on a node are displayed in the Inspector. Dragging a connected node from the node tree into the empty field hides that incoming connection line as long as the node is not selected in the node tree. When the node is selected in the node tree, the line reappears.

Comments
The Comments field is used to add notes to a tool. Click in the empty field and type the text. When a note is added to a tool, a small red square appears in the lower-left corner of the node when the full tile is displayed, or a small text bubble icon appears on the right when nodes are collapsed. To see the note in the Node Editor, hold the mouse pointer over the node to display the tooltip.

Scripts
Three Scripting fields are available on every tool in Fusion from the Settings tab. They each contain edit boxes used to add scripts that process when the tool is rendering. For more details on scripting nodes, please consult the Fusion scripting documentation.

About the Author

Justin Robinson is a Certified DaVinci Resolve, Fusion & Fairlight instructor who is known for simplifying concepts and techniques for anyone looking to learn any aspect of the video post-production workflow. Justin is the founder of JayAreTV, a training and premade asset website offering affordable and accessible video post-production education. You can follow Justin on Twitter at @JayAreTV YouTube at JayAreTV or Facebook at MrJayAreTV