Original subtitles

So this video is all about merge nodes.

Merge nodes are one of the most commonly used nodes within fusion.

And because of that, it's important for us to understand

everything we can do with merge nodes and how they work.

Before we start building more complex compositions within fusion.

So with that being said, let's jump right into this lesson.

All right.

So first things first. Let's generate a merge node.

We can select the merge node button right here and we've created a merge note.

A merge nodes job is really just to merge two pieces of media.

That's it.

It takes one input of media and puts it either on top or below

another piece of media

based on the inputs that we connect them to over here on the merge.

As we know, the green is the foreground and the orange one is the background.

So let's find a piece of media and try to merge it

over top of our original media here.

And the first thing I want to do actually is let's load this up into our second

preview here.

Let's name this. So let's call this

Sam underwater and let's bring in another piece of media here.

So let's drag anything in here and let's close the media pool.

Now, let's preview

this by hitting one and loading it into our first preview window here.

And as we scrub through, we can see nothing's happening.

Why can't we preview this new media that we brought in here?

Well, let's open up our keyframes window and just get an idea

of what's going on here.

So we're scrubbing through our in and out point here in our timeline.

And we can see that that in and out point is very small.

It's small area right here.

If we actually zoom in to our keyframes window,

we can get a better idea of what's going on here.

So we're only previewing over there.

So we need to actually grab our clip here and move it over to this area here.

Now, right now, it's hard to select it because we're so zoomed out.

So what I can do is take that global in and out, move it over.

And now we are within in and out

range that we are playing with for this composition.

Now, I'm going to close keyframes.

We don't need to see that right now.

And we also don't need to see the inspector.

All we need to know is that we have two pieces of media in our Node's

window over here, so I'm going to zoom out a bit and I'm going to rename this one.

I'm just going to call this dirt bike clip.

Why don't we do that? So ev to dirt bike clip,

just dirt bike

and right now we can see that there's not much going on in this clip.

It doesn't matter.

We're just using this, for example, sake.

Now, if I wanted to put this over top of the underwater

clip here and maybe scale it down, how would I do that?

So the first thing I'm going to want to do is connect this to the merge.

So now, because I want this dirt bike clip to be on top of the underwater clip,

what I'm going to do

is bring it onto the foreground input over here, the green one.

So now that is going to ensure that this dirt bike clip is going to be

on top of whatever other media is connected to this merge.

So let's disconnect this line over here.

Let's connect the Sam underwater clip to the background.

And now if we connect this to the output, what's going to happen?

Let's think about this.

So if the dirt bike is on the foreground, Sam underwater clip is in the background.

If we connect it to the output

and the output is being played in, let's bring it to the second viewer here.

What are we expecting to see here in the viewer?

We're going to see the dirt bike clip on top.

So let's bring this out.

And yep, the dirt bye clip is on top.

Based on how we've made those connections over here.

Now I'm going to delete this merge node because the way that we just did

that took a lot of time.

And I don't want you guys using that method.

That was just kind of a way to visually understand what's going on.

We can create merge nodes much faster than this

simply by taking the output of one of our pieces of media here

and bringing it to the output of another piece of media.

And just like that, it auto creates a merge node and based on

what you want to be on the top or bottom, you can just hit the merge node

hit command team and it'll swap those inputs for you.

Now in this case, we do want the dirt bike on top and we can see that

if we break this,

if we do that again, the default is for the media

that you're dragging into the output of the chain of commands.

It will be brought in as a foreground layers.

It's going to be put on top of the other piece of media.

Now, what if we want to stack three clips on top of each other?

Well, we can use the exact same method.

Let's bring a different piece of media in here.

Let's grab that and let's open up the keyframes window.

Let's just see where this new piece of media sits in space.

Let's bring it underneath here, where our timeline

is, where the in and out points are, so we can actually preview it.

And let's bring this up into our viewer one and we can see.

Okay, cool.

We got a cooler clip over here. Now,

let's say I want

to put this clip on top of everything else.

Well, what I can do is now

take the output over here, bring it over the output of the other merge,

and it's going to merge it over top of the other clips

now, because this clip over here, if we zoom out,

we can see that this clip has a resolution of 1920 by 1080.

If we zoom out of this preview over here, we can see the top right

that this is a 4K UHD HD composition, whereas this clip over here is 1080.

So as soon as we merge this new clip over top of everything else,

it doesn't fill the frame because it is substantially smaller.

It's only 1080 versus the 3840 over here.

So now I'm going to rename this dirt bike clip over here.

Let's call this dirt by close up.

So now what we

have is the underwater clip with another dirt bike

clip over top of it, and then another dirt bye clip over top of that.

Now, this doesn't really make much sense,

obviously, because we can't even see the same underwater clip.

And by the way, if your nodes are not snapping to the grid

like this, what you can do is just right click in here and select arrange

tools to grid once that's selected and things will be snappy like this.

I personally like to work in this flow.

Okay, so we have all the clips stacked on top of each other.

That's cool, but I'd like to see everything in one place.

So why don't we take the two dirt bike clips,

make them smaller, and then just move them around

in our frame so we can see everything at once?

So I'm going to be showing

you guys two different ways that we can now play

with the position and scale of both of these dirt bike clips.

The first way is to add a transform note.

So why don't we select this dirt bike, close up clip, select

the transform node, and it will add it after that dirt bike node.

Now, with the transform node

selected, we can go into the inspector and make changes here,

or we can make changes within our viewer over here.

So let's take this let's move it to the top right.

Just like that.

And now why don't we copy this transform node command, see, paste it over here,

hold shift and drag it over here so that it's added to this connection here.

Now, basically what we've done is

we've applied this same transform to this other image.

Now, the reason that other image, the reason that this dirt bike clip

isn't exactly behind this clip is because we've applied the same

transform information to two different clips, a 1080 clip and a 4K clip.

So obviously, they're not going to line up because of that.

But let's just move this 4K clip over here and let's reposition this even more.

So with this transform node selector, Why don't we change the size?

So I'm going to

move this into place wherever I want to here.

And now we can see that both of these dirt bike

clips are sitting on top of the underwater clip over here.

And just by looking at the nodes, we can see that each one of these dirt

bike clips has a transform node attached to it

so we can know that some kind of transformation is being done

to either the scale rotation or position of each one of these,

and then they are being merged overtop of this original Sam underwater clip

and then everything is being funneled out to the media, out node,

which will then be reflected in the edit tab.

So if we open up the edit tab, we can see these same changes being made in here.

Now, if we go back into Fusion,

I want to show you guys a different way that we can

make these same positions, scale rotation changes to these dirt bike clips

without having to use transform nodes, and that is with the merge nodes.

So with both of those transform nodes selected, I'm just going to delete them.

And now we're back to where we started.

So like I said before, a merge node really only has one purpose

and that's to merge one piece of media onto another piece of media.

But if we select a merge node and we go into the inspector,

we can see that we are able to control certain properties

similar to in the transform node.

We're also able to change things like Blend, which is the opacity.

We're also able to change the apply mode so we can change it to like lighten

or multiply or overlay.

Those are just some apply modes that I would use in certain situations.

So it's important for us to know

that we can make these types of changes within the merge nodes as well.

So that's one thing that is kind of hidden in a sense

when you look at a node tree here, because if I made position or scale

changes within one of these merge nodes just by looking at the node tree,

I wouldn't really know that those changes have been made.

I'd have to click into it and then I can see

if those changes have been made in the inspector.

So that's one really important thing to understand about merge nodes

is that we also have the ability to change things like size angle.

We can flip it on its axis here as well.

We can change the apply mode

and also the blend, which is something that will be using a lot of later on.

So these are all options that can be found within the merge node.

So you may be asking yourself

why would you choose to make any kind

of position, scale or rotation changes within the merge node instead of

just adding a new transform node and making those changes in there?

Well, the first reason is it can be more convenient.

You don't have to add a whole another node

to this chain of commands in order to make a transform change.

It's just within the merge node.

And if you think about it,

what we're doing here in the inspector for the merge node is we are changing

the way that this clip is being merged with everything else.

So these parameters that we're able to change here, they do make sense

because they allow us to change the way that things are being merged

and the merge node really controls how things are being merged,

not just whether it's on top or on the bottom, but also the position

of how it's being merged, the size, the blend, all of that.

So it can actually be a little bit more convenient

to make those changes within the merge node instead of adding a new transform

node.

But what we also need to understand is that the merge node is actually going

to transform our media in clip differently than the transform node would.

So why don't we take the transform node?

We'll add it over here to the chain of commands and let's do something.

Let's just on the transform node, let's just move our clip over here to the right

now with our

Transform node selected, let's flip our image on the axis

and let's see what happens so we could see when we flip the image on its axis.

This is how it's behaving.

It's flipping on its axis within this box right here.

Now, what if we did the same thing on the merge node?

So with the merge node selected, let's flip it on its axis here

and we can see that it's no longer applying that flip to just this box here,

but it's really analyzing the entire frame here and flipping

whatever information is in the frame on the center axis right there

so we can see how the merge node would actually affect our image

differently than the just the transform node.

Now, of course we can get the same result if we wanted to

by playing around with more of these parameters here in the merge node.

But it's important just to understand

how both of these can affect your image differently.

So depending on the situation, sometimes you'll want to use a transform node,

sometimes you'll want to use emerge.

But in most situations it doesn't really matter.

A lot of the time it's just personal preference.

So whatever works in your workflow

and really there is no right or wrong answer.

That's the beauty of using fusion.

There's lots of different ways that you can achieve the same effect.

A lot of the time it just comes down to your personal preference.

Throughout this module, you'll personally see how

I use transform and merge nodes in my own workflow.

Now the last thing I want to bring to your attention

is that the merge node also has a mask input over here.

Now you might be wondering why would emerge have a mask input?

Well, with that mask input we are able to tell DaVinci

what part of this chain of commands that's connected to this merge

gets merged with everything else so we can use that mask to define

what area we want, merged with everything else.

So let's grab a rectangle mask, throw it in here

and let's apply it to the merge here and see what happens.

So we could see this is the rectangle mask.

And now let's just delete this

transform layer just to make things a little less complicated

and let's disconnect this rectangle

mask.

So let's take a look at this rectangle mask.

Let's make it even smaller here

and let's make it like that size.

So now if I connect this rectangle mask to the merge, we can see

that we are only merging this space

within this rectangle mask that I've created for the merge.

So this is important to understand because this means we don't have to create

a mask for, let's say, the actual media itself over here.

So I don't have to do this to achieve the same effect.

What I can do is apply

the mask to the actual merge itself

and you'll see later on throughout this course how this can be beneficial

because up here in the chain of commands, you might have a lot of different things

going on, like you might have a blur, a brightness node

and just like a bunch of other things happening over here and applying a mask

up here to your original media can affect things differently

than it would when you are applying it to the merge node.

After all of this is happening over here.

So this is something that I find myself doing a bunch and it's

really important for you to know that you can apply a mask to emerge.

It doesn't have to be to the original media or to all of these effects.

You can just apply it to the merge itself and it's basically kind of making a mask

around everything that's happening over here by just limiting

what area we want all of this to be merged into on top of everything else.

So those are some important things to understand about merge nodes.

What I recommend you do is open up fusion right now, throw in some media in there,

play around with merge nodes, play around with the blend mode,

the apply mode, get familiar with how merge nodes work

because you're going to be using them a lot.

But that's it for this video. I hope you guys enjoyed it.

I'll catch you in the next one.