Yes, it's very good. Though I think the cheaper packages have more 'hand-holding'; Fusion pretty much gives you tools and leaves you to figure out how to use them, rather than having, say, pre-defined 'fire' particle effects.

The one thing it doesn't do at all is 3D tracking, though you can import tracks from other packages. Since the high-end software costs tens of thousands of dollars, I guess they didn't think that including something basic was worthwhile.

http://www.vfxpedia.com/index.php?title=Main_Page is a wiki that eyeon set up for information, there are also some very good tutorial videos around the web. I can't find a link to them at the moment.

I suggest you give the learning edition a try.
also you should learn compositing.
having the software that is used on major shows is not giving you anything unless you know what you do and how to do it.
all comp apps - be it fusion, shake, nuke, toxik, flame, inferno etc. have no magic buttons.

though fusion is very easy to learn. the flowgraph based workflow makes it easy to keep track of everything you do to your footage and is quickly editable.
it is very straight forward and selfexplanatory.

fusion has a good 2d tracker, great 3d capabilities (mind you it is a compositing package not a 3d app) and a very good particle system.

you can't expect to have a 3d tracker included that costs more all by itself than the 5 grand you would pay for fusion.

3d tracking is using highly complex algorythms that are very cost intensive in R&D and programming.

if you need a 3d track use boujou or any other 3d tracker of choice and import the 3d camera data

I used fusion on many shows and it is a good investment. you will need compositing as soon as you start doing fx.
fusion is much better than afterfx imho.shake is discontinued though you could get the apple version for 400 bucks. toxik and nuke are other apps you might want to look into as well.

it is not the app it is the artist and some can work better with one software while others are more productive on another app.

so compare and choose then.

depending on the fx you want to do you might also need a 3d app.

and at the very end if you actually see yourself more a director you might consider getting compositors in your team instead of learning comp yourself. depending on the amount of fx it would be a good idea anyways to get help.....

quote:

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Originally posted by digitalblade
if you need a 3d track use boujou or any other 3d tracker of choice and import the 3d camera data

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Because we all have a $20,000 tracking package lying around...

actually it is 10k right now

besides there are very good 3d trackers for less.

but that was my initial point. you can't expect to have that functionality included in a comp package costing merely 5k.

you need 3d tracking usually only if you are going to integrate cg with practical shots where the camera is wildly moving in many axis.
something you shouldn't do unless you know you can afford the soft/artists needed for that..mind you that a good 3d app costs a few grand too....

therefore you don't have to have boujou lying around unless you have to (;

actually you would be surprised how many shots you can handle without needing 3d tracking.
as convenient and quick as it may be....
and indeed many shops nowadays do most tracking in boujou and hand over the data to comp. in the pipeline this speeds things up and frees the comp artists to do their actual work instead of doing tech stuff like tracking - not that tracking would not be an artform itself....

besides there are plans to have pftrack as a fusion plugin.