Blackmagic Design releases Fusion Studio 21.0 in beta
Blackmagic Design’s NAB 2026 livestream announcing its latest product updates. The new features in Fusion are shown at 1:55:35, shown here in the Fusion page inside DaVinci Resolve.
Blackmagic Design has released Fusion Studio 21.0, the latest version of its 3D compositing software for VFX and motion graphics work, in public beta.
The release adds new tools for motion graphics, updates the deep compositing and USD toolsets, plus checkerboard lens calibration, and Cryptomatte support in the 3D renderer.
At the time of writing, the latest build is Beta 3, released earlier today.
Also available inside DaVinci Resolve 21
A version of the Fusion toolset is included in DaVinci Resolve, Blackmagic Design’s colour grading, editing and visual effects software, version 21.0 of which is also in beta.
DaVinci Resolve gets more promotional support than Fusion Studio – at the time of writing, the Fusion Studio 21 product webpage still lists features from version 17 – so the video above shows the Fusion page within DaVinci Resolve 21.0, but the new features should be the same.
Fusion Studio 21.0: new features for motion graphics artists
Fusion Studio 21.0 introduces a lot of new features for motion graphics artists, the biggest one being the integration of Krokodove.
Previously a free third-party add-on, it provides over 70 tools for motion design, from standard image filters to warping and morphing effects, and a range of titling and text animation tools.
In addition, Fusion Studio now supports two common 2D motion graphics formats: the JSON-based Lottie animation format, and the HMTL-based OGraf graphics format.
For creating on-screen text, Fusion’s Text+ and MultiText tools now support colored fonts and emojis, and get a built-in spell checker and auto-correct system.
Deep compositing: native color correction on deep images
Fusion Studio 21.0 also extends some of the major toolsets introduced in recent releases, including the new deep compositing toolset added in Fusion Studio 20.0.
The key change is a new dColorCorrector node, which makes it possible to color correct footage natively in deep mode, without having to convert them to a flat image first.
The toolset also now has “full layer support”.
USD workflows: new decal projection and texture reprojection tools
The USD toolset added in Fusion Studio 18.5 gets two new nodes, uProjector and uCatcher, for decal projection and texture reprojection.
A new Is Matte checkbox makes it possible to designate an object to be rendered as a holdout matte to occlude other objects in a scene.
The USD renderer gets a new AOV option, Neye, for rendering camera-relative normals, for relighting scenes.
In addition, Fusion Studio becomes the latest VFX application to support Hydra 2, the latest version of the USD rendering framework, also supported in Houdini and Katana.
Cryptomatte support, relief map generation and lens correction
Outside the USD toolset, Fusion Studio’s standard 3D renderer can now export Cryptomatte data, the ID matte-generation system now supported in most DCC applications and renderers.
There are also new tools – Relief Map and Create Relief Map – for creating relief maps, described as “detailed textures that self-occlude and do not require subdividing geometry”.
The Lens Distort node, for handling distortion caused by real-world camera lenses, now supports checkerboard calibration, making it possible to obtain a lens solve from a single frame showing a checkerboard grid.
There are also updates to stereo and immersive workflows, shown in the video at the top of the story.
Workflow: new Macro Editor and MultiInspector
Workflow improvements include a dedicated new Macro Editor for creating templates and macros, and support for user-defined metadata in paths, expressions and scripts.
A new MultiInspector button makes it possible to edit properties shared between nodes.
It is also possible to change properties across all layers within multi-layer nodes like MultiPoly and MultiMerge.
Performance improvements, particularly to SpeedWarp
SpeedWarp, Fusion Studio’s AI-based retiming tool, now uses the same retiming engine as the Edit and Cut pages in DaVinci Resolve, improving performance.
The Relight and Depth Map tools are now “up to 6x” faster.
Native support for Windows on ARM
Fusion Studio also becomes the latest CG application to get native support for Windows on ARM, improving performance on many current Copilot+ laptops and tablets.
DaVinci Resolve has supported Windows on ARM since 2024.
Pricing and system requirements
Fusion Studio 21.0 is compatible with Windows 10+, Rocky Linux 8.6+ and macOS 15.0+. It is currently in beta. The update is free to existing users. New perpetual licenses cost $295.
The Fusion toolset is also available in the free edition of DaVinci Resolve, with a maximum image resolution of 16k x 16k and no network rendering capabilities. See a feature comparison.
Read a list of new features in Fusion Studio 21.0 in the online release notes
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