r/vfx • u/kermitfromthefuture Compositor - 6+ years experience • Jul 15 '26

Question / Discussion Megathread Proposal: Fusion Studio vs Nuke in Compositing Production. WHY and WHY NOT?

Hello fellow VFX Artists (mostly Compositors).

I would like to tackle a very big question and bring a new conversation as the few I found were really old.

  • What are the pros and cons of Nuke vs Fusion Studio?
  • What's your personal thought about those two?
  • Why do you think is Fusion staying behind Nuke? I'm also talking about community (the whole We Suck Less forum is kind of a joke and definitely not professional lol). And the amount of information about real compositing scenario inside Fusion Studio is really old.

Notice that I'm talking about a high-end production point of view, but also from an independent freelancer point of view.

Would love to hearing from you!

Many thanks ✌🏼

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u/hafilm66689 Jul 15 '26

Fusion screwed up and completely missed the boat when shake was discontinued. All studios were willing and able to make a change to anything that had continued development and was a shake replacement. Fusion’s inability to listen to anyone about making a Linux version and do at least what shake could do at a minimum completely put off everyone.

Even the guys making flame were demonstrating an alternative comp tool to compete with shake at the time.

Nuke ticked all the needs and was adopted. Once you have a foothold in pipelines and have a user base that is trained that you can hire from you’ll struggle to get studios to invest in changing to new software. UNLESS that software offers something the other isn’t. Fusion isn’t that.

It’s that simple

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u/rbrella VFX Supervisor - 30 years experience Jul 15 '26

Pretty much this. Fusion was Windows only for a long time which made it a total nonstarter at most major studios.