Two Flagship Creative Tools Raise the Bar for Professional Workflows
Blackmagic Design’s Fusion Studio 21.0 public beta and Celsys’s Clip Studio Paint 5 arrive as substantial upgrades for production artists working across visual effects, motion design, comics and concept art. Fusion Studio 21.0 extends its position as high‑end 3D compositing software by expanding motion graphics tools, deep compositing, and USD‑based scene workflows. In parallel, Clip Studio Paint 5 refines its role as a leading digital painting software for illustration and sequential art, adding smarter stroke handling and more sophisticated 3D reference capabilities. While they operate in different stages of the pipeline—Fusion for compositing and motion graphics, Clip Studio Paint for drawing and layout—both releases are clearly targeting the same professional audience: artists who need speed, control and precision for complex client work and long‑form projects, rather than just casual sketching or one‑off motion pieces.
Fusion Studio 21.0 Strengthens Motion Graphics and Deep Compositing
Fusion Studio 21.0 makes a notable push into motion graphics tools, most prominently by integrating Krokodove, a formerly third‑party add‑on with over 70 utilities for motion design, including warping, morphing, titling and text animation. The software now reads common 2D motion graphics formats like JSON‑based Lottie and HTML‑based OGraf, helping designers move assets between web, app and broadcast pipelines. Text+ and MultiText gain support for colored fonts and emojis, plus spell checking and auto‑correct, which is particularly useful for screen graphics and multilingual deliverables. On the compositing side, the deep toolset introduced previously is expanded with a new dColorCorrector node, enabling native color correction directly on deep images and full layer support. For facilities already invested in deep pipelines, this reduces costly conversions to flat images and keeps more of the volumetric and holdout information intact throughout the comp.
USD, Lens Correction and Cryptomatte Enhance VFX-Ready 3D Pipelines
Beyond motion graphics, Fusion Studio 21.0 adds important updates for 3D compositing workflows built around USD. New uProjector and uCatcher nodes support decal projection and texture reprojection, enabling artists to project graphics or corrections onto 3D surfaces and recover textures efficiently. A simple Is Matte checkbox lets any USD object act as a holdout, improving control over occlusion in complex scenes. The USD renderer now offers an Neye AOV for camera‑relative normals, supporting post‑relighting, and gains support for the Hydra 2 rendering framework, aligning Fusion with other high‑end DCC tools. Outside USD, the standard 3D renderer can export Cryptomatte data, making ID mattes easier to manage across applications. The Lens Distort node gains checkerboard calibration, so artists can derive a lens solve from a single frame, tightening the bridge between plate photography and CG elements in visual effects shots.
Clip Studio Paint 5 Upgrades Stroke Quality and 3D Reference Tools
Clip Studio Paint 5 focuses on making digital drawing and painting more controllable without sacrificing a hand‑drawn feel. Its new Smart Shape stroke‑stabilization system smooths jitters in freehand lines, but instead of acting while you draw, it activates when you briefly hold your mouse or stylus at the end of a stroke. This gives artists immediate feedback and control over how much smoothing is applied. The built‑in 3D toolset also evolves with a dedicated 3D hand model designed as a pose reference, addressing one of the most notoriously difficult anatomy challenges in comics and illustration. The model ships with seven proportion presets and can be posed via sliders, standard 3D gizmos, or even by matching a hand captured with a webcam. Additional 3D updates include height‑based fog in 3D layers and the ability to draw or paint directly onto more types of 3D objects.
Pricing, Performance and Workflow Gains for Production Teams
Both releases also include workflow and performance refinements aimed at busy production environments. Fusion Studio 21.0 introduces a Macro Editor for building reusable templates, a MultiInspector to edit shared parameters across nodes, and the ability to change properties across all layers in multi‑layer nodes like MultiPoly and MultiMerge. AI‑driven tools such as SpeedWarp now use the same retiming engine as DaVinci Resolve’s Edit and Cut pages, while Relight and Depth Map are reported to be up to six times faster. Clip Studio Paint 5 adds multi‑layer color and tonal correction, sequential save recovery to protect work during crashes, UI updates to Tool and Material palettes, and faster transforms on raster layers. New perpetual licenses of Clip Studio Paint 5 Pro cost USD 63 (approx. RM290), while the Ex edition is priced at USD 277 (approx. RM1,280), with desktop subscriptions starting at USD 4.49 (approx. RM20) per month for Pro and USD 8.99 (approx. RM42) per month for Ex.