Fusion Studio is the stand-alone edition of Fusion, Blackmagic Design’s node-based application for visual effects compositing, motion graphics and 3D animation. Fusion also exists in two other forms: a free Fusion download and the Fusion page inside DaVinci Resolve. The Fusion manual covers both the Fusion page inside DaVinci Resolve and the stand-alone Fusion Studio application.[1] This article explains which of these needs a licence, how Fusion Studio is activated, and how network rendering interacts with licence counts.
Where Fusion is licensed
The Fusion product page presents two products: Fusion, listed as free, and Fusion Studio, listed at $295 in the United States at the retrieval date. The page states that Fusion Studio is activated using a DaVinci Resolve licence.[2]
Fusion Studio is therefore tied to the DaVinci Resolve licence system rather than being a separate licence server product. The manual’s welcome page adds that Fusion Studio customers can also use DaVinci Resolve Studio to get a complete set of editing, colour correction and audio post-production tools, with clips shared from the Resolve timeline to Fusion and the result rendered back into the timeline.[1]
Inside DaVinci Resolve, the Fusion page is part of the Resolve licence. The Studio and iPad Features document records which Fusion tools are Studio features: the camera tracker, the deep image compositing toolset, multi-layer pipelining, vector warping and Cryptomatte workflows are marked Studio, while Fusion effects and titles are available without Studio on desktop.[4] A user of the free version of DaVinci Resolve therefore has access to a subset of the Fusion page, and Studio features inside Fusion follow the DaVinci Resolve Studio licence rather than a Fusion licence.
Activation methods for Fusion Studio
The update description for Fusion Studio 21.1.1 states that the version requires a Fusion Studio licence dongle, a DaVinci Resolve Studio licence dongle or an activation key.[3] That sentence has changed across releases, and the history is useful when auditing older installations:
| Fusion Studio release | Licence requirement stated in the update description |
|---|---|
| 16 | A hardware dongle |
| 18.6.3 | A Fusion Studio activation key or licence dongle |
| 19.1.4 | A Fusion Studio licence dongle |
| 20.2 | A Fusion Studio licence dongle, a DaVinci Resolve Studio licence dongle or an activation key |
| 21.1.1 | A Fusion Studio licence dongle, a DaVinci Resolve Studio licence dongle or an activation key |
Source for the table: the update descriptions on the Blackmagic support site.[3]
Two points follow. First, a DaVinci Resolve Studio dongle is accepted by current Fusion Studio releases, so an organization that holds Resolve Studio dongles may already hold Fusion Studio entitlement without having bought Fusion Studio separately; this is consistent with the product page statement about activation by a DaVinci Resolve licence.[2][3] Second, the description for release 19.1.4 names only a Fusion Studio dongle, and does not mention activation keys or DaVinci Resolve licences. An inventory should therefore record the release as well as the licence type.[3]
The documents reviewed do not say how many computers a Fusion Studio activation key may be active on or how a dongle is shared. They also do not state whether a Blackmagic Cloud licence, which the Resolve Studio 21.1.1 update description lists for DaVinci Resolve, activates Fusion Studio; the Fusion Studio 21.1.1 description does not list a cloud licence.[3] Cloud licences are described in the DaVinci Resolve reference manual as monthly DaVinci Resolve Studio licences assigned to organization members.[5]
Network rendering and Render nodes
Network rendering is the area where licence counting could otherwise become complicated, and the manual is explicit. Compositions can be submitted using the Render Settings dialog or the built-in Render Manager to be rendered by other copies of Fusion Studio and by one or more Fusion Render nodes.[1] Render nodes are computers that have the Fusion Render node software but not the full Fusion application. The Render node software is not installed by default with Fusion Studio but can be installed at any time with the Fusion Render node Installer. The manual states that Fusion Studio is licensed for an unlimited number of Render nodes, so the software can be installed on as many macOS, Windows and Linux computers as are involved in network rendering.[1]
In licence-management terms, the Render node is not a counted metric. The count is determined by the Fusion Studio licences themselves (activation keys or dongles) and not by the size of the render farm. The Fusion product page says the same in plainer words: there are no per-node render licence fees, and the software can be installed on as many render nodes as needed.[2]
A dongle-based set-up has topology requirements. The manual lists, among the essential parts before network rendering will work, that the licence dongle, Render Master and Render nodes must be on the same local network (subnet), and that Fusion Server must be running as a background service on the same computer where the dongle is installed.[1] The command line table in the same chapter documents Fusion Server -i, which installs the licence server as a service or daemon that launches on startup before user login, and Fusion Server -S, which keeps it running in the background until force-quit.[1] The licence server therefore runs as a service on the machine holding the dongle, and a licence manager needs to know which machine that is.
The Render Master is the computer that manages the queue and allocates frames to Render nodes. Any copy of Fusion can act as a Render Master by setting up the network preferences, and the manual states that acting as a Render Master has no significant impact on render performance.[1] Nothing in the passage indicates that the Render Master consumes a licence of its own beyond the Fusion copy used for that role.
Third-party render managers
Studios that use third-party render farm managers such as Deadline, Smedge or Rush can call the Fusion Render node from the command line, passing arguments and file paths. The manual notes that using a third-party render manager prevents some of Fusion’s network rendering features, for example network-rendered flipbook previews and disk caches.[1] For licensing, this means a command-line render node controlled by an external manager is still a Fusion Render node under the unlimited-node statement; the manual does not set out a different rule.
Relationship to DaVinci Resolve licences
Because Fusion Studio is activated by a DaVinci Resolve licence, and current Fusion Studio releases accept a DaVinci Resolve Studio dongle, the two products share entitlements in some deployments. Two cautions apply. The first is that the free DaVinci Resolve version carries no licence that could activate Fusion Studio. The second is that App Store versions of DaVinci Resolve Studio follow a separate purchase-based licence that is not interchangeable with other desktop or cloud licences,[4] so an App Store entitlement should not be assumed to activate Fusion Studio.
Practical points for software asset managers
- Record Fusion Studio entitlements by the release they cover and by delivery method, since the accepted licence types changed between releases.[3]
- Look for DaVinci Resolve Studio dongles when reconciling Fusion Studio use.
- Do not count Render nodes against any quantity; count the licences that activate Fusion Studio, and document the machine that holds the dongle and runs Fusion Server.[1]
- For distributed render farms, confirm that the dongle, Render Master and nodes are on one subnet, as the manual requires.[1]
- Keep a record of the licence terms that came with each purchase, since the published documents do not state the permitted number of simultaneous activations.
Out of scope
This article does not cover third-party plugin licences used within Fusion, such as OpenFX or Fuse plugins from other vendors, or the Fusion scripting and Fuse development documentation, which fall under their own terms.