Reactor is an awesome repository for extensions and plugins for Fusion 9, and works in every version of Fusion - Fusion 9 free, Resolve Fusion tab and Studio, although there are some resources specific to each. Many of the tools here are worth more than the cost of a Fusion Studio license by themselves, considering what you might pay for equivalent capabilities in other apps. Always worth throwing a donation to the folks making these.
Well I started this list as a Top 5, and then I started playing around with Reactor again, and hot damn are there some awesome resources for Fusion. So many I had to make it a top 20. Underneath the somewhat stern and imposing technical nature of Fusion is a playground of image tools that feel like magic, especially coming from the slow-as-sludge world of comping 32 bit linear VFX in After Effects.
Just drag the reactor .lua script into your flow or console window. For Fusion 9 free, I had to manually copy / paste the text into the console. But it works, although remember plugins won't work in free version, so krokodove etc is out. Can still use Cryptomatte and hos_Split_EXR_Ultra though.
Here we go. Brace yourself.
20. VLAM - Flame fractals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_flame
Used to play with a version of this in AE. The Fusion version is about 10x faster. Exposes many, many controls. Not super practical, but fun.
19. Flare Tools. LENS FLARE. Insert JJ Abrams joke. Not super organic, but nice starting point and some handy features, like a very easy animation system.
18. Linear to sRGB / Rec709 View LUTs - A simple Viewer LUT for previewing your linear 3D EXR renders in RGB or 709 screenspace. Use this every day.
17. Gradient Mapper. More useful than Colorama, similar to the "tri-tone" effect in AE - great for remapping images from a multi-tone gradient.
16. MT_GlitchTools - Bryan Ray - Red Giant Universe in a free toolset! Very fun to play with an essential toolbox for all your Vaporwave needs.
15. Exponential Glow. Like RealGlow for AE, but free, and a few more options to boot. Looks tremendous in 32 bit linear, and very fast.
14. Redshift Camera extractor. The RSCameraExtractor Fuse extracts the transformation matrix values from the metadata's comma-separated list. Gonna update this with more info when I learn how to use it. Being a Redshift junkie this seems useful.
13. nuke2Fusion & Nuke "Grade" node (like the Nuke node pictured below) - A series of Nuke-like layouts for Animation, comping, etc. along with a bunch of settings to make Fusion more nuke-y, especially great if you're coming from Nuke. duh.
12. Wireless / 3D / 3D Mat Fuse - wireless fuses. Like Portals, but for your flow.
11. Depth Defocus - essentially a free version of Frischluft Lenscare.
9. FFmpeg - It's FFmpeg. It's good. Use it. Swiss Army Knife of transcoding
8. Fusion Comp Link "The "Fusion Comp Link" script can be run from inside of Fusion Studio or Resolve Studio. It will then read the counterpart program's active composite data and import it into the foreground Fusion session. This lets you quickly migrate a composite between the two programs."
7. LifeSaver - "LifeSaver is a fuse based replacement for the traditional Saver or MediaOut nodes. This fuse uses EXRIO for the file output and supports multi-Channel and multi-part EXR image saving. This node is special in that you can use the same node in comps that are created inside of both Resolve's Fusion page and inside of Fusion Standalone. This dual environment support allows you to move documents between both programs easily via copy/paste, the "Fusion Comp Link" atom in Reactor, or using a .comp file."
6. STX tools A very, very cool suite of FX stuff - Check out patch pal, which works like nuke's smart vectors for warping / tracking.
4. hos_SplitEXR_Ultra & hos_HeatMap_Ultra (No Resolve). Absolutely essential scripts. Split EXR does all the hard work of... splitting multi-layer EXR files, which I prefer to work with. Less clutter. Instead of bringing in multiple loaders and changing the channels by hand it splits up all available AOVs. HeatMap shows you how fast / slow every tool is. Comp below is showing longest render times per tool in red.
3. TonemappingTools. Filmic, Reinhardt and Corona highlight compression. Use these to get great 8 or 16bit outputs from 32bit linear images.
2. Krokodove (Fusion 9 Studio only) An absolutely massive collection of plugins for motion graphics and cool 3D warping stuff. Neat example.
1. Cryptomatte. (No Resolve) The single most powerful tool in compositing, paired with a 3D renderer that supports it, (Vray, Arnold, Redshift among others) creates ID mattes automatically with support for motion blur, transparency, and depth of field, using organizational information already available at render time. "Using Cryptomatte with per-light AOVs in Redshift feels like cheating" -anon
Honorable mentions:
- ReloadLoaders - probably belongs in the top 20 but I forgot about it and damned if I'm gonna re-order this list, but it will reload all your loaders in case your sequences have changed.
- Time Machine Fuse - See above: Retime any sequence with a much easier UI
- XfChroma - nice chromatic aberration tool
- Suck Less Audio - haven't used this yet but looks handy.