Nuke is a powerful compositing application designed to work for you…

Nuke's powerful 3D workspace supports OBJ import, projection mapping, geometry modifiers, and more. This true 3D environment creates powerful workflows and exciting new ways to approach compositing.

© 2006 Dreamworks LLC and Warner Bros. Inc. All rights reserved.
Image courtesy of Digital Domain.

Nuke 5 has included support for working with stereoscopic and multi-view projects.
Images courtesy of Tim Baier.

Nuke delivers the industry's broadest support for EXR images. Read, process and write over a thousand channels per stream, improving data management and workflow.

Nuke’s exclusive Image Based Keyer (IBK) gives artists powerful tools for dealing with uneven backings. Primatte is built-in and Keylight is available as an optional extra.

Savable layouts, dockable panels, GUI customization capabilities and features like the 'bullseye' and 'input' buttons make managing large, complex composites easier than ever.

© Heribert Raab, Softmachine. All rights reserved.
Images courtesy of Heribert Raab.

Even when processing high resolution footage at 32-bit floating point precision on modest hardware, Nuke's multi-threaded, scanline-based rendering engine gives rapid feedback.

Nuke offers an extremely open architecture. Both its node graph and user interface are accessible through the Python and TCL scripting languages, making it possible to customize Nuke in innumerable ways. If you really want to drill down, Nuke supports the industry standard OFX plug-in API as well as a native developers’ kit (NDK) for creating your own tightly integrated plug-ins.

All of The Foundry's OpenFX™ (OFX) plug-ins are fully compatible with Nuke. Currently, the Keylight keyer, the Tinder collection (which includes lens flares, warpers, and lens blurs), and the Furnace collection (which includes motion vector retiming, wire removal, clean plate creation, grain, and texture tools) are available for OFX, with more collections added all the time.

© 2007 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.
Images courtesy of Image Engine.

Nuke is available on Windows®, Linux® and Mac OS X® platforms – all at equal cost. Licenses float across operating systems, so every artist can work where they are most comfortable and creative.

Not only does Nuke run on relatively modest hardware it comes with an economical price tag, so even on a fairly tight production budget you can gain access to a functional, fast and intuitive compositing solution.

Evaluation Licenses

To obtain a fully functional 30-day evaluation license, please contact the Sales team at sales@thefoundry.co.uk with your request. So that we can set you up with an evaluation account, please ensure that you supply your full contact information (Phone, fax and email; contact address and company name - if applicable), as well as the lmhostid of the system(s) that you will be using for your evaluation. For information on how to obtain your lmhostid please click here.

Alternatively, please feel free to call us in London on +44 (0)20 7434 0449 or Los Angeles on +1 (310) 399 4555 to discuss your requirements in more detail.

Architecture

• Scanline-based image processing engine is highly memory efficient and provides fast feedback.
• 1023 channels of 32-bit floating point colour data, organised into user-definable layers.
• Nuke is resolution independent so you can read your images, do your thing then output at the resolution/s of your choice.
• You can enhance Nuke with third party plug-ins or utilise the NDK or OFX API to develop your own.
• Highly multi-threaded on all supported platforms to take full advantage of multiple processor systems and multi-core CPUs.

• Take advantage of Nuke’s extensive customisation capabilities to make complex procedural effects accessible at the touch of a button.
• Plain-text project files for easy external editing and processing.
• Expression support throughout the interface.
• Nuke features a handy drop down menu, which lists image formats by name along with the corresponding resolution and pixel aspect ratio.
• Automatic proxy switching. Nuke's intelligent updating is a much more efficient way of working with images, it only computes what you are looking at which vastly reduces turn around time.
• Give attention to every detail with Nuke’s 32-bit floating point quality scanline rendering.

• Advanced window management. Saveable layouts, GUI customisation capabilities and quick-access features such as the ‘bullseye’ and input buttons make navigating large projects easier than ever.
• Node-based workspace enables rapid construction and editing of complex 2D and 3D composites. Offers a variety of node annotations, grouping (with export), coloured backdrops, thumbnail images, and more.
• A comprehensive 3D workspace. Create complex virtual environments in the OpenGL accelerated 3D workspace using built-in primitives, geometry imported from .OBJ files, and camera projections.
• One or many viewers can be used, showing the output of any node. All viewers support OpenGL 3D scene viewing, wiping between multiple sources, custom LUT’s and more.
• Multiple image outputs from the same script.
• Graphical and command line interfaces enable you to interact with Nuke in the interface that is most efficient for you.
• Nuke is supported by many third-party render queuing applications and offers a straightforward command line rendering interface for easy integration with bespoke systems.

• 2D and 3D viewer modes (with OpenGL™ preview).
• Multiple, concurrent image viewers.
• User-definable Region of Interest (ROI).
• Support for input A/B comparison on every viewer.
• Integrated FrameCycler™ Professional for frame-rate accurate playback.

• Python scripting.
• Stereoscopic workflow.
• Four-point 2D tracking/stabilization.
• Per-session undo/redo history throughout UI with user-definable autosave intervals.
• Colour correction: offset, gain, gamma, hue, saturation and contrast controls (per shadow, midtone and highlight region); full histogram control; spline-based curve control; look up tables (LUTs); hue correction; conversions among industry standard colourspaces.
• Support for industry standard file formats including up to 1023 channels from OpenEXR files.
• Extensive set of image processing tools like noise, Gaussian blur, vector blur, defocus, dilate/erode, keying, Bezier matte tools, grid and spline warping, and a variety of image merge methods.
• Concatenated 2D and 3D transforms with user-selectable filtering methods for producing the best possible end result.
• Fully-fledged animation editor.
• Drag and drop parameter linking saves typing expressions.
• Advanced motion-analysis based retiming.
• Rotoscope shapes supporting per-point feathering, delivering increased flexibility when rotoing elements with motion blur.
• Highly customisable layout – save and restore up to six custom layouts of tabbed panels or floating windows.

• 3D scene scanline renderer with multisampled motion blur.
• OBJ import with UV preservation.
• Texturable cards, bicubic and bilinear meshes, and standard geometric primitives.
• Projection mapping capabilities.

• Advanced Image Based Keyer (IBK).
• Integrated Primatte™ keyer.
• Hue and Luma/channel keyers and spill suppression tools.
• The OFX Keylight for Nuke plug-in is available as an optional extra

• Support for an unlimited number of fully animatable spline-based masks.
• Vector-based, anti-aliased text generator.
• Noise, grids, linear and radial gradients.

• Powerful curve editor for visualizing and editing curves and expressions.
• Interactive curve sketching.
• Robust expression language offering a wide variety of mathematical functions.

• Grouping functions: create reusable setups from node clusters; selectively expose parameters from nodes within groups; create custom parameters and populate them with values via expressions.
• Clone function: create node instances that maintain dynamic links with parents.
• Annotation tools: name and colour individual nodes; insert resizable, colour-coded backdrops.
• Filtering: find and select nodes and groups according to name or comment.

Evaluation Licenses

To obtain a fully functional 30-day evaluation license, please contact the Sales team at sales@thefoundry.co.uk with your request. So that we can set you up with an evaluation account, please ensure that you supply your full contact information (Phone, fax and email; contact address and company name - if applicable), as well as the lmhostid of the system(s) that you will be using for your evaluation. For information on how to obtain your lmhostid please click here.

Alternatively, please feel free to call us in London on +44 (0)20 7434 0449 or Los Angeles on +1 (310) 399 4555 to discuss your requirements in more detail.

Nuke 6.0v1 is supported on Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" and 10.6 "Snow Leopard" (32-bit only), Windows XP SP2, XP64 and Linux CentOS 4.5 (32-bit and 64-bit)

Windows and Linux

550 MHZ Pentium III or newer processor.
Windows XP (with Service Pack 2 or later) or Linux CentOS 4.5.
5GB disk space available for caching and temporary files.
512MB RAM (minimum requirement).
Workstation-class graphics card, such as NVIDIA Quadro series or ATI FireGL series, or newer.
Display with 1280 x 1024 pixel resolution and 24-bit colour.
Three-button mouse.

Mac OS X

Intel or PPC. Mac OS X
5 GB of disk space available for caching and temporary files.
512MB of RAM (minimum requirement).
AGP or PCI Express graphics card with at least 32MB of video memory.
Display with 1280 x 1024 pixel resolution and 24-bit colour.
Three-button mouse.

Back to the Nuke Overview page.

A lot has changed since Nuke 4.8 but the top three features are a new user interface, support for stereoscopic images and Python scripting.

User Interface

Stereoscopic Support

Python

Mask Inputs

Proxy Support

The project settings panel contains options for a proxy format and a proxy scale and a choice of which of these should be used. If you use the proxy format, the scaling will be proportionate to the full size/proxy format relationship (not scaled to the proxy format). Alternatively you can specify a simple scale factor using the scale control. Formats can include extra information about offsets and pixel aspect but in the end the important result for either is a scale factor which is applied to all Read nodes and image generators. For more information, see Project Formats, Proxy Scale, and the Proxy Mode in the Nuke User Guide.

The Read node will output at the required proxy scale, so there is no longer a need to add a Reformat node to generate a proxy image. You can also provide a proxy image in the Read node's proxy file knob and if the current proxy scale requires an image of the proxy file's size or smaller, this will be used in preference to the full resolution file, saving on I/O time and memory while reading. For more information, see Loading Files in the Nuke User Guide.

Finally, the Viewer has an extra "downrez" setting which multiplies against the current scale, regardless of whether proxy mode is on or not. This provides a quick way to flip to lower resolution processing without any involved setup. It's also particularly useful when a comp includes a just a few very large plates, for example a 10k matte painting, since you can set this "downrez" value to something like 1/16 when viewing just those nodes for better interactivity. For more information, see Lowering the Display Resolution of Individual Viewers in the Nuke User Guide.

Viewer Changes

Exposure and gamma on the viewer are now applied in the GPU when possible for faster feedback.

Motion Blur

Undo/Redo

• Support for 64-bit operating systems on Windows and Linux.
• Support for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
• Personal Learning Edition (PLE) now available.
• Support for .fbx files.
• Extended bicubics on the card node.
• Stereo workflow improvements.

Comments from the Beta Sites

"Nuke 5.1 is a really great achievement for The Foundry . With 64 bit we are not getting any runtime errors while using more than 30 passes of 4k images with rsmb motion blur - not a single crash. We did the first visual effects 4k film "Drona" using The Foundry's Nuke software in India." Soumyadip Chakraborty, Associate Compositing Supervisor at EyeQube Studios.

“Thanks so much for 64 bit, this is huge! I have a script with 50 or so tilesets, 20k wide each on average. Nuke takes advantage of all 6G RAM on my system. Three thumbs up!” Johan Aberg, Weta Digital

“I've been running tests with some fbx scenes, camera animation, multiple models, etc... In my humble opinion this is the biggest improvement and it is working brilliantly. Thanks for the great work!” Sean Devereaux, Freelance Compositing Supervisor

“I've been dealing with huge environment set ups here and most of the time I'm not even aware of the fact that my Nuke script is using 10+GB of memory. Not to mention the speed improvements I get when going to 5.1. A huge thank you for targeting this as a priority!!” Frank Rueter, 2D Technical Director at Digital Domain

“We're currently working on a stereoscopic IMAX movie with CG planes comped on live plates. One of our comp artists was struggling to render the motion blur using VectorBlur on the 4K images without a crash. I gave him access to Nuke 5.1 64bit on his machine and everything is working flawlessly. We're glad The Foundry took that step forward.” Franocis Lord, Lead Technical Director at ObliqueFx

27 Aug 2009 - Nuke 5.2.

Nuke 5.2 features new pre-comp tools that facilitate collaborative workflow, Python UI improvements, metadata support and the ability to register multiple 'Viewer Process' Gizmos for user-defined viewer LUT processing, including new support for 3D LUTs and OpenGL GLSL shaders.

In addition Nuke 5.2 enables video monitor output through Blackmagic, AJA Kona and Xena and introduces a RED R3D Redcode format reader that brings the full range of picture information into a full 32bit float processing environment.

Viewer playback performance has been significantly improved, flexible disk caching introduced at script nodes and numerous bugs fixed.

Nuke 6.0v1 introduces a new RotoPaint node providing rewritten and additional new tools for creating and animating detailed roto shapes, paint and clone strokes, integrated together in a non-destructive layer-based hierarchy.

Keylight, the industry-proven blue/green screen keyer, now ships with Nuke 6.0v1 at no extra charge.

What is NukeX?

NukeX 6.0 extends the range of tools usually found in the compositing environment adding an integrated 3D camera tracker, automated and manual lens distortion tools, FurnaceCore – The Foundry’s reengineered set of Furnace plug-ins - and a DepthGenerator plug-in. Offering VFX users two different Nuke products enables facilities of all sizes to implement a Nuke solution to fit a range of artist and customer needs. Nuke continues to be an evolving, flexible solution ideal for a multitude of VFX tasks, while NukeX brings previously inaccessible tools and workflow options to compositing artists, saving time and increasing the quality of their work. Nuke and NukeX are fully script compatible, with Nuke capable of viewing and rendering nodes created using the extended NukeX toolset.