NUKE and NUKEX | Features

NUKE and NUKEX provide all the tools you need to get the visual result you want while retaining the power and flexibility to solve the harder technical production challenges. Backed by a large, global pool of trained talent NUKE and NUKEX are driving forward industry standards and workflow, delivering measurable results in any visual effects business.

Compare NUKE and NUKEX Features

Feature	NUKE	NUKEX
Multi-channel workflow
Nodal toolset
3D Workspace
Multi-threaded, scanline-based rendering engine
Up to 1023 32-bit float colour channels with linear workflow
Python Scripting and integrated script editor
Industry standard OFX support, giving access to a large array of after market plug-ins
Available on Windows®, Linux®, Mac OS X®
Stereoscopic workflow
OpenColorIO
OCULA Plug-In support
Audio Scratch Track
Deep image compositing toolset
3D Camera Tracker
3D Particles
Planar Tracker
Denoise
Modelling and point cloud generation
PIXAR RenderMan Pro Server Support
FURNACECORE
Buy online now:	Buy or rent	Buy or rent

Features in both NUKE and NUKEX

• Workflow
• Nodal Toolset
• 3D Workspace
• Speed
• Powerful
• Customise
• User presets
• Choice
• Production proven
• Stereoscopic workflow
• Performance
• Audio Scratch Track
• Deep Compositing
• OpenColorIO
• Improved Adobe Photoshop layered PSD reading
• UDIM functionality

Features only available in NUKEX

• 3D Camera Tracker
• 3D Particles
• Planar Tracker
• Denoise
• Modelling & Point Cloud Generation
• Lens Distortion Tools
• Pixar RenderMan Pro Server Support
• FURNACECORE

Features in both NUKE and NUKEX

• Workflow – NUKE's robust multi-channel workflow makes compositing CG more efficient. The industry's broadest support for multi-channel EXR images combines with multi-channel, multi-view and high dynamic range compositing to improve productivity and data management. NUKE allows you to cleanly manage multi-pass renders in a single stream, separate out individual passes for manipulation and work natively with HDRI.
• Nodal Toolset – With over 200 creative nodes at your disposal, NUKE provides all the tools artists need whatever the challenge. These include all the industry standard keyers (Ultimatte, Primatte, Keylight), rotoscope and vector paint tools, multiple colour correction approaches, Gaussian and vector blur, defocus, dilate/erode, NEW grid and spline warping, multiple compositing merge methods, powerful expression language, a vector-based text generator, GPU accelerated 3D LUTs, an animation curve editor, dope sheet and much more…
• 3D Workspace – NUKE's comprehensive and tightly integrated 3D environment allows artists to combine live action 2D and 3D elements seamlessly and quickly. You can create cards, extended bicubics, bilinear meshes and standard geometric primitives or import pre-constructed meshes using OBJ and Autodesk FBX® support.

Compositing artists can decide how far to go in NUKE - transform, texture, projection map, light and render with multi-sampled motion blur and even cast shadows – saving round trips with other departments.

• Speed – Even when processing super high resolution footage at the highest 32-bit floating point precision on modest hardware, NUKE's multi-threaded, scanline-based rendering engine gives rapid artist feedback and accurate results. NUKE also integrates easily with render-farm systems giving you even more power and speed in your pipeline.
• Powerful – NUKE scales with your workload. NUKE's resolution-independent, multi-channel pipeline allows you to read and output at any image size and manage up to 1023 user-definable 32-bit floating point colour channels. Whatever the job throws at you, NUKE can handle it.
• Customise – NUKE fits perfectly into VFX pipelines, making it easy for artists to customise and tightly integrate new tools. NUKE's simple, but extensive, user interface and nodes can be easily customised to suit the individual artist.

  For details about customising NUKE, see the NUKE Developers page.

NUKE's inbuilt Python script editor, parameter expressions, linked clones and Gizmo-macros can be used to rapidly prototype and deliver complex procedural effects, accessible later at the touch of a button. Standard Python scripting can also be used to control processing and the user interface.

NUKE's open architecture and Developers Manual allow more technical artists to drill down to the industry standard OFX image processing plug-in API and the in-depth NDK NUKE developer's kit.

LGPL Qt 4.6 also allows the use of any Qt user interface component directly inside NUKE. Artists and programmers can extend NUKE nodes with custom C++ parameter knob controls and embed their own UIs inside of NUKE.

• User presets - Artists can tailor their workflow by creating preset configurations of parameters and nodes that can be re-used at a studio, job, shot or individual artist level.
• Choice – NUKE is available on Windows®, Linux® and Mac OS X® all at equal cost. Licenses float across operating systems, so every artist can work where they are most comfortable and creative and offline batch rendering can be at its most efficient.
• Production proven – Whether you work on feature films, episodic TV or commercials, NUKE has been battle proven at some of the worlds best effects houses.
• Stereoscopic workflow – NUKE knows stereo. NUKE's unique integrated stereoscopic workflow allows you to work on stereo footage as one image stream, only splitting out to separate left and right image streams where necessary saving you significant time. NUKE's architecture also supports an arbitrary number of image streams allowing you to do multi-views with ease.

NUKE has everything you need to tackle 2D to 3D conversion work whatever your preferred technique. From simple pixel displacement to full on 3D match- moved geometry, NUKE can deliver.

Higher quality 2d-3d stereoscopic conversion can be achieved using the Displacement Shader which applies dynamic tessellation and displacement of 3D geometry at render time.

NUKE is also the only platform that supports The Foundry's award-winning OCULA plug-in toolset. OCULA helps correct a wide range of live action stereoscopic problems and has been refined through collaboration on numerous productions including Avatar and Tron: Legacy.

• Performance - The Localise Read Cache can automatically create local copies of image sequences to reduce network traffic, improve user experience and artist interactivity. At the same time aggressive caching takes advantage of available RAM to speed up compositing, avoiding re-rendering when changing frames or moving from script editing to playback.
• Audio Scratch Track - The Audio Scratch Track works with NUKE's curve editor, allowing artists to match their VFX to audio cues and generate animation curves from audio waveforms.
• Deep Compositing - allows artists to work with 'deep images' containing multiple opacity or colour samples per pixel. This allows rendering of CGI elements without predetermined holdout mattes avoiding the need for re-renders when content changes.

Deep compositing can also be used to create new volumetric effects and merge 3D images with reduced edge artifacts.

• Read NUKE Deep Compositing testimonials.
• OpenColorIO – OpenColorIO is an open source colour management solution originating from Sony Picture Imageworks. OpenColorIO enables colour transforms and image display to be handled in a consistent manner across multiple graphics applications, including: compositors, image playback tools, renderers, and colour graders. OpenColorIO lets you set up a profile once and then see consistent colours across all compatible applications: NUKE, MARI, HIERO and KATANA, as well as other industry standard products. Ensuring you have the reassurance of consistent colour and results across all applications in your pipeline, OpenColorIO is unlike other colour management solutions and is geared towards post production; suitable for both visual effects work and animated features.
• Improved Adobe Photoshop layered PSD reading – Bring Adobe Photoshop layered PSDs directly from Photoshop into NUKE. The improved PSD reader now reads 16 bit PSD files and converts your PSD layers into a Nuke node graph with matching blending modes and clipping masks. This allows you to work more closely with your matte and texture teams and minimise the time spent converting files types.
• UDIM functionality – UDIM Import lets you import a set of texture patches that follow the UDIM numbering scheme and quickly apply them to the surface of a 3D object. This improves interoperability with MARI in particular via the NUKE<>MARI Bridge, letting you work closer and faster.
• Plug-ins - All of The Foundry's OpenFX™ (OFX) plug-ins are fully compatible with NUKE. Plug-ins are available from The Foundry and third party plug-in vendors.

NUKEX | 3D Camera Tracker

• Integrates directly into NUKE's 2D/3D image processing environment, providing live and in-context access to NUKE's powerful pre- and post-processing tools.
• Analyze 2D image sequences, and automatically solve to reconstruct the 3D camera with unknown, approximate or known, constant or varying constraints
• Control automatic track selection and distribution, and add user generated track data
• Automatic 3D point cloud and camera creation native to NUKE's 3D environment. Create reference geometry and cards positioned at tracked points in the 3D scene

NUKEX Camera Tracker Tutorial Part 1

• View all 3 NUKEX Camera Tracker tutorials

NUKEX | 3D Particles

NUKEX 6.3's true 3D particle system integrates seamlessly with NUKE's 3D workspace.

Artists can create a range of particle effects quickly and effectively within the composite including breaking windows, dust, fire and rain with no need to go back and forth to an external 3D rendering package.

• Read a NUKEX 3D Particles Testimonial.

NUKEX Particle Fundamentals Part 1

• View all NUKEX Particles Tutorials

NUKEX | Planar Tracker

Planar Tracking dramatically speeds up common compositing tasks such as sign replacement, element inserts and clean plate generation.

Any new element can be matched to a flat surface such as the face of a building, the floor, the side of a car and easily be tracked, placed and animated.

NUKEX Planar Tracker Tutorial Part 1

• View all 5 NUKEX Planar Tracker Tutorials

NUKEX | Denoise

The Foundry's research team won a Sci-Tech® Award for their original FURNACE algorithms in 2007. They have now written a completely new Wavelet-based Denoise algorithm for NUKE resulting in cleaner and more visually pleasing results with less artefacts.

• Read NUKEX Denoise testimonials

NUKEX Denoise Tutorial: Part 1

• View all NUKEX Denoise tutorials

NUKEX | Modelling & Point Cloud Generation

The image-based modelling tools allow any artist to easily combine a tracked 3D camera with a selection of 2D image features to create simple scene geometry.

When added to the dense point cloud generation and automatic calibration of projection cameras from 2D images and geometry, NUKEX provides new ways to reference and re-apply composited elements more efficiently and realistically into live action scenes.

NUKEX | Lens Distortion Tools

• Integrates directly into NUKE's 2D image processing environment
• Unwarp and warp image sequences using a parametric lens model
• Lens modelling through automatic analysis or manual feature identification

NUKEX | Pixar RenderMan Pro Server Support

As an alternative to the in-built scanline renderer, integration with RenderMan aligns NUKE-rendered scenes with the rest of the 3D pipeline, seamlessly matching motion blur and depth of field, whilst providing the compositor with more flexible control of new rendering capabilities such as ray-traced shadows and reflections. You can also inject and manipulate RIB files and statements. This allows you to bring in external shaders and RIB sources from your 3D RenderMan pipeline and render real 3D elements live without going back to 3D.

FURNACECORE - Included with NUKEX

NUKEX comes with FURNACECORE, the core plug-ins from The Foundry's Academy Award©-winning FURNACE toolset, which have undergone many enhancements.

• Kronos - high quality time warping based on optical flow technologies
• MatchGrade - copy the grade from one sequence to another
• MotionBlur - add realistic blur based on the motion in the scene
• DeNoise - removes or reduces all kinds of noise from your footage
• DeGrain - optimised removal of film grain from a plate
• ReGrain - add grain to your clean plates or graphics from stock, or sample your own
• DeFlicker2 - removes in-scene flicker from light sources of all kinds
• Steadiness - smooth a shots camera move, or lock off a shot completely
• RigRemoval - remove unwanted foreground objects from a shot
• Align - align similar shots automatically
• WireRemoval - quickly clean up wires
• VectorGenerator - generates motion vectors for use in other nodes

FURNACECORE Kronos Tutorial Part 1

• View all the NUKEX FURNACECORE tutorials