Leading compositing tool gets a major revamp, boasting improved performance and scalability, simple compositing workflows, and flexibility to create new USD-based integrations.
Creative software developer, Foundry, has announced the release of Nuke 14.0, the first in the Nuke 14 series. The release offers a revamped beta 3D system equipped with more than 40 nodes and a USD-based architecture, boasting improved performance and scalability while preserving the simplicity of compositing workflows and offering pipelines the flexibility to create new USD-based integrations.
As part of this revamp, Nuke introduced a dedicated scene graph that allows artists to view, navigate, and manage complex 3D scenes easily. In addition, users can access new path and mask knobs, which work intuitively with their workflow, and new light nodes, material, and shader workflows.
Foundry has released the 3D system as a beta feature and created a new forum space to allow artists to collaborate, give feedback, and build the next generation of 3D compositing workflows.
Nuke users get updates to the UnrealReader, enabling Unreal Custom Render Passes support. The release introduces cloud-based login licensing and Cattery, a free library for third-party machine learning models converted to .cat files and ready to be run as Nuke nodes, as well as several other enhancements to help accelerate work.
New 3D system (beta)
The new USD-based system brings Nuke’s 3D in line with modern standards and introduces new nodes and workflows for artists.
New 3D System: Scene graph (beta)
The new 3D system introduces a dedicated scene graph that allows users to easily view, navigate and manage large, complex 3D scenes. Users will get a clear, visual overview of a scene, with intuitive drag-and-drop functionality to new path masks in nodes. The scene graph is consistent with modern 3D workflows and ensures every primitive inside the new system will have a unique ID path in a scene graph hierarchy.
New 3D System: Path and masking (beta)
The new path and mask knobs provide users with greater control. All nodes that create geometry have a new path knob letting users determine where the created geometry lives in the scene hierarchy and how it’s named. Similarly, any nodes that modify geometry have a new mask knob so artists can specify which part of the 3D scene that node should affect. Based on a simplified CEL expression language, the nobs allow the use of tokens and expressions. Knobs can default to intuitive workflows with minimal input, allowing for complex selections.
New 3D System: Lights and materials (beta)
Supported for USD material networks, the new light and material nodes in Nuke 14.0 and the new PreviewSurface material node allow for USD-based specular or metallic workflows. Materials can also display immediately in the viewer when working with USD files with their own looks. As a result, artists can see their assets more accurately in Nuke’s 3D viewer. In addition, the new USD lights allow for importing lights from other USD-based applications to be seen the same inside Nuke. Then combined with Hydra and potential future support of additional renderers in Nuke’s viewport, artists can see a more consistent image across applications.
New 3D System: Feedback forum
So that artists can continue to shape the new 3D system across the 14 series, a community forum has been introduced for discussions and feedback with the 3D team. The Nuke team requests user feedback in all areas, from existing nodes and workflow improvements, new node or workflow suggestions, feedback on performance, the API, or new features such as the scene graph or path and masking workflows. Access the forum here.
Cattery
The Cattery is a library of free third-party machine learning models converted to .cat files to run natively in Nuke, designed to bridge the gap between academia and production, providing all communities access to different ML models that all run in Nuke. Users will have access to state-of-the-art models addressing segmentation, depth estimation, optical flow, upscaling, denoising, and style transfer, with plans to expand the models hosted in the future. More information is available here.
“The new 3D system is one of the biggest updates to Nuke in its history at Foundry,” commented Foundry director of production Juan Salazar. “Nuke’s 3D system was revolutionary in its time—however, as projects have grown in scale and complexity, it was no longer up to scratch. The new 3D system is the product of the best minds on both the Nuke and Katana teams, applying a deep understanding of USD and production pipelines. We are building the next generation of 3D workflows in compositing on this more scalable and performant base. While we are dedicated to maintaining the speed and simplicity of 3D compositing workflows, this update introduces major changes for artists, and releasing the new 3D system as a beta feature will enable us to capture critical feedback on how to make improvements in USD and 3D workflows. I’m excited to see what artists and pipelines do with this new system!”
More information about Nuke 14.0 is available here.
Source: Foundry