New 3D system: Overview (beta)

We’re revamping Nuke’s 3D system introducing a new beta USD-based system enabling artists to work efficiently with modern 3D scenes at scale.

The new USD architecture brings Nuke’s 3D in line with modern standards and introduces a dedicated scene graph, new path and masking workflows, over 40 new nodes, and USD-based workflows. We’ll be continuing to develop the new 3D system across the Nuke 14 series and, to ensure artists don't lose access to any workflows they are used to, the new system will work in parallel with the classic 3D system.

New 3D system: Path and masking (beta)

We’re giving artists greater control with new path and masking workflows. All nodes that create geometry will have a new path knob that enables users to determine where the geometry they’re creating lives in the scene hierarchy and how it's named. Similarly, any nodes that modify geometry will have a new mask knob that allows artists to specify which part of the 3D scene that node should affect. These knobs are based on a simplified CEL expression language that allows the use of tokens and expressions. For artists, this means that the knobs can default to intuitive workflows with minimal input, but also allow for complex selections if you want to go deeper.

New 3D system: Feedback forum

So that artists can help continue to shape the new 3D system across the 14 series, we are introducing a dedicated community forum to enable discussions and feedback with the 3D team. We’re interested in hearing from you in regards to 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. Join us below to help develop the future of 3D compositing workflows in Nuke! 

UI and performance improvements to AIR tools

Nuke 14.0 ships with UI and performance improvements to Nuke’s AIR tools. These updates include a new checkpoint targeting human matting that has been added to CopyCat, speeding up training by up to ten times. We’ve also upgraded to PyTorch 1.12.1 which widens the range of support for models converted to .cat via the CatFileCreator node and sped up CopyCat training by 20% on NVIDIA Ampere GPUs.

Timeline updates

Artists now have access to full OCIO soft effect support on their own timeline. This means projects imported from Studio or Hiero can be opened and all the OCIO soft effects can now be accessed and adjusted. New instances of OCIO can be added on new tracks or clips, giving you even greater control over how you work with soft effects in HieroPlayer and allowing artists to better review in the context of a sequence. We’re also updating OTIO to the latest 0.15 version so that pipelines can continue to explore this new format for moving editorial data throughout your pipeline.

Bokeh

Bokeh, originally developed by Peregrine Labs, is now free within all active licences from versions 13.2v6 and Nuke 14.0v2. Bokeh is the only commercially available tool for defocus of deep data and has become essential for artists using deep compositing in Nuke. Bokeh offers the ability to simulate the attributes of real-world lenses, enabling artists to achieve highly cinematic depth of field effects.

Login-based licensing for teams

Nuke 14.0 sees the introduction of new login-based licensing for both teams and individuals, making it easier for artists to access licenses when and where they need to without the need to have access to VPNs or internal servers. For teams and organizations, the new web-based UI allows nominated administrators to invite and manage Users, User Groups, and License Pools. Artists will be able to use their Foundry account login to use these licenses, giving them greater flexibility in how they use their licenses and control over who in their organization can use what licenses.

ARRI, Sony and RED SDK updates

Stay up-to-date with industry standards with support for the latest SDKs and cameras. Support includes ARRI Alexa 35, Sony Venice 2, and Red V-RAPTOR XL. The SDKs contain bug fixes for previous releases and also improvements to image quality.