The Foundry is back again with bundle of new features and enhanced version of the leading VFX Compositing software. As stated in earlier post, Nuke 8.0 got launched on 11th November, 2013 at Mumbai, India. Check out exclusive pics of the event and top 10 features of Foundry Nuke 8.
Courtney Pryce (Creative Specialist) started with ‘Namaste Mumbai’. And all the auditorium cheared him. Followings are the excerpts of his detailed explanation regarding major features.
Text node
Text node is bundled with various editing and animation styles. It can be animated by per character, sentence and/or group wise. It all happens on the realtime update on viewer. The VFX artists get a huge liberty to play with various text effects. It eliminates the need of any third party software for the desired output.
Dope sheet
It is made visually rich. It shows the big picture at once. You can tweak the entire animated timeline. In sync, you can also modify per attribute key frame animation. It’s an amazing tool for rotoscoping. Nuke was heavily used in the Hollywood block buster movie Gravity which begged The Best Visual Effects Oscars Award in 2014.
Help
In-context help is introduced for better understanding. It’s like a handy tutorial for Nuke 8.0
Match Grade
It is one of the very powerful tools of Nuke 8. You can select color range by selecting a pattern. It gives you selected and average color range with waveform support to accurately achieve the color operations. Color wheel is provided to accurately control Hue, Saturation and Value. Pixel Analyzer is an add-on benefit.
Scopes tools
It gives the very powerful Waveform, Vector scope and Histogram package all in one.
Camera Tracker and Model Builder
These advanced to make set solves. It also works well even with reference still images. The point cloud is much better than the previous version.
Edit Geo
Manipulating 3D shapes are taken on advanced level.
Deep Compositing
This was the most awaited session. The codes have been re-written for more detailed catching of pixel selection. It has been the best among the top 10 features of Foundry Nuke
One of the best Nuke Tutorial : Mochaimport+ for Nuke
Support for TD’s
Blink script node has been added to write custom image processing operations inside Nuke. ‘Import Nuke’ function made available for programmers.
Apart for above Nuke features, a big emphasis was also on Hiero. Famously it is called as ‘Timeline of Nuke’. Hiero 1.8 features greatly enhanced playback performance, color operations, new editing audio controls to give control for Per Track and Per Item Volume Controls.
Making of ‘World War Z’ with Nuke, Mari and Hiero
Lev Kolobov (2D Supervisor – MPC) showcased behind the scenes of ‘World War Z‘. It was very prestigious movie for MPC and Nuke, Mari and Hiero helped them in the entire pipeline to achieve the required output. He showed the Compositing workflow for the movie. They had used Deep Compositing on a very huge scale to achieve the excellence they had targeted for.
The audience cheered for various unseen before and after VFX. Many visual effects shots were perfect blend of technical and artistic sense. With the help of new tools, the director could achieve seamless experience.
Lev also showed some custom scripts written specially for the movie. In the pipeline, they had divided the shots in three categories – Simple, Complex and Very Complex. Custom scripts shelf was made for repetitious shots and crowd simulation. Multipass renderings were done, so they Compositors can have a better control at the Post Production level.
In the end, he came with concept of ‘Chak De India 2’ with Shahrukh Khan and Sachin Tendulkar !!!
The team from Aditya Infotech, Foundry and MPC:
The Best Buddies – VFX Artists and Trainers:
Waiting to brush my hands on Nuke 8 … 🙂