Beginner's Guide to Nuke

Hello all, this blog post will be documenting some of the things I have learned about Nuke.  Our class is starting out with Digital Tutor's "Beginner's Guide to Nuke".

The first two lesson were merely introductions telling some information about the program:

Nuke is a "node-based" compositor.

Compositing: "Bringing in multiple elements and making them look like they exist in the same space."

Compositing is usually one of the last steps you take with your production/animation.

Here is a screenshot of Nuke's interface.

A node is a piece of code or object that does a specific operation to something.  Also the position of of the node does not matter, it is what it is connected/plugged in to that matters.

Here are three different ways (not the only ways) shown how one could organize their group of nodes.

A clear way to organize your group of nodes

Another clear way to organize your group of nodes

A confusing arrangement of nodes

The instructor also mentioned that if you want to create a shortcut for quickly scrolling through various nodes you are working on is to click on the viewer and then click on the node you want to access and press a number on your key board.  Here is a picture showing that I have connected my viewer to 2 different nodes and that I can press 1 and 2 to access them quickly.

The next lesson simply went over the properties bin (located on the far upper left).  You can access the properties of the node you are working with by double left clicking it.  There are many different settings that you can play around with like blur and color correction effects.

The next tutorial went over how to read (import) an image into Nuke and some of the project settings that you can mess around with.

Press "R" to read an image into Nuke

Press "P" to get to your properties panel for a node or project

In the following tutorial he briefly went over merging two nodes and turning an alpha layer on and off.

Blurry Picture of Where the Merge Node is

Press "Shift + X" to Switch Order of Merge Nodes

I didn't really understand his brief explanation on Alpha channels; hopefully when he uses it later in the tutorial I will understand it more.  (He did mention in the next two lessons that an Alpha helps us define the transparency on some of the parts of our object).

After that we went over the transform node, how you could mess around with some of its properties in the properties panel, and more about what to connect it to.

Location of the Transform Node

Another Look at the Transform Node

The next tutorial went over Rotoscoping some.  The instructor's definition of rotoscoping was: "Rotoscoping is essentially drawing out a new Alpha."  He also repeated that an Alpha channel helps us determine the transparency of certain areas of our image.  Rotoscoping is like making your own alpha channels, where you can specifically choose what you want to be masked out of the image.

The Hot Key for Turning Your Overlay (mask) On and Off is "O"

The following lesson went over color correction.  We went over a couple of the color correction setting (because there were a lot of them).

Color Correction Nodes Located Under Peace Looking Symbol

Saturation referred to the intensity or vibrance of the colors.  Contrast either intensifies or lowers the relationship between the darks and the lights in your scene.  Gamma and Gain were a bit similar in that they controlled the overall brightness or darkness of our scene.  The only difference between them is that Gain is like Gamma on steroids the change is much more prominent.  Offset seemed to control the overall intensity of your blacks and whites.  The cool thing about color correction is that you can assign it to different nodes if you want to color correct them individually.  The instructor said that the key to color correcting is to make all the layers look like the are blended together (they look like they were shot in the same location (lighting)).

Color Correction Settings in Properties Panel 

The last lesson in "Beginner's Guide to Nuke" went over how to write/render out your files when you think you have finished your final product.  First go to the very first tool at the top right of you Nuke Node Settings and select "Write".

After you connect the write node to the node connecting all your other nodes (in this case the color correct node) then go into your node's project settings and name your file.  (If the setting for the write node are not appearing you may have to double click on the node).  Find where you want to save the file/name it/click save.  You will need to then select the file type you want (in my case it was a jpeg) before you can click render.

Composited (Rendered) Jpeg Using Nuke

To write out a sequence file for rendering the process is almost exactly the same.

When you get to where you name your file you have to either add ".%03d" or ".###" to the end of your file name.  The instructor tried to explain why you had to do this, but I didn't quite understand why.  He said something about it affecting padding.

Then select your written sequence node and go up to the top of Nuke's Menu Bar and click "Render Selected...".  If you don't do this it will render out all the write files with their connections (that might take longer than you want it to).

If you have all your rendered jpegs (or other file type you choose to name it) in a folder you can then click and drag the folder into Nuke's Node Graph.  This will automatically create a sequence of your rendered animation which you can then play in Nuke if you desire to do so.

Nuke's interface as well as its Node Graph is a simple setup that works well.  There have been other editing software that I have used before that seemed more daunting because of the hundreds of buttons showing up everywhere on the default start up.  I can see how Nuke would be a handy tool to use when rendering pictures and compositing videos or animations.