Nuke 13.0 is the next step
in our journey in supporting artists
and providing new tools to help them
create amazing work.
To do this, we are continuing our focus
on helping to keep artist's eyes on the image
so that they can do what they do best.
With Nuke 13.0, we have extended
the monitor out feature
and unified the systems in Nuke and Nuke Studio.
This means artist's in Nuke can more easily
view their work on a second monitor,
even if they don't have access
to a monitor out card.
Simply utilize the new floating window
and it's independent output transformed controls
so that you can view your image accurately
on a second display.
For artists working with Nuke Studio,
you can now seamlessly switch
between the timeline and node graph
with no disruptions to your monitor out output.
We've also included new controls and preferences
to give you greater options
of what and how you want to display.
Some examples of the new interactive mode,
which gives you greater control
on how your image buffers are displayed
on your second screen.
The ability to adjust the gamma and gain
of your viewer, and toggle if this
is displayed on your second monitor,
or color transform controls,
so you can have separate color settings
to ensure your image displays accurately
no matter what monitor you connect to.
As well as all the above enhancements,
stability, reliability and usability
have all been greatly improved.
And we've taken our first step with HDR workflows
with a beta feature that allows the ability
to display HDR images on XDR
and EDR enabled monitors on Mac OS.
A feature we're really excited about this year
is Hydra support for the 3D Viewport in Nuke.
This is the first step towards improving
the 3D system,
and by using HDStorm, the 3D viewer
can now display a higher fidelity representation
of the 3D scene.
This means artists can make artistic decisions
inside of the 3D system, rather than always
having to switch back to the Scanline render.
Hydra supports nearly all of
the existing workflows you are familiar with,
such as moving geometry, particle systems
or projection setups, but the real power
of Nuke's new Hydra Viewport comes
from working with lights and materials
in the 3D system.
Nuke is now able to display lights, shadows,
materials and textures much more accurately.
And when comparing the Hydra output
to Nuke's original 3D viewport
there's a night and day difference.
Finally, we've the output in the Scanline render,
and while the hydra representation
isn't one-to-one,
it's a much closer representation
than we have ever had before in Nuke.
Nuke's Hydra view is the first in
a series of projects we have planned
to update for the 3D system,
addressing both the performance
and user experience.
And while we know there's a lot to be done
we believe that this is a great first step
and will allow our artists to be more creative
and more efficient when working
with the 3D system.
Part of helping artists to keep in
a creative space and able to focus on
the image is in reducing pipeline friction
to allow for greater collaboration.
With that in mind, we are continuing
to develop our USD support in Nuke
with the ability to ingest camera, lights
and Axis data directly into Nuke's native nodes
from a USD file.
This means if you started using USD elsewhere
in your pipeline, you can continue to use it
to carry the data you need directly into Nuke.
Each node has had UI and seen graph improvements
to help with working with USD data,
while still allowing artists to continue
with the workflows they are used to.
We've also updated our USD version
to 20.08 and kept this in line
with our sister products,
so that's supporting USD between each
of our products is more seamless.
Like the Hydra work, this is only the start
in making Nuke a more collaborative space,
we're excited to continue development of USD
to allow for greater sharing between DCC's
using non-destructive workflows.
Though for those wanting to get more out of USD
in Nuke right now, all the extensions
to the USD nodes are being open sourced
so that pipelines can further extend
and customize these nodes
for their unique USD setups.
Sync Review was introduced
in Nuke 12.2 as a beta feature,
as we wanted to support artists who suddenly
found themselves working remotely
and in need of tools that allow
for greater collaboration at distance.
With Nuke 13.0, we are happy to release sync review
with more of the features needed
to enable teams to collaborate
and continue working together
towards a shared vision of the final image.
In the initial release of 12.2,
users had access to the playback controls,
annotations, version system,
and some soft effect parameters.
Now in Nuke 13, we've expanded
the ability to sync all of the actions
needed in their review session.
This means users can now make changes
in the timeline, import new footage,
create or modify new soft effects
and have an unlimited number of users,
see the same thing at the same time.
Sync review like many of our features
is about listening to our users needs
and trying to help build tools
that allow artists to work better.
Alongside sync view, we're bringing
the annotations functionality to HieroPlayer.
This means you get the same capabilities
as Nuke Studio in Hiero,
and provides greater creative control
by giving artists the ability
to create annotations, as well as
update them live, during a sync session.
Artists working in HieroPlayer,
also now have access to the functionalities
of importing files and creating new sequences.
Even when working with Hiero projects
this allows all artists to follow
and participate in review sessions
while using sync review.
Nuke 13.0 will introduce a new suite
of machine learning tools in Nuke and NukeX.
With the new copycat node, being a standout.
The aim is to help accelerate artist's workflows
with new technology and give them control
over tools that get them to
the final image faster.
NukeX's copycat allows an artist to
train a neural network,
to copy their own sequence specific effect.
With copycat, an artists can create an effect
such as garbage matting, beauty repairs,
or even deblurring,
on a small number of frames in a sequence
and then train a network to replicate
this effect on the rest.
Simply input a selection of the original frames,
along with what you want them to look like
and hit train.
The plugin will then output a trained network
ready for the inference node to apply your effect
to the rest of the footage.
The inference node runs the neural networks
produced by the copycat node.
Once copycat has actually trained a network
its weights will be saved in a cat file.
This file can be loaded in the inference node
and applying to the remainder of the sequence
or even a different one altogether,
thereby allowing you to share
your train data model with other artists
working on similar shots
and in need of the same effect.
If the effect isn't quite working
as intended for the artist's work
then they can use their own footage to further
train the model using the copycat node
and create an even deeper data set.
Both copycat and the inference node
require a NukeX license,
but Nuke users can still benefit
from machine learning workflows.
Not only can they process the inference node
to allow for easier script sharing,
but they have access to
two new machine learning pre-trained tools.
The first is the upscale node,
which allows you to increase
your footage by a factor of two.
This is very similar to Nuke's TVIScale node,
but when comparing,
you can see you can get a much nicer result,
especially when working with fine details.
The second pre-train node is the Deblur node
which removes motion blur from the input.
And can be especially great,
when working with stabilized footage.
This node also as a mask input
in case you want to isolate the effect
to a specific area.
It's important to note
that these tools are very GPU intensive
and require an NVIDIA GPU to get started.
An already much loved tool is now becoming
a native feature to Nuke 13.0,
with the introduction of cryptomatte
this implementation includes an updated UI
with a new vertical matte list to make viewing
your selected mattes even easier.
The ability to select the cryptomatte manifest,
is embedded in the input image
when contained in a sidecar file.
The introduction of wildcard functionality
to allow for sophisticated matte selections and Python 3 support
Having Cryptomatte inside Nuke
means it no longer has to be downloaded
as a third-party gizmo.
But also means that going forward
we can develop this tool further
so that artists can get more
from the workplace they utilize most.
Performance is something that has been
at the heart of Nuke development
for a number of releases now.
And Nuke 13.0 continues on this theme.
On average when rendering scripts,
Nuke 12.1 was 18% faster than 11.3
12.2 was 15% faster than 12.1,
and Nuke 13.0 is 10% faster than Nuke 12.2.
All this we've improved thread scaling.
We know how important efficiency is for artists.
And while we are happy
with the performance progress in Nuke,
we know there's still so much more to do
and are excited to keep pushing this further
with future releases and expanding this
into other areas of Nuke.
Keeping Nuke as a dependable cornerstone
of your VFX pipeline is something
we take great pride in.
And we know this can only happen
if we support the libraries
and STK updates you need.
As such with Nuke 13.0, we are continuing
our support of the VFX Reference Platform.
For the 2020 platform, this includes
quite broad and significant upgrades
that seize Nuke using the latest versions
of technologies like OpenEXR and Python 3.
We're also including file format
and SDK updates for Avid and ARRI.
And have abstracted these into
a separate plugin package
so that you can access these file formats
for the releases you're working on,
rather than only when you upgrade.
These are just a few ways in which
we're trying to improve
how Nuke fits into your pipeline.
Thank you all for your continued passion
and feedback over the last year.
And for being part of the Nuke family,
stay safe and Happy comping.