Leading software developer, The Foundry has released the new version of its powerful node based compositor, NUKE.

NUKE 8 includes countless exciting features and updates for artists working across multiple industries. The product was launched today at a live streaming digital event hosted in London’s West End.

Guest speakers from high profile facilities took to the stage to showcase their use of NUKE 8 features in television, commercials and film VFX workflows. Speakers included Stephan Fleet, Creative Director at Encore Hollywood, Russell Dodgson, Head of NUKE Worldwide at Framestore and Mike Maloney, Compositing Supervisor at Digital Domain.

They were also joined live onstage for a Q&A by Hugo Guerra, Head of NUKE at The Mill and Paul Simpson, Founder and Creative Director at Realise.

Hugo Guerra, Head of Nuke at The Mill comments: “This update of NUKE cements it as the most powerful compositor in the market today. It doesn't matter if you are making a film, a commercial, a TV show, game cinematics or creating an art installation, you will never be disappointed with its unique scalability and raw versatility”.

What’s in NUKE 8?

The vast list of features include the new Dope Sheet, allowing artists see and move keys around in the context of a timeline style view, a brand new Text node letting artists compose, edit and animate directly in the viewer.

There are big updates to NUKE’s grading and colour correction tools with a new intuitive in-panel colour wheel to control hue, saturation and value as well as Scope tools to help users analyse the picture like Waveform, Vectorscope and Histogram viewers and a pixel analyser. There’s also a new Match Grade node enhancing NUKE’s grading capabilities.

Jeff Jasper, Digital FX Supervisor & Technical Lead at New Deal Studios comments: “Colour is really important and the fact that they added colour wheels right within the correction tools is great – it gives you much more flexibility. The Match Grade node update in NUKE 8 also really helps you get the colour correct you need in a commercials workflow much quicker.”

Making environment work a faster and easier process, a further update to NUKE’s Camera Tracker adds to the set solve functionality and lets artists track and solve cameras from reference stills, helping to assist object or set modelling within one integrated environment. The Model Builder now also features UV creation for even greater 3D control.

Brand new 3D tools include Viewer Capture to allow users to flipbook images from the 2D and 3D Viewer, a new Edit Geo node, a Particle Cache node to speed up rendering times and the Wireframe Shader node for various visual effects and increased control over projection mapping.

Overall speed and performance are also improved with the addition of OpenEXR 2.0 multi-part image read and write support, Alembic 1.5 and Planar Rendering. NUKE 8 also features a new intelligent in-context help system.

With NUKE 8 developers are able to write their own image processing operations inside of NUKE using the new Blink Script node to ensure they get the best possible performance from their teams hardware.

The new Import NUKE function allows developers to use NUKE as a module in any Python interpreter, and developers of C++ plugins can now output planar data in more flexible ways thanks to new Planar Rendering Framework.

HIERO 1.8

Alongside the NUKE 8 release, HIERO 1.8 is also available today, bringing a wide range of user driven new features and improvements to HIERO and HIEROPLAYER. These will include new Quicktime colour handling controls, a wide range of enhancements to optimise playback, new audio level controls, the ability to use custom readers and a whole host of additional improvements and fixes. This update really enhances the NUKE / HIERO workflow offering.

For further information, and to watch a recording of the event click here.

NUKE 8 Testimonial from The Foundry on Vimeo.

About The Foundry

The Foundry develops award-winning computer graphics and visual effects (VFX) software used globally by leading artists, designers and creative professionals. The portfolio lets users create inspiring and technical high-end visuals across a wide range of industries including product and concept design, marketing & advertising, media & entertainment and game development.

In September 2012, The Foundry added MODO, a 3D software package that combines modeling, painting, animation and rendering, to its portfolio. In addition to MODO, the product line includes NUKE (industry standard compositing), HIERO (shot conform and review), MARI (3D digital painting), KATANA (a look development and lighting framework), FLIX (collaborative visual story development), OCULA (a stereoscopic correction toolset) as well as a range of plug-ins.

In the design world, MODO enables the creation of a huge variety of things from products and advertising material to games assets, animation projects and beyond.

All of the company’s products, including MODO, are used to created create breathtaking visual effects sequences on a wide range of features, television projects and commercials. High profile examples include Gravity, Pacific Rim, World War Z, The Hobbit and the 2013 Oscar® winner, Life of Pi (Best Visual Effects). In television examples include Once Upon A Time, Falling Skies, Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones.

Clients include major feature film studios and post-production houses such as Pixar, ILM, Double Negative, The Moving Picture Company, Walt Disney Animation, Weta Digital, Framestore and Sony Pictures Imageworks.

In 2013, The Foundry made the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 for the fourth consecutive year, ranking in 92nd position. This year, the company has also been shortlisted for categories in the UK Tech Awards and the National Business Awards. The Foundry’s CEO Bill Collis was recognized as the UK Technology winner for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. 

© The Foundry, its logo and product names are registered trademarks in the UK, USA and/or other countries. MODO is a registered trademark in the USA and/or other countries. Academy Award is a registered trademark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.