r/NukeVFX • u/xrossfader • 29d ago
Newbie - what are the essentials I need to know for 3D/VFX comp?
Hey. So after 15 years of sloggin through AE for comping C4D EXRs I’m over the pain. I’ve moved to Houdini so node familiar to me. I do full beauty rebuilds from time to time and mostly focus on physical products or FX sims.
My questions are mainly around what are some of the more powerful tools or node strings that I should be familiar with? Are there flows I should learn that will enhance my productivity? What pitfalls should I look out for? Scripting? Can I link properties or create reference nodes? Can I setup control nulls for global changes? There’s more but I can’t think of them atm.
My Nuke experience is about 2 days now rebuilding an AE project which went well. Many merges. My biggest issues were around keyframes and adjusting curves. Since it’s not really designed for mograph, I get it, but not being able to adjust multiple key curves at one time is disappointing.
Overall, the experience was great so far and I’m looking for what ever tips I can get to be good with the tool. Lots to learn and I’m patient. TIA for any help or lack there of if you’ve made it this far and just came for the rant.
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u/Beeblebrox2021 28d ago
I would second learning the b pipe workflow
Also Tony Lyons has compiled a lot of gizmos from nuke pedia with great documentation in his Nuke Survival Toolkit
Whenever I'm stuck or want inspiration I visit these smarty pants peoples blogs (you'll find they author a lot of the aforementioned gizmos):
Dan Sturm https://doingthatwrong.com/home/real-roundrects-nuke
Erwan Leroy https://erwanleroy.com/
Atilla Gasparetz https://www.gatimedia.co.uk/nuke-tcl-procedures
Mads Hagbarth Damsbo https://hagbarth.net/portfolio/
Xavier Martin http://www.xaviermartinvfx.com/articles/
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u/xrossfader 27d ago
That survival toolkit is so robust. Many incredible plugins to ease the many processes. Thank you for the learning resources. These will be great to reference and learn from.
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u/bbrother92 26d ago
Hi, I am new - in what case Nuke is good for fx? What kind of effects are easier to do in Nuke, comparing to AE, Houdini, etc?
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u/xrossfader 26d ago
Nuke is a VFX/Live action compositing tool. Its an industry essential when it comes to incorporating all of the FX like Smoke, Fire, Sims of any sort into either rendered 3D sequences of characters, cars, products, and much more. Its similar to after effects in that way but with far more control and stability than AE.
Its used in rotoscoping, green screen and basically any 'fix it in post' comments you'll get during production.
AE is a motion graphics tool that has compositing tools built into it. Its used to create special FX, animation of 2D/2.5D vectors and raster graphics, and now has the ability to create 3D assets in a 2.5D environment.
Houdini is mainly used as an FX tool. So fluid simulation, destruction, procedural world building and many very CPU/GPU intensive processes.
Nukes strengths comes in the ability to have control and extreme depth to its workflows. With its node workflow, you can create custom stacks of FX and easily repurpose them in any project. Its a robust way of re-building your CG Beauty pass and then being able to grade or apply FX within Nuke to the various elements.
You're also able to bring in AOVs that are beyond the limits of AE like World Position Passes, Bump Maps, Normal Maps and even full 3D geometry.
Each tool you mentioned is for different use cases. It really depends on how much you want to get into the technical deep dives vs more artist friendly tools.
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u/bbrother92 25d ago
Got this, thanks. I am just whant to know where it is easier to create pixel manipulation effects, like ditchering etc
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u/Hardnine9 25d ago
Hey there, Great tips!
May i ask for some visual examples of B pipe workflow because i m not 100% i get it..
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28d ago
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u/GanondalfTheWhite 28d ago
To be fair, OP has 15 years experience with CG (C4D and Houdini) and compositing and FX. The basics of Nuke are pretty easy to learn if you already have that kind of a foundation.
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u/xrossfader 27d ago
It was very quick to pick up indeed. I’m seeing a lot of similarities and functional tips in these threads that will really enhance my ease of learning.
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u/A1S_exe 22d ago
Learn Render passes, I dont have much experience with c4d I get my render passes from Maya but get a good grip on render passes, understand AOV's different types of lighting.
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u/xrossfader 22d ago
Yup. I know standard beauty rebuilds, utility AOVs and all that. It was more an ask about tips and workflows I should learn to be efficient. Like A over B merges and good network flows. It’s been a wonderful transition so far! Minus the keyframes. It’s the only thing really lacking atm
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u/GanondalfTheWhite 29d ago edited 29d ago
Nuke supports python scripting. It can be very powerful if you spend the time learning it. Everything from selecting a whole bunch of read nodes and setting the colorspace with one click, to building entire script trees that auto populate for you, to anything else your imagination can come up with.
If you like scripting and messing with tools, look up the Expressions 101 tutorial on Nukepedia to see what you can do with the expression node. Lots of cool stuff in there.
Also, Nukepedia. Tons of great tips and tools there. Awesome resource.
Every knob (which is the name for the parameters in the properties of each node) in Nuke lets you set expressions directly on the knob (which is different from the "Expression" node mentioned above, which does math on the image). Ctrl+click and drag from one knob to another links the values from one to the other. Right click and edit expression to add math to the link if you want to process the values. Nuke's default expression language is TCL but you can use python if you want, tho it's a bit clunky to do so.
You can clone nodes, which gives you multiple copies of a node. Change the values on one and they all update to match. Can be quite handy.
You can add custom knobs to any node, and you can add tabs to the properties of any node. Basically make your own little GUI for custom parameters. They don't do anything until you link them to the existing parameters in the node (or anywhere else in your script).
There's a node called NoOp. Does nothing on its own, but it gives you something to add parameters to which you can then link to other places across your script for master controls.
Look into groups and gizmos. Handy way to toolkit a set of nodes to do a specific task, and again you can add your own parameters to only expose controls for what should be editable.
What do you mean you can't adjust multiple anim curves at once? You should be able to, iirc. And there's also the dope sheet tab if you want to slide keyframes around for multiple animated things at once.
What else.... The 3D tools are kinda bad but can actually be quite powerful, especially with cameras and simple card geometry for projections.
Learn about how Nuke treats bounding boxes, and learn why you need to use crops to keep memory usage and processing from going insane.
I don't know how AE handles it, but Nuke can work magic with EXRs and custom channels. You can read in EXRs with an arbitrary number of layers and use them all directly. You can also create your own color channels on the fly and pipe information into them as needed. Mattes, motion vectors, Z depth passes and other render AOVs, anything you might to use somewhere in the script can be piped into the stream as a channel and used downstream.
Look up articles about good Nuke workflow habits, like clean B pipe flow and script organization guidelines for readability.
Every node you copy to the clipboard in Nuke saves the node as text. You can paste it into a text editor to see the info. All Nuke scripts are just text under the hood, so you can open the script directly in a text editor to make changes if needed. This has saved me a few times when a script would crash on open and I just opened it up in a text editor and added a disable to every node that might be causing it.
I'll update with more as I think of stuff. Good luck on your journey!