Any reviews of nuke 7 beta and ease of use ?

[PatrickFaith]

I'm debating the plunge to nuke, and was wondering if anyone is testing the nuke 7 beta with R3D files. I am hoping nuke 7, aside from new features, will be a bit easier to learn then nuke 6 ? My main worry is I will get nuke 7 and my brain will explode (i'm a decent AE guy, but havn't used the high end packages at all). Also I'm thinking I will need NukeX, but though I'm integrating a lot of vfx/3d, i'm not doing any stereo3d (so i'm hoping the learning curve would be more gentle).

Has anyone made the transition from being a AE guy to nuke 6 ... I was also wondering how deadly that transition is.

[ EDIT ...

I btw decided to move to Nuke for compositing ... I just received too many comments by pro's that it's the way to go to if wanted a totally professional look. Some times i ignore what the pro's/oldtimers say ... thinking I can weazel through it with "ok" quality ... then about 90% into the project I realize they were right ... and I then have to decide between an inferior product or redoing tons of work.]

 

[PatrickFaith]

Collecting notes from emails,calls,etc ... Thanks.
I am finding the transition to nukes is Perty simple, is adding huge production value - after getting my scarlet and rpp, has been the closest product to get me to A level type movies. Great documentation and tons of video's. Using the book "digital composition with nuke" by lee Lanier(there is a training free version for learning the basics). Nuke 7 is a semi closed beta so reviews can't go online yet, what I have seen by foundry employees is totally über.

Overall it works very nice with blender, same mindset. It doesn't replace after effects, but I am doing about 80% of what I would do in AE in nukex. Nuke community is great too.

 

[Joe Minuni]

Late on your thread,but glad you made the move to nuke. It has so many tools that make complicated composites easier and I love node based software. A good AE user can accomplish many of the same things one could in nuke, but I can work a lost faster with the node based compositing. Plus the plethora of specialized tools, and support for the .exr render passes

I remember learning nuke, and taking a composite I had done in After Effects and re-doing it in Nuke, getting a much more polished result faster. Much of that speed was being able to shuffle around nodes quickly vs having 20 compositions in After effects to navigate in and out of.

I'm also looking forward to NukeX7...been reading cool things

 

[PatrickFaith]

... I remember learning nuke, and taking a composite I had done in After Effects and re-doing it in Nuke, getting a much more polished result faster. Much of that speed was being able to shuffle around nodes quickly vs having 20 compositions in After effects to navigate in and out of.
...
I'm also looking forward to NukeX7...been reading cool things

For sures! Raw-Linear has really opened my eyes up. Question ... in your show real ... http://www.bubble-engine.com/work.html ... is that mainly shot with scarlet and vfx/sfx composited in nuke? Looks awesome. Some of the slow motion footage looks great ... was that epic or scarlet going through nukex to retime ?

 

[Nick Shaw]

I moved from After Effects to Shake and then to Nuke, so I was already familiar with node based compositing when I started using Nuke. Once you're used to nodes, then it is very frustrating when you have to use After Effects. You can achieve a lot of the same things with pre-comps, but it's nowhere near so easy. Nodes are confusing at first if you are used to layers, but one you adjust to the different way of working they are (IMHO) much simpler to use.

I am using the Nuke 7 beta, and I can't see that it would be any easier to learn that v6 – it's fundamentally still the same software, but with some new features.

One important improvement for RED users is that v7 uses the latest RED SDK, so has access to REDcolor3, which is not available in v6.

Disclosure: I have done some work for The Foundry, but the opinions expressed here are my own.

 

[PatrickFaith]

I moved from After Effects to Shake and then to Nuke, so I was already familiar with node based compositing when I started using Nuke. Once you're used to nodes, then it is very frustrating when you have to use After Effects. You can achieve a lot of the same things with pre-comps, but it's nowhere near so easy. Nodes are confusing at first if you are used to layers, but one you adjust to the different way of working they are (IMHO) much simpler to use.

I am using the Nuke 7 beta, and I can't see that it would be any easier to learn that v6 – it's fundamentally still the same software, but with some new features.

Thanks Nick, I'll try not to bug you toooo much on questions I'm finding it's easier to do simple things like crop of frame in AE, but when I want to resize a frame and pick how the pixels get sampled ... that's where the nodes rule. btw, since your a storm expert, with it not being updated, I'm feeling a bit of a gap of software as new features are added to nuke and R3D, yet I don't see a simple way of using them(which to me is what storm was about). For example I'd love to have a R3D to deep pixel operator (where the accelerometer can be used with with camera solution and 3d points), so I would have nice pixel clouds from the R3D. This would make the deep pixel merges a lot easier for me.

 

[Nick Shaw]

For example I'd love to have a R3D to deep pixel operator (where the accelerometer can be used with with camera solution and 3d points), so I would have nice pixel clouds from the R3D. This would make the deep pixel merges a lot easier for me.

I don't believe that accelerometer meta-data is currently available to 3rd party developers, but I'm sure when it is The Foundry will be all over it.

 

[Joe Minuni]

For sures! Raw-Linear has really opened my eyes up. Question ... in your show real ... http://www.bubble-engine.com/work.html ... is that mainly shot with scarlet and vfx/sfx composited in nuke? Looks awesome. Some of the slow motion footage looks great ... was that epic or scarlet going through nukex to retime ?

Thanks! Correct, most of footage was from scarlet, except 2 greenscreen comps which were from a HPX3000 if I remember correctly. Everything comped in nuke. The only time remapped clip was that nike shot

 

[PatrickFaith]

>> Nick Shaw: ... I don't believe that accelerometer meta-data is currently available to 3rd party developers, but I'm sure when it is The Foundry will be all over it.

Coolness, I'm finding the normal nuke stuff is relatively easy to get good tutorials on, but I'm having problems finding good examples on deep compositing workflows(like how to make point clouds based on camera solves and r3d frame differencing). Seems like the foundry guys are totally focused, kind of reminds me of RED.

>> Joe Minuni ... Thanks! Correct, most of footage was from scarlet, except 2 greenscreen comps which were from a HPX3000 if I remember correctly. Everything comped in nuke. The only time remapped clip was that nike shot

Awesome, I will keep up with your site, since basically that is the same workflow I'm doing (Scarlet -> Nuke). Only difference is I am using blender but it looks like your using a higher end $ package for animation and modeling.