Digital Compositing With Nuke 101 (PDFDrive)

a Fatbars Limited ™ Training Services
AUTHORISED TRAINING CENTRAL ASIA
Certified Nuke Training Series
Digital Compositing with Nuke 101

written by Sze Chianly / Samantha Goh
published by
Level 1
Certification
www.TheFoundryTrainingCentral-Asia.com copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

Digital Compositing with Nuke 101
Fatbars Limited
Copyright @ 2010 by Fatbars Limited
Fatbars Limited
Flat / Room 2510 , 25/F Hopewell Center
183 Queen’s Road East, Wanchai,
Hong Kong, SAR China
Tel : 852 64383480 Fax : 852 30113207
Email : training@thefoundrytrainingcentral-asia
Website : http://www.fatbars.tv
Website : http://www.thefoundrytrainingcentral-asia.com
Notice of Rights
All intellectual property rights relating thereto are and shall remain the sole property of Fatbars Limited, Hong Kong,
SAR China. Fatbars Limited assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or inaccuracies that may appear in this
Training Guide and this Training Guide is subject to change without notice. All Rights Reserved.
Nuke™ compositing software © 2008 The Foundry Visionmongers Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Nuke™ is a trademark of The Foundry Visionmongers Ltd.
Digital Domain ® is a registered trademark of Digital Domain, Inc.
Primatte™ keyer tool © 1997-2008 Photron USA, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Primatte™ is a trademark of IMAGICA Corp.
Primatte™ patent is held by IMAGICA Corp.
Maya ® is a registered trademark of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and other countries.
Houdini ® is a registered trademark of Side Effects Software, Inc.
Boujou is a trademark of 2d3 Ltd.
Framecycler ® is a registered trademark of Iridas, Inc.
Cineon™ is a trademark of Eastman Kodak Company.
Stereoscopic images courtesy of Stereostock Limited -http://store.3dstereostock.com/

R3D Red footage from Director Mr Josh Kim. All other digital media © Fatbars Limited (www.fatbars.tv)
All rights reserved by their respective owners in the Hong Kong ,SAR China and/or other countries.
ISBN 978-988-18465-1-8
Printed and bound in Hong Kong , SAR, China
The Foundry Training Central Asia copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

Course Description
The Nuke End User Certification Program is designed to be taught in a instructor-led training course at Authorised
training locations in the following regions : Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, China. Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia,
Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore. Fatbars Limited has been appointed by The Foundry to set up The Foundry
Authorised Training Central Asia for The Foundry’s products. Standardizing all training programs for The Foundry’s Nuke,
includes the production of the official training courseware, certification deployment and training support for participating
Authorised Training Centres, Authorised Educational Institutes and Certified Trainers.
The goal of the program is to offer customers, from beginners to professionals, quality training delivered in a consistent
professional manner. Upon completing the course material in this book, you can become a Certified End User by taking
the certification exam at an Authorised Training Center. Differentiate yourself to employers and prospective clients as a
Certified Nuke End User. By passing certification exams, you become a Certified Nuke End User for a chosen level.
To find an Authorised Training Center, Authorised Education Institute and Certified Trainer in your region, go to www.
thefoundrytrainingcentral-asia.com.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LESSON 1 : GETTING AROUND NUKE

• Understanding The Workflow 8
• The Nuke Window 8
• Menu Bar 9
• Tool Bar 9
• Understanding Nodes And The Node Graphs 11
• Working With Nodes 11
• Selecting Nodes 11
• Getting Around Your Node Graph 12
• Customizing The Nodes 13
• Node Notes 13
• Managing The Properties Panel 14
• Other Controls On All Properties Panels 15
• Indicators On Nodes 18
• Grouping Nodes 18
• Grouping Nodes With The Backdrop Node 18
• Grouping Nodes With The Group Node 19
• Cloning Nodes 20
• Viewer Nodes And Viewer Pane 21
• Panning And Zooming The Viewer Window 21
• Timeline Controls 21
• Keyframe Indication 23
• The Curve Editor Pane 23
• Displaying A Single Channel 25
• Displaying A Channel Set 25
• Displaying A Channel List 25
• Adjust Display Gain And Gamma 26
• Overlay Controls In the Viewer 26
• Viewer Composite Display Modes 26
• Region Of Interest (ROI) 28
• Customizing Your Layout 29
LESSON 2 : FILE BROWSER AND REFORMAT

• Defining Common Favorite Directories 30
• Path Name Field 31
• Auto Save Function 32
• Using Proxies And Down-res 32
• Locking The Range 34
• Loading Image Sequences 34
• Missing Frames 35
• Reformatting Images 35
• Reformat Using < Scale > 36
• Cropping Elements 36
• Adjusting The Bounding Box 37
• The Bounding Box And Black Outside Node 37
• Understanding Channels 38
• Creating Channels And Channel Sets 38
• Create A New Channel Set And / Or Channel : 38
• Channel Copy Node 39
• Merging Images 40
• Using Channels 42

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LESSON 3 : KEYING
• Keying Video 45
• What Is Premultiply? 46
• Sampling White And Black Points With The Grade Node 47
• Define With Grade: 47
• How Primatte Works 49
• Primatte Controls 50
• Auto-Compute 50
• Select Background Colour 51
• Dealing With Spills 53
LESSON 4 : COLOUR CORRECTION

• Colour Correction And Colour Space 60
• Making Tonal Adjustments 60
• Using Histogram 60
• Using The Grade Node 61
• Adjust Display Gain And Gamma 61
• Making Basic Corrections 61
• Using Sliders 61
• Using Colour Curves 62
• Masking Colour Corrections 63
• Making Hue, Saturation And Value Adjustments 65
• Correcting Hue 65
LESSON 5 : TRANSFORMATION
• Using The 2D Transformation Overlay 67
• Using The Transform Node 67
• The Card3D Transform Node 67
• Animating Parameters 69
• Set Keyframes 69
• To Delete A Single Keyframe : 70
• Using The Curve Editor 70
• To Remove A Curve From The Editor : 70
• To Zoom In Or Out In The Editor : 71
• To Add Points To A Curve : 71
• To Select Points On A Curve : 71
• To Interpolate Parts Of A Curve : 71
• To Repeat A Portion Of The Curve Throughout The Curve : 72
• To Reverse A Curve : 72
• Adding Motion Blur 72
• Choosing A Filtering Algorithm 72
• Bring in the Stars 75
LESSON 6 : PAINT
• Using Paint 77
• Stroke/Shape List 79
• The Clone and Reveal Tool 79
• Drawing Shapes 80
• Selecting the Output Format and Channels 80
• Setting the Project 81

TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Transforming Strokes/ Shapes/Groups (Transform tab) 82

• Editing Shape Specific Attributes (Shape tab) 83
• Editing Brush Hardness (Stroke tab) 83
• Editing Brush Type (Stroke tab) 83
• Editing Clone or Reveal Attributes (Clone tab) 83
• Animating Strokes/ Shapes 83
• Ripple Edit 84
• DustBust Node 85
LESSON 7 : TRACKING
• Tracking And Stabilising 86
• Tracking An Image 86
• Positioning Track Anchors 86
• One-Point, Two-Point, Three-Point and Four-Point 86
• Tracking And Trackers 87
• Calculating The Track 88
• Re-tracking Part Of A Track 88
• Manipulating Track Curves And Smoothing Tracks 89
• Moving Track Points With Curves: 89
• Smoothing Tracks 89
• Applying Tracking Data Using Tracker Controls 89
• Using the <Stabilize2D> Node 90
• Stabilising Elements 90
• PreProcess_Graphics Group 93
LESSON 8 : 3D COMPOSITING
• Overview 101
• Camera Views 104
• The Scene Node 104
• The ScanlineRender Node 105
• 3D Scene Geometry 105
• Transform Handles Of A 3D Object 106
• Working with Cards 106
• Deforming Card Objects 106
• Modifying Objects Using an Image 106
• Modifying Objects Using A Perlin Noise Function 107
• Adding Lights 108
• Direct Light 108
• Point Light 109
• Spot Light 109
• Environment Light 109
• Projection Cameras 110
• Projecting Textures With The Project3D Node 110
• Parallax Scene 112
• Animating the Camera 114
• Adding Elements 115
• Adding The Snow 116
• Importing Camera Data 116
• Understanding Gizmos 118
• Applying The TimeBlur Filter 119

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LESSON 9 : TEMPORAL OPERATIONS

• Distorting Time 121
• Simple Retiming 121
• Reading a Red File (R3D) 121
• Frame Blending 123
• OFlow Retiming 123
• OFlow Parameters 125
• Warping Clips 127
• Applying The TimeBlur Filter 127
• Editing Clips 128
LESSON 10 : WARPING
• Warping 130
• Warping Images Using The GridWarp Node 130
• Morphing 134
• Setting Up The Warp 135
• FrameRange And AppendClip Node 136
• Wrapping The Elements 138
• Warping An Image Using The SplineWarp Node 138
• Keyframing The Warp 140
• Keyframing The Watch Band 141
• Finishing The Comp 142
LESSON 11 : STEREOSCOPY COMPOSITING

• What is Stereoscopic imaging? 143
• Setting the Views for the Script 143
• Reading A Stereoscopic Pair 144
• Displaying Views In the Viewer 144
• To Display A Blend Between Two views : 144
• Converting Images Into Anaglyph 145
• Joining Two Separate Files Into One Stereoscopic Image Node 146
• Color Correction In S3D 147
• Selecting Which Views To Apply Changes To 147
• Rendering Stereoscopic Images 149
• To Render OpenExr Files: 149
• Rendering Files In Other Formats : 149
• Reproducing Changes Made To One View 150
LESSON 12 : RENDERING
• Previewing In A Nuke Viewer 151
• Flipbooking Within Nuke 151
• Flipbooking within FrameCycler 152
• FrameCycler 153
• Rendering Output 154
• Render Resolution and Format 154
• Output (Write) Nodes 154
• Executing Renders 155
• Supported Image Formats 155

LESSON 1 : GETTING AROUND NUKE
Understanding The Workflow
Nuke utilizes a node-based workflow, where you connect a series of nodes to read, process, and manipulate images.
Each node in the project—an image keyer, a colour correction, or a blur filter, for example—performs an operation and
contributes to the output. The process tree reads in the direction the arrows point as shown in the diagram below.
Read Image #1 Read Image #2

Process Tree
Image Keyer Blur Filter
Image #1 Over Image #2
Write Results to Disk
When you save a Nuke project, the Nuke project files are saved as plain text file. You will see a series of sequential
commands by using a text editor which are interpreted and executed when you render the output.
The Nuke Window

Nuke’s default window is divided into three panes: the Node Graph / Curve Editor Pane, the Properties / Script Editor
Pane, and the Viewer Pane.
Viewer Pane
Properties / Script
Editor Pane
Node Graph / Curve Editor Pane
The Foundry Training Central Asia Pg 8 copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

GETTING AROUND
LESSON
NUKE
1
Onto these panes, you can add the following panels :
• Toolbars for selecting nodes.
• Node Graphs (also known as DAGs) for building node trees.
• Curve Editors for editing animation curves.
• Properties Bins for adjusting the nodes’ controls.
• Viewers for previewing the output.
• Script Editors for executing Python commands.
By default, there is a Node Graph panel in the lower left corner, a Viewer panel in the top left corner, and a Properties
Bin on the right.
Menu Bar
The menu bar is located on top of the Nuke window. Its menus, such as the File or Edit menu, let you perform more
general actions related to the whole script, the viewers, or editing, rather than certain individual nodes.
File Commands for disk operations, including loading, saving, and importing scripts.
Edit Editing functions, preferences, and project settings.
Layout Restoring and saving layouts.
Viewer Adding and connecting viewers.
Render Rendering the output.
Help Accessing a list of Hotkeys, user documentation, training resources, tutorial files, and Nuke-related
e-mail lists.
Tool Bar
The tool bar is located on the left-hand side of the Nuke window. By default, it consists of thirteen icons. The different
nodes are grouped under these icons based on their functions. You use the tool bar to add nodes to the Node Graph.
To make selections from the tool bar, click on an icon and select an option from the menu that appears. To quickly
browse through the menus in the tool bar, click and drag over the icons. Nuke opens and closes the menus as you
drag over them, making it easy to search for a particular node or find out what the available menus contain.
You can press the middle mouse button on a menu icon to repeat the last item used from that menu. For example,
if you first select a <Blur> node from the Filter menu, you can then add another <Blur> node by simply pressing the
middle mouse button on the Filter icon.
IMAGE Image read and write nodes, built-in Nuke elements, and Viewer nodes.
DRAW Roto shapes, paint tools, film grain, fills, lens flares, sparkles, other vector-based
image tools.

GETTING AROUND
LESSON
NUKE
1
TIME Retiming image sequences.
CHANNEL Channel management.
COLOUR Applying colour correction effects.
FILTER Applying convolve filters, such as blur, sharpen, edge detect, and erode.
KEYER Extracting procedural mattes.
MERGE Layering background and foreground elements.
TRANSFORM Translating, scaling, tracking, and stabilizing elements.
3D 3D compositing nodes and tools.
VIEWS Nodes for working with views and stereoscopic or multi-view material.
METADATA Metadata Information of the selected material.
OTHER Additional operators for script and viewer management.
To display a tool tip that explains the icon’s function, move your mouse pointer over the icon.

GETTING AROUND NUKE
Hotkey for the node
Understanding Nodes And The Node Graphs

Let’s bring in a nuke script.
1. Open a new script. The media files is in Lesson 1 / Scripts / rockstarv2.nk. This is a finished exercise which we will
be doing in lesson 4. But first, let’s learn about nodes and graphs.
2. The Node Graph pane is where you add nodes and build your node tree. When you add a node to the panel, its
properties panel appears in the Properties Bin on the right. This is where you can adjust the node to produce the effect
you’re after. To check the result, you can view the output in a <Viewer> Node.
Working With Nodes

Nodes are the basic building blocks of any composite. To create a new compositing script, you insert and connect
nodes to form a network of the operations you want to perform to layer and manipulate your images.
Selecting Nodes
Nuke offers a number of options for selecting nodes. Selected nodes display in a highlight colour defined in your
preferences. The default highlight colour is light yellow.
• To select a single node: Click once on the node.
• To select multiple nodes: Press Shift while clicking on each node you want to select or drag on the workspace to
draw a marquee. Nuke selects all nodes inscribed by the marquee.
• To select all upstream nodes: Press Control (pc) / Command (mac) while dragging on a node . Nuke selects all
nodes that feed data to the selected node.
• Press Control + click (pc) / Command + click (mac) on the selected node’s control panel.

GETTING AROUND NUKE
• Press Control + Shift + click (pc) / Command + Shift + click (mac) to select these upstream nodes.
Viewer Pane
Node Graph / Curve Editor Pane
Properties / Script
Editor Pane
To select all nodes in a script: Select Edit > Select all (or press Control (pc) + A / Command (mac) + A).
To select nodes by name: Choose Edit > Search, or press forward slash (/), and the node’s name . A dialog appears.
Type ‘Primatte’ and Click, OK. The <Primatte> node in your node graph will be highlighted as light yellow.
Netvigation Window
Getting Around Your Node Graph
1. When you have huge scripts, you will need to zoom into the node graph. Once your node graphs is not fully viewed
in the Node Graph pane, the small navigator map on the lower right will appear. Click and drag the top left corner of
the navigator map to enlarge it.
2. Click inside the small window on the shaded area to move around your script.

GETTING AROUND NUKE
3. To view the whole script again, press ‘F’ key to fit the script into your pane. The navigator map will not show if the
whole script is viewed.
4. To view only the node graph, press the spacebar to expand the node graph view. This is a toggle function. Press
spacebar again to go back to the previous view. You can expand any of the pane in Nuke.
5. To pan with the mouse, press Alt (pc) / Option (mac) and drag the mouse pointer over the workspace. The script
moves with your pointer.
6. To zoom in: Move your mouse pointer over the area you want to zoom in on, and press the plus key (+) repeatedly
until the workspace displays the script at the desired scale. Press Alt (pc) / Option (mac) and drag right while holding
down the middle mouse button.
7. To zoom out: Move your mouse pointer over the area you want to zoom out from, and press the minus key (-)
repeatedly until the workspace displays the script at the desired scale or press Alt (pc) / Option (mac) and drag left
while holding down the middle mouse button.
Customizing The Nodes

1. Select the <Primatte> Node. Double click it to put its properties information into the properties pane.
2. In the title field on top of the properties panel, you should see the current name of the node. Delete that name and
enter a new name ‘My-Keyer’ in its place. The changed name is reflected on the node graph. To change the colour of
the node, click on the node colour assignment box will display the colour controls. Pick a new colour for your node,
and see the changes both on the line surrounding its own properties panel and in the node graph.
Select Nodes that is directly attach to your current Node
Center this Node in the center of the Node Graph Node Colour Assignment
Node Notes
1. You can leave comments and change the font name and colour of your node. This is a great way to leave
information for someone who is taking over your script.
2. In the properties panel, click the <Node> tab at the top of the dialog. Its attributes appear.
3. Type any comments regarding the node in the label field. These will appear on the surface of the node. From the
font pull down menu, select the font type for any text on the node.
4. Use the buttons on the right to bold or emphasize the text.
5. Enter the font size in the font size field.
6. Click colour to choose a new font colour. The Select colour dialog appears, allowing you to select the desired
colour.

GETTING AROUND NUKE AND PROPERTIES PANEL
7. There 4 tick box at the bottom of the node information panel. When selected:
• Hide input - hide the arrows coming into this selected node. (check the results on the node graph)
• Cached - will always keep the output result in memory, so that it can be read quickly when changing things
connected to it.
• Postage stamp - It will create a small image in the selected node indicating its output.
• Disable - ignore this node when processing. Using the Hotkey ‘D’ will have the same result. The node has a cross
over it to indicate that it has been disabled.
Managing The Properties Panel

You can limit the number of properties panels that can be open in the Properties Bin. To do so, enter the maximum
number of properties panels in the field on the Properties Bin.
Lock The Properties Bin
Maximum Number Of
Empty The Properties Bin
Properties Panels
When you lock the Properties panel , all the new control panels will float. To empty the Properties Bin and close all the
properties panels in it, click the remove all panels button.

PROPERTIES PANEL
Other Controls On All Properties Panels

Double click on the node <guitar_rotoMaskaa>. Check on the viewer to see a beizer shape on the guitar. Click on
the box on the right and change the colour to a pick. The outline is now pick in colour. This is very helpful when the
background colour is too close to the outline of your shape.
Reverts any changes made

Undoes the last change made to the node after the properties panel was opened
Changes the colour used for the node’s

controls in the viewer Floats the Properties Panel. Clicking this button
again docks the Properties Panel back in
Redoes the last change undone
the Properties Bin if the Bin exists
1. Let’s add a <HueShift> node to change the colour of the stage node. Click off and do not select any node.
2. There are 3 ways of adding a node.
3. You can select by using the tool bar. Click on the colour icon and side menu will come out and you can select
<HueShift> to insert the node into the node graph view.
4. The faster way is to right click on the node graph pane and open the contextual menu. Simply right click on any
empty gray area in the node graph to activate it.

CONNECTING NODES
Assigned Hotkey
Assigned Hotkey
5. If the node has Hotkey assigned, then simple type the Hotkey to bring in the node. If not, simply press ‘tab’ and
start typing ‘HueShift’. As you do, nodes that have Hue will start displaying inside the box. Select HueShift from the
selection and the node will be added into the node graph pane.
6. Your node at the moment not connected to any script. Simply select the node and bring it between the stage and
the <Primatte> node. When their paths are crossed, the arrow connecting will highlight. Once you released the mouse,
the <HueShift> node will be connected to the tree.

CONNECTING NODES
7. To disconnect a node: Drag the head or tail of the connecting arrow to an empty area of the workspace OR Select
the lower node in the tree and press Control + D (pc) / Command + D (mac).
8. To reconnect a node: Drag on the head or tail of the connecting arrow and drop it over the centre of the node to
which you want to connect.
9. Some nodes like <Light Wrap> and <Merge> node has labels A and B. Nuke distinguishes the dual inputs that
may run into a <Merge> node with the labels A and B. A refers to the foreground element, and B to the background
element. Nuke always copies from the A input to the B. This means that if you later decide to disable the node
associated with an A input, the data stream will keep flowing, because it will, by default, use the B input.
10. To delete nodes: Select the node or nodes you want to delete. Select Edit > Erase (or press Delete).
11. To duplicate a connecting arrow: Shift + drag the connecting arrow on top of the node you want to create a
connection to. Nuke duplicates the connecting arrow, leaving the original connection untouched.
Bend connecting arrows
12. To bend connecting arrows: Select the node before the connector you want to bend. From the tool bar, select
Other > Dot. A dot appears after the selected node, causing a bend in the connector. Drag the dot as necessary to
reposition the bend. You can also add a dot to an existing connection by pressing Control (pc) / Command (mac) and
clicking on the yellow dot that appears on the connecting arrow.

CONNECTING NODES
Indicators On Nodes
Some nodes have tiny indicators, like the small A on the top right hand side of <guitar_Maskaa> node. There are
several indicators that can appear on the nodes in the Node Graph, depending on what you are doing. The following
table describes what each indicator means.
Indicator Examples Indicator’s Description

The wide rectangles indicate the channels the node processes. The thin rect-
angles indicate the channels that are passed through the node untouched.
The node’s effect is limited by a mask from the either the node’s primary input
or output.
The node has been disabled by pressing D or clicking the Disable button.
The node has been disabled using an expression.
The node has been cloned. The indicator appears on both the parent and the
child node.
One or more of the node parameters are animated over time.
One or more of the node parameters are being driven by an expression.
You are working with a multi view project and have split off one or more views
in the node’s controls.
The full effect of the node is not in use, because you have adjusted the mix
slider in the node’s controls.
Grouping Nodes
You can group nodes in the Node Graph using the <Backdrop> node or the <Group> node. The <Backdrop> node
adds a background box behind the nodes, separating the nodes visually from the rest of the node tree. A <Group>
node, instead, combines a set of nodes into a single node, acting as a nesting container for those nodes.
Grouping Nodes With The Backdrop Node

You can use the <Backdrop> node to visually group nodes in the Node Graph. Inserting a <Backdrop> node creates a
box behind the nodes. When you move the box, all the nodes that overlap the box are moved, too. By inserting several
backdrop nodes, you can group the nodes in your node tree onto boxes of different colours and titles. This makes it
easier to find a particular node in a large node tree, for example.

CONNECTING NODES
To group nodes with a <Backdrop> node:
1. Select Other > Backdrop. A <Backdrop> node box appears in the Node Graph.
2. Drag the triangle in the lower right corner of the box to resize the box as necessary.
3. Click on the box title bar and drag it to move the box behind the nodes together. If there are any nodes on the box,
they move together with the box.
Box title
Triangle to resize
4. Put the backdrop behind the above nodes and now you can move them together.
Grouping Nodes With The Group Node

You can use the <Group> node to nest multiple nodes inside a single node.
To group nodes with a <Group> node:
1. Select all the nodes you want to nest inside the <Group> node.
2. Select Other > Group (or press Control + G (pc) / Command + G (mac) on the Node Graph.
3. All the selected nodes are collapsed into a group. The original nodes are still in the layout and can be deleted if you
like. The internal structure of the <Group> node is shown on a separate tab that opens.

CONNECTING NODES AND VIEWER
To view the nodes nested inside a <Group> node:

In the <Group> node’s controls, click the S button (short for Show) in the top right corner.
S button show the nodes in the group
Cloning Nodes
You can clone nodes in preparation for pasting them elsewhere in a script. Cloned nodes Inherit the values of their
parent, but unlike copied nodes, they also maintain an active link with their parents’ values. If you alter the values of
one, the other automatically inherits these changes.
Clones are helpful for maintaining consistent setups across multiple elements. For example, you might use clones
to apply an identical film grain setup to a series of elements shot on the same stock. Should you need later to make
changes to the setup, these changes would automatically ripple throughout the script.
To clone nodes:
1. Select the node or nodes you want to clone.
2. Choose Edit > Clone or (Alt + K (pc) / Option + K (mac).
Nuke clones the node(s), whilst maintaining an active link to the parental node(s). The clone status is indicated with an
orange line that connects the clone to its parent node. The nodes also share the same name.
To declone nodes:
1. Select the node or nodes you want to de clone.
2. Choose Edit > Declone (or Alt + Shift + K (pc) / Option + Shift + K (mac)).
Nuke removes the clone status of the selected nodes.

VIEWER
Viewer Nodes And Viewer Pane

Viewer nodes, unlike process nodes, don’t alter data in any way; rather, they act as windows on it. Each viewer node
displays the render output of any connected process nodes in the viewer panel. These nodes do not produce output
for rendering; they generate display data only.
At the end of script, you will see the viewer node. Each viewer has Hotkeys to select up to 10 inputs.
1. Let’s bring in another image. Type ‘R’ Hotkey or right click to choose from the contextual menu > image > read. Go
to Lesson One / Media / seaside_still.tif and bring in the image.
2. Currently, we cannot see this image in the <Viewer> node. Let’s assign it to this <Viewer> node by typing ‘2’. You
can see that a number 2 appears on the arrow, joining to the same <Viewer> node. This means that seaside_still.tif is
assign to video input 2. Now you can toggle between 1 and 2 input.
3. Your mouse must be in the viewer pane before you can swap the viewer’s input.
Panning And Zooming The Viewer Window

To pan the frame: hold the Alt key and drag on the display. The frame follows the mouse pointer.
To recentre the frame: Press F.
Timeline Controls
Drag the orange marker along the timeline to quickly cue to a specific frame. The number of the current frame appears
in the Current field above the timeline. You can also cue to a frame by typing its number directly into this field. By
default, Nuke automatically adjusts the timeline of every Viewer window to show the frame range defined in your
Project Settings. If no frame range is defined, the frame range of the first image you read in is used as the global frame
range.

VIEWER
Play backward Stop Play forward
First frame Last frame
Back 1 frame Next frame

Previous keyframe Forward 1 frame
To have the viewer adjust the timeline to show the ‘in’ and ‘out’ frames of the current input clip, select Input from the
frame range source menu. To adjust the playback range for the current viewer window, Control + drag (pc) / Command
+ drag (mac) the red playback range marker on the timeline to a new ‘in’ and ‘out’ frames.
2D / 3D
Proxy Zoom Menu Cameras
Channel Set / Channel Display Wipe / Display Composite Controls
Downscale Menu Re calculate the image
Region of Interest
Timeline Controls
In Range Frame Increment Time Marker Out Range
The fps field (frames-per-second) initially displays the project’s playback speed. Nuke will attempt to maintain this
speed throughout playback, although this adjusts depending on the resolution of the imagery and your hardware
configuration. The Frame Increment field let you specify the number of frames by which the Previous increment / Next
increment buttons cue the sequence.

VIEWER
Keyframe Indication
Select the node <guitar-Maskaa>, on the timeline controls you can see cyan lines underneath some frames. They are
the keyframes animated in the properties of all the nodes with their control panels open.
Keyframed
The Curve Editor Pane
As you add keyframes to a parameter, Nuke automatically plots a curve on its Curve Editor panel, where each value
(the y axis) is plotted as it changes over time (the x axis). You can add keyframes, delete keyframes, and even adjust
the interpolation between keyframes without ever looking at this curve. However, as the animation grows more
complex, you may find it easier to edit the animation by manipulating this curve directly.
The Curve Editor is behind the Node Graph Pane. Select <guitar-Maskaa> and see the keyframes created for this
node. The vertical, or y axis, denotes the value of the parameter. The horizontal, or x axis, denotes time (in frame
units). Click on the area you want to zoom in on or out of. Press the + button to zoom in, or the - button to zoom out
or scroll up with the mouse wheel to zoom in, or down to zoom out. You can see both the Node Graph pane and
the Curve Editor pane at the same time by splitting the pane. You can split pane when you see this icon on the top left
corner. Click on the icon and choose to split vertical or split horizontal.

VIEWER
Splitting The Pane
1. Let’s choose <Split Horizontal>. The Node graph pane is now divided into 2.
2. Click and drag the <Curve Editor> pane to the empty pane. Now you can view both Node Graph and Curve Editor
at the same time as shown below.
3. To close the pane, simply click on the X icon on the top right. Drag the divider to the right or left to open the Node
graph pane.
Divider
4. You can split pane in all panels to create your customized workspace.

DISPLAYING CHANNELS
Displaying A Single Channel

You can press the R, G, B, and A keys on your keyboard to display the red, green, blue, and alpha channels
respectively. Or, you can also select a channel from the RGB pull down menu in the top left corner.
Press one of the channel keys again to toggle back and display all channels. The channel set list let you choose a
set of colour channels to display in the viewer. By default, this is set to display the rgba set, but you can choose any
channel set in the data stream.
<r> to display the red Channel. <g> to display green channel and <b> to display the blue channel. <a> to show the
alpha channel. To see the full colour again, example if you type <r> to see the Red channel, to see full colour again,
type <r>. This is a toggle control.
Displaying A Channel Set

The channel set list is a group of image channels treated as a single layer. By default, this is set to display the rgba set,
but you can choose any channel set in the data stream.
Displaying A Channel List

The Channel list controls which channel appears when you view the <alpha> channel. The default setting does display
the alpha channel when you press the A key; however, you can change this by selecting any channel in the data
stream.

DISPLAY MODES
Adjust Display Gain And Gamma

The gain and gamma sliders let you adjust the displayed image, without affecting your final output. These controls
are useful for tasks like spotting holes in mattes. You can boost or reduce gain by entering a multiplier (exposure
value), dragging on the slider, or using the F- Stop arrows. Boost or reduce gamma by entering a gamma multiplier or
dragging the gamma slider.
The gain and gamma toggle buttons let you switch between the default values of 1 (normal) and the last gain and
gamma adjustments you made in the viewer.
Gain Slider Gamma Slider
Gain Toggle Gamma Toggle
The Zebra Stripe button, when pressed, applies stripes to all out of gamut pixels.
Zebra Stripe Button
Overlay Controls In the Viewer

To hide all the overlay controls in the viewer, with your mouse in the Viewer Pane, type ‘O’ to toggle between Overlay
on and Overlay off.
Viewer Composite Display Modes

The wipe control provides an option for displaying a split-screen of two images, which can help you compare before
and after versions for colour correction, filtering, and other image manipulation. This control also includes display
compositing options to overlay different images.

DISPLAY MODES
Input 2 Input 1
1. Select the Read Node <rocker_girl> and set it in video input 1. Select the node <Light Wrap> and set the result to
video input 2. So when you switch between 1 and 2, you should see the girl before and after she is processed.
2. From the viewer composite list in the middle, select under. The two images are displayed split-screen in the Viewer.
There are 5 viewer composite display mode. <-> is none, <over> , <under>, <minus> and <wipe>.
3. Drag the handles of the cross hair to adjust the wipe:
• Drag the cross hair centre to change its position.
• Drag the long handle (on the right) to rotate the wipe.
• Drag the arc handle to cross-dissolve the second image.
When you are finished with the split-screen, select none (-) from the viewer composite list.

INTERFACE LAYOUT
Arc Handle
Rotation Handle
Position Handle
Region Of Interest (ROI)

The ROI button let you enable rendering only through a region of interest—a portion of the image you explicitly select.
This is useful for quickly viewing render results in a process heavy script. After you’ve set a region of interest, you can
clear it by pressing Shift+W over the viewer. Then, drag a new marquee to define a new region of interest. Click the
ROI button again to turn off the feature and update the whole viewer with the recent changes.
Region Of
Interest
Region Of
Interest

LESSON 1
Customizing Your Layout

Nuke gives you several options for customizing the window layout. There are 6 window layouts already setup. They
can be found on the menu under <Layout>.
1. Choose Layout > Restore Layout x to apply a previously saved layout. You can also save your layouts. From the
menu bar, choose Layout > Save Layout to save the current layout.
2. To select a predefined colour scheme, click the right mouse button and choose Edit > Preferences. Then click the
Choose a Preset button and select a colour scheme.
3. Define other appearance options, such as window colours and fonts, by changing the settings under Edit >
Preferences > the Node Graph tab.

LESSON 2 : FILE BROWSER AND REFORMAT
Defining Common Favorite Directories

Favorite directories can be accessed by artists with a single click from any Nuke file browser. Typically you would
create these favorites for common directories on a project.
Let’s set the directories up for our lessons. Whenever you load or save files in Nuke, you’ll see a browser similar to the
one shown below. The directory navigation buttons let you create or access the directory from which you wish to read
or write data. The navigation controls let you move through the directory structure, bookmark favorite directories, and
create new directory folders.
Go Up The Directory
Backward
New Folder Forward
Add Directory
Delete Directory
To use the navigation controls:

• Click the Add Directory button to create a new directory at your current position in the file hierarchy.
• Click Up one directory to ascend one directory level closer to the root.
• Click Home to access the directory defined as your local working directory.
• Click Root to ascend to the very top of your local drive or server’s file hierarchy.
• Click Work to access the directory you (or your system administrator) defined as your network working directory.
• Click the + button to add a directory bookmark.
• Click the edit button to edit the name or path name to a bookmark.
• Click the - button to remove a directory bookmark.
To limit the file list to specific file types, use the filter pull down menu and Sequences check box.

FILE BROWSER
• Select *.nk to display only Nuke script files.
• Select * to display all files (except hidden files), regardless of whether they’re associated with Nuke.
• Select .* * to display all files, including hidden files.
• Select */ to display directory names, but not their contents.
• Check Sequences to display image sequences as single titles, as in fgelement.%04d.cin 1- 50 rather than
fgelement.0001.cin, fgelement.0002.cin, fgelement. 0003.cin, and so on.
When you click on the + icon, a pop up window will appear. Click on all the categories if you want this path to be
seen in all the different browser. Click ok and now it will appear on the side menu.
Path Name Field

The path name field displays the current directory path, let you navigate to a new path, and also enter a filename for
scripts and rendered images.
Click here to preview files

FILE BROWSER
To preview files in the file browser:
Click the black arrow in the top right corner of the file browser. The file browser expands to include a small viewer.
Let’s bring in mini_combine.exr in Lesson 2 / Media / mini_cooper. Select the file and click <Open> to bring it into
Nuke. To view it in the viewer, make sure that the image is attached to the <Viewer> node.
The image information will show on the right side in the Properties menu. This shows the information regarding this file.
Image File’s Path
Image size
This is also where you can set proxy settings for this image. You can also set proxy settings for the whole project under
Edit > Project Settings or Hotkey ‘S’ in either the Node Graph Pane or Properties Pane.
Auto Save Function

To make sure that your autosave files are saved in a specific folder, you have to set it up in the Preference Window /
Preference tab. Go to preference window using Hotkey ‘shift + S’. Under the autosave filename, set your path there.
Using Proxies And Down-res

Proxies are low-resolution versions of the final image you intend to create. For many compositing tasks, the low-res
version can help you work faster. Then, when you’re ready to create the final output, switch proxy mode off and return
to the full-res version.
Under Edit > Project Settings or Hotkey ‘S’ in either the Node Graph Pane or Properties Pane to see Project Settings.
Nuke can generate proxies on-the-fly, according to the scale or format of your images. Currently, the proxy is set
to 0.5. Click on the proxy button on the viewer to see the image in proxy mode. When <down-res> is the chosen
method, you use the <down-res> button to lower the current resolution of the viewer. If the current resolution of the
viewer is in proxy mode, then <down-res> will add its <down-res> factor on top of the proxy mode.

SETTING PROXY AND PROJECT SETTINGS
Proxy Mode Active
Change the proxy scale to 0.2 and now your image’s resolution is now only 20% of the original. When <proxy format>
is the chosen method, you use the <proxy> button to toggle the resolution defined under Project Settings panel. In this
method, you choose what format to proxy your script to e.g. HD to Pal format.
Proxy from one format to another
To activate <down-res>:
Choose 4 from the <down-res> list to change the display resolution to 25% of full resolution. Now the viewer shows
the result of adding this <down-res> factor on top of the current proxy mode.

SETTING PROXY AND PROJECT SETTINGS
Down-res List
Locking The Range

Inside Project Settings panel, you can set the amount of frames for the entire project by defining the frame range. This
frame range changes when you have different length of media. If you do not want the range to change, then you must
tick ‘lock range’. Then the frame range will not adjust itself.
Setting the amount of

frames in the current script
The frame range of the first sequence you read in is used as the global frame range if the ‘lock range’ function is not
ticked. If you add a <Checkerboard> node, the length will also be set to the ‘lock range’.
Changing Colorspace
Loading Image Sequences

When you are ready to start compositing, you may want to begin by importing a background or foreground image
sequence. Typically, you would read in both full and proxy-resolution versions of the sequence. You can read in several
image sequences in one go.

READ NODE
Nuke reads images from their native format, but the <Read> node outputs the result using a linear colourspace.
If necessary, you can change the Colourspace option in the <Read> node’s properties panel, or insert a Color >
Colorspace node to select the colour scheme you want to output or calculate.
Missing Frames
When working in a compositing environment, many elements come from different sources e.g. 3D animation in the
process of rendering while you started your compositing script. When you read the file sequences in, you can select
the following :
• error - flag an error message if there is an error in your file sequences.
• black - show a black frame if there is an error in your file sequences.
• checkerboard - show a checkerboard if there is an error in your file sequences nearest frame - replace the error
frame with the nearest non error frame.
In many situations, we need to reformat images through scaling, cropping, and pixel aspect adjustments. By setting
the bounding box using Crop, we can minimize processing and rendering times.
Reformatting Images
This section we learn how to use scaling operations with specific regard to reformatting elements to match specific
resolutions and pixel aspect ratios. Nuke includes at least two nodes designed for reformatting elements: <Reformat>
and <Crop>. When you read in elements, Nuke stores their format settings and makes them available to the
<Reformat> node. You can then apply one of the existing formats to your images, or create, edit, and delete formats
yourself.
Setting The Project

1. Open a new script. The media files is in Lesson 2 / Media.
2. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in under Mini_Cooper / mini.full.tga and connect
it to the <Viewer> node.
3. Click Transform > Reformat to insert a <Reformat> node before the <Viewer> node.
4. There are 3 types to choose : <to format>,<to box> and <scale>.
5. Select the format you wish to edit from the output format pull down list or from the same list, select edit. The Edit
format dialog appears. Edit the name, file size, image area, and pixel aspect fields as necessary.
6. Click OK to save the changes to the format.

REFORMAT
Reformat Using < Scale >

1. In the scale fields, enter scale factors for the width and the height. Click the 2 button to scale both directions
together using the same scale factor.
2. Use the resize type pull down menu to choose the method by which you preserve or override the original pixel
aspect ratio. From the < resize type > pull down list, you can choose:
• Width - to scale the original so that it fills the output width.
• Height - to scale the original so that it fills the output height.
• Fit - to scale the original so that its smallest side fills the output width or height.
• Fill - to scale the original so that its longest side fills the output width or height.
• Distort - to scale the original so that both sides fill the output dimensions.
3. Choose the appropriate filtering algorithm from the filter pull down list. When scaling an image with Key, Simon, and
Rifmen filters, you may see a (ringing) haloing effect on the mattes, which is caused by pixel sharpening these filters
employ. If necessary, check clamp to correct this problem.
Cropping Elements
1. Delete the <Reformat> node and replace in its location with Transform > Crop.
2. Define the crop boundaries: In the viewer, drag on any side of the frame to reposition it. In the Crop properties
panel, increment or decrement the box field (x stands for left side; y, for bottom side; r, for right side; and t, for top

REFORMAT
side).
3. To fill the cropped portion with black, check black outside. To fill the cropped portion by expanding the edges of the
image, uncheck black outside. To adjust the image output format to match the cropped image, check reformat.
4. Increment the softness field if you wish to vignette the edges of the cropped portion.
Adjusting The Bounding Box

The bounding box defines the area of the frame that Nuke sees as having valid image data. The larger the bounding
box is, the longer it takes Nuke to process and render the images. To minimize processing and rendering time, you
can crop the bounding box. To adjust the bounding box, you can use the <AdjBBox> node. The <AdjBBox> node
Let’s you both crop and expand the bounding box edges. If needed, you can also add a black outside edge to the
bounding box using the <BlackOutside> node.
The Bounding Box And Black Outside Node

The <AdjBBox> node let you expand or crop the edges of the bounding box by a specified number of pixels.
For example, if you have an image with lots of black (0,0,0,0), you can adjust the bounding box to contain just the
useful area so that Nuke won’t waste time computing results where there is no change.
1. Delete the <Crop> node and replace in its location with Transform > AdjustBBox.
2. In the <AdjBBox> node controls, adjust the Add Pixels slider to increase or decrease the size of the bounding box.
By default, 25 pixels are added to the edges of the bounding box. Nuke expands or crops the edges of the bounding

REFORMAT AND MULTI CHANNELS IMAGES
box. If the bounding box is cropped, whatever is outside the bounding box area gets replicated towards the edges of
the image.
3. If necessary, you can remove these replicated edge pixels and fill everything outside the bounding box area with
black. To do this, use the <BlackOutside> node.
4. Click Transform > BlackOutside to insert the node after the <AdjBBox> node. Nuke fills everything outside the
bounding box area with black.
Understanding Channels
Digital images generally consist of the four standard channels: red, green, blue, and alpha. Nuke allows you to create
or import additional channels as masks, lighting passes, and other types of image data. A Nuke script can include up
to 1023 uniquely named channels per compositing script.
For example, you can combine multiple render passes from a 3D scene—an image from the red, green, and blue
channels, a depth mask (z-depth channel), a shadow pass, a specular pass, lighting passes, and multiple mattes all
stored within one image sequence in your composite.
Think of a channel as a container that contains image data. Once created or read into your composite, the image
data stored in a channel is available downstream in the network until the value is replaced with something else or the
channel is removed. All channels in a script must exist as part of channel set (also called a layer). You’re probably
familiar with the default channel set—RGBA—which includes the channels with pixel values of red, green, and blue,
and also the alpha channel for transparency. The channel set list is a group of image channels treated as a single layer.
All channels in a composite must belong to at least one channel set.
Creating Channels And Channel Sets

This section we learn how to create a single multi channel image by using a series of images. It’s important to
understand that many types of nodes allow you to direct their output to a specific channel and parent channel set. You
have the option of processing these channels in each subsequent node, or leaving them unchanged.
Setting The Project

1. Open a new script. The media files is in Lesson 2 / Media
2. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read and bring in all the TGA files inside the folder : Mini_
Cooper. There should be 5 files : mini.diffuse.tga , mini.full.tga , mini.reflection.tga , mini.shadow.tga and mini.specular.
tga. These are all different rendered passes of the same 3D scene.
3. Attach <mini.full.tga> to the <Viewer> node. Set each image to different viewer buffers to see the other images.
4. Select <mini.full.tga>. Now we are ready to create the new channels / channel sets.
Create A New Channel Set And / Or Channel :

1. Open the properties panel for the <mini.full.tga> node. Make sure your viewer shows <mini.full.tga> image.

MULTI CHANNELS IMAGES
2. Go to the viewer, from the channels pull down list, select new.
Channels Pull Down List
3. The above dialog box will appear. Under Name, enter the name of the channel set. Click on the <rgba> button for
the channels to be filled automatically. Let’s go ahead and create 4 new channels.
<mini.diffuse><mini.reflection><mini.specular><mini.shadow>
4. When you check your newly created channels, they are all empty. This is because there are no information in those
layers yet. We need to copy the right information into the right channels.
5. We can do so by using the Channel > Copy node.
Channel Copy Node

The Channel > Copy node features a simplified set of options. Channel > Copy has just two controls: one for
specifying the channel to copy, and one for specifying the destination channel for output.
1. Click Channel > Copy to insert a <Copy> node before the <Viewer> node of <Mini.full.tga> image or type Hotkey
‘K’.
2. Detach the rest of the images from the viewer.
3. First, we are going to add the shadow pass image <mini.shadow.tga> into <mini.full.tga>’s channel layer. Select the
<Copy> node in the Properties panel.

MERGING IMAGES
<mini.shadow.tga>’s current RGBA channels
<mini.full.tga>’s current
RGBA channels
Copy
4. Attached <copy> A to <mini.shadow.tga> and B to <mini.full.tga>.

5. The right set of box refers to <mini.shadow.tga>’s current channel (RGBA) and the left side refers to the <mini.full.
tga>’s new channels that we just created. Now go back to viewer, and you should be able to display <mini.shadow>
image into the new channel.
6. Continue to do the same for the rest of the images on the same tree as show in the diagram. Type Hotkey ‘W’ or
contextual menu under Image > Write and render the single image out in OpenEXR format.
7. Click on the file button to set where to save this file. Upon selecting location, type < yourfilename.%04d.exr >. To
output all channels, change the <Write> node’s Output list from RGB to All Channels, select the OpenEXR file format,
and then execute the render. Type <1> for one frame render and <1,100 > to render an image sequences.
8. Currently the OpenEXR format (.exr) is the only file format that supports unlimited channels. Now you have a new
image with multiple channels.
Merging Images
With Nuke, you can merge images in a wide variety of ways. The <Merge> node is used for layering multiple images
together. The <Merge> node with its compositing algorithms allows you to control just how your images are combined.
When layering images with the <Merge> node, you need to select a compositing algorithm that determines how the
pixel values from one input are calculated with the pixel values from the other to create the new pixel values that are
output as the merged image.
The operation menu in the <Merge> node’s control panel houses a large number of different compositing algorithms,
giving you great flexibility when building your composite. Here are some of the more common operations available.
Operation Algorithm Description Illustration Example Uses

atop Ab+B(1-a) Shows the shape of image B, with
A covering B where the images
overlap.
conjoint-over A+B(1-a/b), Similar to the over operation, except Two polygons where a and
A if a>b that if a pixel is partially covered b share some edges but a
by both a and b, conjoint-over completely overlaps b. Normal
assumes a completely hides b. over will produce a slightly
transparent seam here.
copy A Only shows image A. This is useful if you also set the
mix or mask controls so that
some of B can still be seen.

MERGING IMAGES
difference abs(A-B) How much the pixels differ. Also Useful for comparing two very
available from Merge > Merges > similar images.
Absminus. Useful for comparing.
disjoint-over A+B(1-a)/b, Similar to the over operation, except Two polygons that touch and
A+B if a+b<1 that if a pixel is partially covered by share an edge. Normal over will
both a and b, disjoint-over assumes produce a slightly transparent
the two objects do not overlap. seam here.
divide A/B,0 if A<0 Divides the values but stops two This does not match any
and B<0 negative values from becoming a photographic operation, but can
positive number. be used to undo a multiply.
exclusion A+B-2AB A more photographic form of Used in a more motion graphics

difference. type environment.
in Ab Only shows the areas of image A Useful for combining mattes.

that overlap with the alpha of B.
Also available from Merge > Merges
> In.
matte Aa+B(1-a) Premultiplied over. Use

unpremultiplied images with this
operation. Also available from
Merge > Merges > Matte.
multiply AB,0 if A<0 Multiplies the values but stops two Used to composite darker
and B<0 negative values from becoming a values from A with the image
positive number. Also available from of B - dark grey smoke shot
Merge > Merges > Multiply. against a white background, for
example.
out A(1-b) Only shows the areas of image A Useful for combining mattes.
that do not overlap with the alpha
of B. Also available from Merge >
Merges > Out.
over A+B(1-a) This is the default operation. Layers This is the most commonly used
image A over B according to the operation. Used when layering
alpha of image A. a foreground element over a
background plate.
overlay multiply Image A brightens image B. Useful for compositing with no

if B<0.5, matte for sparks, fireworks,
screen if explosion.
B>0.5

USING MULTI CHANNELS
plus A+B The sum of image A and B. Also Useful for compositing white
available from Merge > Merges > smoke or fire shot against a
Plus. * the plus algorithm may result dark background.
in pixel values higher than 1.0. If you
want to clip values to a maximum
of 1.0, use the screen operation
instead.
screen A+B-AB Like plus, but clips pixel values to a
maximum of 1.0. Also available from
Merge > Merges > Screen.
under A(1-b)+B This is the reverse of the over

operation. Layers image B over A
according to the matte of image B.
Using Channels
Now that you have created a multi channel open exr image, let’s bring it in and use it in a color correction situation. By
using the different channel information, you will be able to color correct parts of the image accurately.
Setting The Project

1. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Mini_Cooper / mini.combine.exr and connect
it to the <Viewer> node.
2. In the viewer, you should be able to see the different channels and the image you just created.
Node’s Name
Select Image
Channel
3. To extract the desired channel out, insert Channel > Shuffle node, in between the image and the viewer. The first
one will be the mini.diffuse channel.

USING MULTI CHANNELS
4. Rename the <Shuffle> node’s name to Shuffle_diffuse and under the left ‘in 1’, select <mini_diffuse>. Do another
<Shuffle> node, this time select <mini_specular>.
5. To merge <Shuffle_specular> and <Shuffle_diffuse> together, type ‘M’ to bring in the <Merge> node. In the
<Merge> node, under ‘operation’, change from the default <over> to <plus>.
In the <Merge> node,

under <operation>,
change from the default
<over> to <plus>.
6. Add a Color Correction > Grade, or Hotkey ‘G’ to insert between <Shuffle_specular> and <Merge>. Try changing
the gamma factor in the <Grade> Node. Only that one channel set is affected.
7. Now for the shadows. Add another <Shuffle> node, this time select <mini.shadow>.

LESSON 2
8. Keeping in mind we will need to reorder the A and B, the shadow layer is at the bottom and the specular layer is on
top. Add another <Merge> node. This time, under ‘operation’, change from the default <over> to <multiply>.
9. Add another <Grade> node under <Shuffle_shadow>, and now you can control the shadow information. Now we
need to add a background for our 3D image. Let’s check if there is any alpha by using the Hotkey ‘A’ in the viewer.
10. The alpha is missing. We can shuffle out the alpha from the original and use it to make a holdout matte. Add
another <Shuffle> node, select the alpha channel . Rename it <Shuffle_alpha>.
11. <Merge1 (plus)>’s node has a triangle on both side. From the right side triangle, an arrow indicated that it is the
mask channel and point it to <Shuffle_alpha>. Now the alpha channel is assigned. Type ‘A’ for alpha in the viewer to
check for the results.
12. Type ‘R’ to read in the background, Mini_background /mini_background_combine.exr. Add another <Merge> node
to complete the composition.

LESSON 3LESSON
: KEYING
3
Keying is one of those fundamental compositing skills. You can’t composite anything until you have mattes pulled for
the elements you want to layer together. One keying operation seldom produces an acceptable matte. Image quality,
lighting conditions, subject motion, colours—even camera moves—affect the steps required to get a clean matte
for your composite. Keying is a technique for creating a matte by processing the pixel values in the image channels,
revealing another image behind it.
So how do you get a clean matte in Nuke? The best approach is to understand the strengths of each keying tool
and combine them as needed. This tutorial shows how to pull keys in Nuke and how to layer the results with channel
operations, merge nodes, and rotoshapes.
Keying Video
Nuke’s Keyer node provides standard controls for pulling luma keys, green and blue screens, and colour channels. The
Keyer node is a basic keyer with less features than Primatte. But sometime that is all we need. Let’s use this Keyer
node.
Setting The Project

2. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Windy_hair / windy_hair.exr and connect it to
the <Viewer> node. Check out the red, blue and green channels of image by cycling through R, G, B key. To get the
full RGB again, if you are viewing Red Channel, type R again.
3. The blue channel is not that bad. We are going to use the <Keyer> node to pull the matte from there. Now the
Keyer is a basic keyer under the Keyer > Keyer . Under the Keyer’s properties menu, select <bluescreen>.
Second handle, high value
First handle, low value
4. In the control panel for the <Keyer> node, you’ll see the range graph. The range graph is where you’ll adjust the low
and high pixel values of the matte. The first yellow handle on the left determines the low or transparent values of the
key and second handle, on the upper-right, determines your high or opaque values.
5. Drag the second yellow handle to the right until it reads .90 (approximately), and watch the effect in the viewer in
the alpha channel. Type A to see the Alpha channel and A again to see full color. Play with it until you are happy with
your result. My setting gets the matte inside out. That is ok since a simple invert will do the trick.
6. Add the <Invert> node by clicking Color > Invert and add the node between the <Viewer> and the <Keyer> node.
Make sure in channels <alpha> is selected.

LESSON
KEYER
3
7. Under Filter > Erode (Blur) , use <Erode> to control the edges. My settings (erode_settings) is just a small amount.
In the properties menu of this node, size is set to 1 and blur is set to 0.53.
8. Add a <Premult> node by clicking Merge > Premult.
What Is Premultiply?
Basically, colour can be stored in two different ways in an image with an alpha channel, straight or pre-multiplied.
Straight is easy. Basically, the RGB is left as it is, and the transparency is stored in the alpha channel. Pre-multiplied
means that the RGB is actually (mathematically) multiplied by the value of the alpha channel. Without the Premult node,
the blue background (like a transparent overlay) will be added to the final comp. To take that out, use the Premult
node. Let’s continue with the lesson.
9. Insert a <HueCorrect> node to get rid of the blue spill between the hair. For the compositor, HueCorrect is
obviously of greatest use in diminishing green, blue, or red- screen spill. Nuke’s <HueCorrect> node let you make
precision adjustments to the levels of saturation in a range of hues. You do so via edits to a series of suppression
curves. By choosing which curve you edit and how much of that curve you alter, you can precisely limit the influence of
the effect.
10. Select the blue channel in the properties panel of <HueCorrect> node. Sample the blue by pressing down the
Control (pc) / Command (mac) key while your pointer is over the blue area of the image. The area will be indicated
on the properties panel. Select the point closer to the blue area selected and move the point downwards. Watch the
viewer for the change of color.
11. Now we deal with the background. Type Hotkey ‘R’or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Windy_hair
/seaside_still.tif. This will be the background for the girl.
12. A <Blur> node is added to have some control of the background. The <Blur> node is in Filter > Blur or HotKey ‘B’.
Set the blur size to 1.7. Under <Channels>, set it to <all>.
13. We can merge the keyed image to the background now. Type HotKey ‘M’ or under Merge > Merge. Take a look at

LESSON
KEYER
3
your comp. It does not look right. Part of being a compositing artist is to train up your critical eye so you can analyse
your trouble spot and find solution to your compositing problem. This is also the baby step toward becoming a T.D. or
T.S. (Technical Director or Technical Supervisor).
14. The foreground plate is not matching with the background plate in the area of black and white region. This is the
region of color that is also known as blackpoint and whitepoint of the image. When both plates do not match, the
composited shot will not look right. So we need to correct this by adding the <Grade> node, matching the foreground
image’s black point and white point to the background image’s black point and white point.
Sampling White And Black Points With The Grade Node

The <Grade> node let you define white and black points by sampling pixels from a viewer frame. So let’s find those
points on the Windy hair girl clip.
Define With Grade:

1. In the <Grade> node properties panel, use the channels pull down list to select the channels you wish to process.
2. Click the blackpoint parameter’s colour swatch. The eye dropper icon appears.
3. In the viewer, press Control + Shift (pc) / Command + Shift (mac) while clicking on the pixel you want to define as
the blackpoint (typically the darkest pixel). Do the same for the whitepoint (typically the lightest pixel).

LESSON
KEYER
3
Picker Box
4. Insert a <Grade> node between <HueCorrect> node and <Merge> node. Inside <Grade> node, you should find
blackpoint and whitepoint. Go to the picker box of black and select it. We are going to make the foreground plate
match the background. Find the black area around the rocks. These are shadows that is usually the darkest point
in the picture. Control (pc) / Command (mac) click to select it. Check out the settings on the grade. It is now set to
0,0,0. As suspected it is the blackest point.
5. Now we look for the White point , This time I am look at the foreground plate. The white of her eyes looks like a
good spot to use as the white point. Control (pc) / Command (mac) click on it. The whole image gets brighten up.
Basically we have just reassign the white point and black point of the foreground plate.
You can fine-tune the corrections by adjusting the lift and gain slider. Lift controls the shadow and black areas while the
gain controls the highlight and bright areas.
6. You can use the <Light Wrap> node to create background reflections on foreground elements. The node simulates
scattering of light around the edges of your foreground element. So let’s finish the comp with a <Light Wrap> node.
7. Click Other > All Plugins > Updates first. The list of plugins will rebuild and you should find <Light Warp> there.
Connect LightWrap’s A to the Merge node and B to blurred background node.
8. In the properties panel of <Light Wrap>, set Diffuse as 48.5 and Intensity 0.5.
9. Select the <Viewer> node, right click to go to Render > Flipbook Selected or HotKey Alt + F (pc) / Option + F
(mac). A dialog box will pop out and ask for the frame range.

KEYER AND LESSON
PRIMATTE
3
10. Flipbooking a sequence refers to rendering out range of images (typically at proxy resolution), then playing them
back in order to accurately assess the motion characteristics of added effects.
How Primatte Works

The Primatte chromakey algorithm is a sophisticated method of colour space segmentation that can be easily
explained to help a user achieve maximum effectiveness with the tool. Primatte node comes in 3 types : Primatte,
Primatte RT and Primatte RT+. Basically Primatte segments all the colours in the foreground image into one of four
separate categories. The result is a ‘spill suppressed’ foreground image and a matte which is used to apply the
modified foreground to a suitable background. Primatte RT and Primatte RT+ algorithms will produce a less accurate
key. Primatte works in 3D RGB colour space. Here is a visual representation of the Primatte algorithm after an image
has been processed.
Primatte will work equally well with any colour backing screen. It does not have to be a specific shade of green or blue.
Setting the Project

2. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Rock_Star / Rocker_girl/rocker_girl.exr and
connect it to the <Viewer> node. Check out the red, blue and green channels of image by cycling through R, G, B. To
get the full RGB again, if you are viewing Red Channel, type R again.
3. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Rock_Star / Stage/stage.exr and connect it to
the <Viewer> node. This will be her background.
4. This time we will be using the <Primatte> node to key her out. Click Keyer > Primatte and insert the node between
the <Viewer> and the <Image> node. Attach <Rock Star> to A and Stage to B of the <Primatte> node.
LESSON
PRIMATTE
3
Primatte Controls
The Primatte algorithm mode delivers the best results and supports both the Solid Colour and the Complement Colour
spill suppression methods. It is the algorithm that uses three multi-faceted polyhedrons to separate the 3D RGB
colorspace. It is also the default algorithm mode and, because it is computationally intensive, it may take the longest to
render. First we look at some of the initalise section of Primatte.
Auto-Compute
The Auto-Compute button can be used as the first step in the Primatte operation. The purpose is to try and do the
first three steps of the Primatte Operation for you. It will try to automatically detect the backing screen colour, remove
it and do some clean-up on the foreground and background noise. If the clip was shot with an evenly lit, well saturated
backing screen, the Auto-Compute button will leave you with an image that may only need some spill removal to
complete your keying operation.

LESSON
PRIMATTE
3
auto FG Factor
The auto FG Factor slider can be used to modify how the Auto-Compute algorithm deals with foreground noise.
Change the position of this slider and you can see the results of the Auto-Compute operation change.
auto BG Factor
The auto BG Factor slider can be used to modify how the Auto-Compute algorithm deals with background noise.
Change the position of this slider and you can see the results of the Auto-Compute operation change.
Degrain Tools
The Degrain tools are used when a foreground image is very grainy like with film noise. As a result of the grain, when
backing screen noise is completely removed, the edges of the foreground object often become harsh and jagged
leading to a poor key. These tools were created to, hopefully, help when a compositing artist is faced with a grainy
image.
Degrain Type
The Degrain type selector gives the user a range of grain removal from ‘none’ to ‘large’. If the foreground image has
a large amount of film grain induced pixel noise, you may lose a good edge to the foreground object when trying to
clean all the grain noise with the Clean BG Noise Actions mode. These tools allow the user to clean up the grain noise
without affecting the quality of the key. Let’s continue with the exercise by using tools from the Actions Section.
Select Operation
Color Picker
Select Background Colour

1. When this operational mode is selected, the Primatte operation will be initially computed by having the user sample
the target background colour within the image window. Under operation <Select BG Color>, click on the picker,
holding down the Control (pc) / Command (mac) and sample the blue background of Rocker_girl.
2. Clean Background Noise. When this operational mode is selected, the user samples pixels on the image window
known to be 100% background. White noisy areas in the 100% background region will become black. This is usually
the second step in using Primatte. Switch the operational mode to <Select BG Noise>.
3. Click on the picker, holding down the Control (pc) / Command (mac) and sample the noise from the Alpha channel
of the Rocker_girl. Zoom in tight to pick up any small noise on the edge of the matte.

LESSON
PRIMATTE
3
4. Clean Foreground Noise by switching the operational mode to <Clean FG Noise>. When this operational mode is
selected, the user samples pixels on the image window known to be 100% foreground. The colour of the sampled
pixels will be registered by Primatte to be the same colour as in the original foreground image. This will make dark gray
areas in the 100% foreground region become white. This is usually the third step in using Primatte.
5. Spill Sponge. When this operational mode is selected, the background colour component in the sampled pixels
(or spill) within the image window is keyed out and removed for the colour region selected. This operation can only be
used once on a particular colour and the amount of spill suppression applied is not adjustable. It is the fastest way to
remove spill from a composite image. For more accurate spill suppression, a Fine Tuning or Spill (+) operation should
follow or be used instead. This can usually be the fourth (and final) step in using Primatte unless additional adjustments
are necessary.
6. Matte Sponge. When this operational mode is selected, the sampled colour within the image window becomes
100% foreground. However, if the sampled colour is already keyed out and removed, it leaves the current ‘suppressed’
colour. It only affects the key or matte information. This tool is usually used to quickly remove stray transparent pixels
that have appeared during the chroma keying procedure. It is a quick and easy way to make final adjustments to a
composite.
7. Restore Detail. With this mode selected, the completely transparent background region sampled in the image
window becomes translucent. This operation is useful for restoring lost hair details, thin wisps of smoke etc. It shrinks
the small polyhedron slightly.

LESSON
PRIMATTE
3
Dealing With Spills

Primatte deal with Spills in the Spill Process Section. The light from the original blue or green screen spills over onto the
image with the performers resulting in “blue spill”or “green spill” and creating an unwanted haze around your subject.
Choose from 4 different spill process :

no suppression
complement
Replaces the spill colour with the complement of the backing screen colour.
solid colour
Replaces the spill colour with a ‘user selected’ solid colour.
de focused background
Replaces the spill colour with colours from a de focused version of the background image.
After adjusting Primatte, let’s look at the composition so far. Play around the footage and you will see that there are
blue spills reflected on the guitar that will mess with our alpha channel since we are keying blue. We have to deal with
this and keep the reflection to sell the shot.

PRIMATTE AND ROTOSCOPING
LESSON 3
In the visual effects industry, the term rotoscoping refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element
on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background.
The term : Garbage matte is a rough, simple matte isolating unwanted elements from the primary element. In this case,
we are trying to isolate the areas which the guitar reflect the chroma blue screen. Let’s take a look at the full_comp_
rockstar_V2.nk.
Step One
Step Two
Step One
The <Primatte key> node.
Step Two
Controlling the blue reflection on the guitar by rotoscoping. This is the part where the unwanted blue reflection on the
guitar has to be corrected.
1. A bezier shape is drawn and animated from frame 20 to frame 50. To draw a bezier, insert a <Bezier> node by click
Draw > Bezier or HotKey ‘P’. Attach the node directly to the <Rocker Girl> image node.
2. Holding down the Control (pc) / Command (mac) , click and draw a bezier shape surrounding the guitar. Rename
your node to ‘guitar_rotoMaskaa’.

ROTOSCOPING
LESSON 3
3. Frame 20 to 50 there are some blue spills reflected on the shinny guitar surface. So let’s put some keyframes
for the bezier. Go to frame 20, click on the animation button and choose ‘Set key’. Once the key is set, make sure
‘Autokey’ is ticked. Future keyframes will be automatically inserted in shape.
Animation button
Auto Keyframing Selected Animation button
4. You will also need to animate the Opacity Settings to turn on the Matte / Alpha of the rotoshape at a particular
time.
5. In the Opacity, set keyframe to 0 on frame 24. Select ‘Set key’ in the keyframe menu and go to frame 25 and set
opacity to 1. Add another keyframe at frame 49 with opacity to 1, and at frame 50, opacity keyframed at 0.

ROTOSCOPING
LESSON 3
6. Using constant setting for the key frames in Curve Editor should do the trick. Control + A (pc) / Command + A
(mac) to select all the keyframes in the graph then choose <Constant> for keyframe interpolation for both the opacity
and shape keyframes.
7. Nuke features two main nodes for channel swapping: <Shuffle> and <ShuffleCopy>. The <Shuffle> node let you
rearrange the channels from a single image (1 input) and then output the result to the next node in your compositing
tree. <ShuffleCopy> node let you rearrange channels from two images (2 inputs) and output the result.
8. Insert a <ShuffleCopy> node to copy the alpha channel from the bezier to the Primatte output. What you get is
only the rotoshape . Add a <Premult> node to isolate the Blue Reflection. Click Merge > Premult and insert the node
after <ShuffleCopy> node.
9. Now that we have isolated that area. Time to key it out with a <Keyer> node. Add a <Keyer> node after the
<Premult> node and change its name to ‘Dealing_Blue_Glare’ .
10. Under the <Keyer> node, switch the operation to ‘bluescreen’ and adjust the range to key the blue reflected spills
from the guitar.

ROTOSCOPING
LESSON 3
11. Adjust the range to .69 and .90. Type ‘A’ to view the alpha channel in the viewer.
12. Add an additional <Blur> node to blur the alpha channel. Click Filter > Blur or Hotkey ‘B’. Under the channel menu
of the Blur properties, select <alpha> to blur. Now the problematic areas are isolated.
Step Three
Step Three
Now that the problematic guitar areas are isolated, we can start colorcorrecting it by using <HueCorrect> node. Nuke’s
<HueCorrect> node let you make precision adjustments to the levels of saturation in a range of hues. You do so via
edits to a series of suppression curves. By choosing which curve you edit and how much of that curve you alter, you
can precisely limit the influence of the effect.

ROTOSCOPING
LESSON 3
1. Take from the <rocker_girl> image node and use <HueCorrect> node to suppress and desaturate the offending
blue on the guitar. Check in the range of Frame 22 to 50.
The alpha area isolated in guitar A
The colorcorrected guitar’s RGB
2. Using Control (pc) / Command (mac) click on the blue reflected area you should be able to see a line indicating
where the blue colour is appearing on the HueCorrect graph display. Select the Sat’s curve and click on the curve
points and bring it down.
3. Copy the alpha channel from Step Two Controlling the blue reflection to Step Three Blue_reflect_color correction’s
RGB by using the <ShuffleCopy> node.
4. Add another <Premult> node after <ShuffleCopy> node before merging all together.

ROTOSCOPING
LESSON 3
5. Click Merge > Merge or HotKey ‘M’, add a <Merge> node using the <Over> operation, putting the output from
corrected tree over the initial Primatte key tree. Playback and check your comp.
6. The blue reflection spills are now corrected.
7. Add an additional <Light Wrap> node for a better edge on the comp. Click Others > All Plugins > LightWrap.
Step Four
8. You can use the <LightWrap> node to create background reflections on foreground elements. The node creates a
reflection of light around the edges of your foreground element by blending in whatever is in the background. Set the
LightWrap’s Diffuse to 1.5 and set the Intensity to 5.5. That should do it.

LESSON 4 : COLOUR CORRECTION
Colour Correction And Colour Space

Nuke works in 32-bit floating point bit depth (colour precision) colour space and is resolution independent. So you
can read your images and output at the chosen resolutions. Color correction is an important aspect of visual effects.
Defining tonal range (the blackpoint, whitepoint, and neutral value) is typically the first step in colourcorrecting a clip.
Tonal range adjustments often improve contrast, but more importantly, they set the stage for subsequent colour
corrections by properly dividing the colourspace into shadow, midtone, and highlight regions. You can accomplish that
by using Nuke’s colour correction nodes to adjust the appearance of the images in your composites.
Making Tonal Adjustments

Several of Nuke’s colour correction effects offer tonal adjustment tools. Of these, Grade and Histogram are probably
the most intuitive to operate. We start the lesson by using Histogram.
Using Histogram

2. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in under <RedDog.dpx> and connect it to the
<Viewer> node.
3. Attach the <Histogram> node to the Image viewer. Color > Histogram.
4. Connect a <Viewer>node to the output of the <Histogram> node so you can see the effect of your changes.
5. Drag the input range slider until it lines up with the initial boundary of the histogram.
6. Set the Histogram’s value of the input range from 0.02, 1.01995 and 0.71. The color of image’s white and black
points are now more spread out.

BASIC COLOUR CORRECTION
Using The Grade Node

The <Grade> node let you define white and black points by sampling pixels from a Viewer frame.
1. Alt + C (pc) / Option + C (mac) to duplicate the image node.
2. Click Color > Grade or HotKey ‘G’ to insert a <Grade> node at the appropriate place in your script.
3. Sometime it is hard to see where the blackest or whitest point is in the image. Here are some tools to help.
Adjust Display Gain And Gamma

The gain and gamma sliders let you adjust the displayed image, without affecting your final output. These controls are
useful for tasks like spotting holes in mattes. You can boost or reduce gain by entering a multiplier (exposure value),
dragging on the slider, or using the F-Stop arrows. Adjust the gain slider in order to find the brightest and darkest areas
of your image Boost or reduce gamma by entering a gamma multiplier or dragging the gamma slider.
Gain Toggle Display Gain Slider Gamma Toggle Display Gamma Slider
4. Connect a <Viewer> node to the output of the <Grade> node so you can see the effect of your changes. In the
<Grade> properties panel, use the channels pull down list to select the channels you wish to process.
5. To find out where the blackest point in your image is, use the gain toggle to move the gain slider to 64. Now you
can see where the darkest point is. Its about the dog’s nose. Toggle the gain back by clicking on it.
6. Click the blackpoint parameter’s colour swatch. The eye dropper icon appears.
7. In the Viewer pane, press Control + Shift (pc) / Command + Shift (mac) while clicking on the pixel you want to
define as the blackpoint (typically the darkest pixel).
8. Now you can see where the whitest point is. It is in the dog’s eye. Toggle the gamma back by clicking on it. Move it
to about 0.15. Now you can see the whitest point is the in the dog’s eye.
9. Click the whitepoint parameter’s colour swatch. The eye dropper icon appears.
10. In the Viewer pane, press Control + Shift (pc) / Command + Shift (mac) while clicking on the pixel you want to
define as the white point (typically the lightest pixel).
11. This is typically called one light grade. Its a process that all color correction should take as a first step.
12. Make sure when you are selecting the black and white points, that you are selecting from the original image and not
the graded one.
Making Basic Corrections

Adjustments to contrast, gamma, gain, and offset often comprise the bulk of the work in colour correction. Nuke’s
ColorCorrect node will be used in this section of the lesson.
Using Sliders
1. The <ColorCorrect> node is particularly convenient for making quick adjustments to contrast, gamma, gain, and
offset. A single window houses sliders for all these basic corrections and allows you to apply these to a clip’s master
(entire tonal range), shadows, midtones, or highlights.
2. To adjust contrast, gain, gamma or offset with the <ColorCorrect> node: Click Color > ColorCorrect (or press C) to
insert a <ColorCorrect> node at the appropriate place in your script.
3. Connect a <Viewer> node to the output of the <ColorCorrect> node so you can see the effect of your changes.
4. In the ColorCorrect properties panel, use the channels pull-down list to select the channels you wish to process.

BASIC COLOUR CORRECTION
5. Drag the slider appropriate to the region you want to affect an operation you want to apply. For example, to
brighten the images highlights, you would drag on the highlights gain slider. Remember too that you can use the colour
sliders to apply any of the corrections on a per channel basis by clicking on the rgba values ‘4’ indicated in the diagram
below.
Expand RGBA Values
Colour Picker
Colour Slider
Keyframe
Using Colour Curves
If you prefer to work with colour curves, you can use the <ColorLookup> node to make contrast, gamma, gain, and
offset adjustments (and, in fact, many others). Colour curves refer to line graphs of a given colour channel’s brightness.
The horizontal axis represents the channel’s original, or input, values, and the vertical axis represents the channel’s
new, or output values.
1. Go to Color > ColorLookup and add the node to the image.
2. You can edit the <ColorLookup> node’s colour curves to make all of the types of corrections that are possible
through the <ColorCorrect> node and you can generally make these corrections with more flexibility and precision than
is possible with sliders.
3. In the ColorLookup properties panel, click red, green, blue, or alpha if you want to limit the subsequent operations
to a particular channel.
4. You can select multiple curves in order to edit one curve with reference to another. Otherwise, select the master
curve.

MASKING COLOUR CORRECTIONS
5. In the viewer, Ctrl +drag (pc) / Cmd+drag (mac) to sample color. the cursor over the pixels you want to sample for
the correction.
6. In the ColorLookup properties panel, press Control + Alt (pc) / Command + Option (mac) while clicking on the curve
to set points at the places where the red, green, and blue lines intersect with the colour curve.
7. Edit the position of the points and adjust the tangent handles to adjust the curve shape for the colour correction.
Whitepoint
New Brightness Values

Blackpoint
Original Brightness Values
Masking Colour Corrections

Virtually all the colour correction effects in Nuke include mask parameters that let you limit the correction to the non-
black pixel values of a matte image.
We continue with the lesson. We have graded the dog but the white fur still have a yellow tint. So we are going to
mask out the white fur and colour correct that yellow tint.
1. Click Keyer > Keyer to bring in the <Keyer> node to do a soft key over his fur. Attached the node under the
<Grade> node.
2. Add a <Color Correction> node after the <Keyer> node. Color > ColorCorrect or HotKey ‘C’
3. Open the node’s properties panel and locate the mask controls. The mask controls are located at the ranges bab of
the <ColorCorrect> node.
4. From the first pull down menu, select a channel from the node’s mask input as the matte. Connect the mask to the
node with the mask input connector, if you haven’t already done so or simply assign it in the <ColorCorrection> node.

Use luminance
key to key the
fur out
5. Use one of the channels in the node’s primary input as the matte.
6. Select the channel you wish to use as the mask from the pull down list.
7. For our case, we just need to select rgba.alpha. Now we can make the dog’s fur brighter. Adjust the gamma to
about 3 in the master control, shadow ‘s saturation 0.88 and midtones’s gamma 2.45. Now the fur is more white.

Making Hue, Saturation And Value Adjustments

For certain colour correction tasks like spill suppression, you ideally want to influence only a very narrow range of
colour values. For such tasks, it’s often helpful to use effects that employ the Hue, Saturation, and Value (HSV) colour
model. As its name indicates, the HSV colour model breaks colour into three components :
• Hue, which refers to the colour’s location on the traditional colour wheel.
• Saturation, which refers to the extent to which the colour has ‘soaked up’ its hue.
• Value, which refers to the brightness of the colour.
Nuke offers effects that allow you to correct the hue, saturation, and value components individually or collectively.
Correcting Hue
Nuke’s HueCorrect node let you make precision adjustments to the levels of saturation in a range of hues. You do
so via edits to a series of suppression curves. By choosing which curve you edit and how much of that curve you
alter, you can precisely limit the influence of the effect. For the compositor, HueCorrect is obviously of greatest use in
diminishing green, blue, or red-screen spill.
2. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in ‘MorphB.dpx’ and connect it to the <Viewer>
node.
3. Attach the <HueCorrect> node between the image and <Viewer> node. In the HueCorrect properties panel,
choose the channels you want to influence:
4. Click sat to influence all channels (red, green, blue, and alpha) equally.
5. Click lum to influence all channels, but with luminance weighting in effect (meaning that the red channel receives
approximately 30% of the effect; the green, 60%; and the blue, 10%).
6. Click red to influence only the red channel.
7. Click green to influence only the green channel.
8. Click blue to influence only the blue channel.
9. Click r_sup suppress only the red channel.

10. Click g_sup suppress only the green channel.
11. Edit the curve as necessary—typically this means dragging down on control points in the hue region that you wish
to suppress.
12. Select the ‘sat’ of <HueCorrect> node,in the HueCorrect properties panel, press Control + Alt (pc) / Command +
Alt (mac) while clicking on the curve to plot a particular pixel’s value on the curve.
Range Of Hues Influenced

New Saturation
Original Saturation

LESSON 5 : TRANSFORMATION
LESSON 5
This lesson we learn how to perform a range of 2D and 2.5D spatial transformations including translations, rotations,
scales, and skews to elements using a number of Nuke nodes.
Using The 2D Transformation Overlay

Several of the nodes discussed in this section display a Viewer overlay for executing spatial transformations. This
overlay is often a faster alternative to the properties panel. The diagram shows you how to use Nuke 2D transformation
overlay.
C
B D E
A to F line Drag to skew the image

A or F point (yellow square) Drag to scale the frame on Y
B or D point (yellow square) Drag to scale the frame on X
C/inside-circle Drag to translate the image. Shift+drag to constrain the translation to x or y
E Drag to rotate the frame around the pivot point. The transform overlay snaps
to typical values. To prevent the snapping, press Shift while dragging
Circle (blue) Drag to scale the image uniformly
Control + drag(pc) / Command + To reposition the anchor point
drag (mac) + inside - circle
Using The Transform Node

The <Transform> and <TransformMasked> nodes let you not only translate elements, but also rotate, scale, and skew
them from a single properties panel. <TransformMasked> is identical to <Transform> except that it offers controls for
assigning a mask to protect certain areas of the frame from translations.
Practice
1. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Lesson 5 / Media/box/Openbox.dpx and
connect it to the <Viewer> node.
2. Add Transform > Transform node, or Hotkey ‘T’ to insert between the image and the <Viewer>. Practice the
transformation overlay.
The Card3D Transform Node

Another 2D Transform node is Card3D. You’ll note when viewing the output of a <Card3D> node that it displays an
overlay for executing spatial transformations. This overlay is often a faster alternative to the properties panel.

TRANSFORMATION
LESSON 5
• There are 3 axis : X axis (transform in left or right direction), Y axis (transform in the up or down directions and Z
axis (transform in the front or back direction). Press Control (pc) /Command (mac) while dragging to rotate the
frame on any axis.
Setting The Project

2. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in all the images in these folders : <Box>
<Butterman> and <Stars> and connect it to the <Viewer> node.
3. You can open the finished script under Lesson 5/ Scripts/ Butterman_box_pop.nk and take a look at the animation.
The fairylike butterman image layer is keyframed to fly out of the box, with sparkles around.
4. This is where we bring in the rendered 3D model ‘butterman’. The model is a pretty simple body but with a
rather intricate wings. It is also rather bland when it is flying. We are going to do something about it. Play the image
sequence and you will notice the glow in the middle is kind of lacking too. In this lesson, we will deal with that as well.
5. Attach the <Viewer> node to <Open_box> sequence. You will see that the lady is opening the box and the
Butterman flying around. We need to match the animation of Butterman by keyframing the <Transform> node. The
objective is to keyframe butterman to fly out of the box, behind the box cover and match its action to the Girl’s eye.
6. Lastly let’s check on the stars sequence popping out when the box open by attaching the viewer buffer 3.
7. Add add merge > Merge or Hotkey ‘M’. Merge A to Butterman and B to the girl with the box. You can quickly
merge Butterman over Open Box and take a look.
8. Play the current script and you can see our lady is actually looking at some thing flying out of the box. We have
to match her movement with the flight of the Butterfly man by using a <Transform> node. Add a <Transform> node
before <Merge> node. Click Transform > transform or Hotkey ‘T’. We do transform by keyframing.

TRANSFORMATION
LESSON 5
Animating Parameters
Animating a parameter or keyframing refers to the change of value over time. You do so by setting keyframes on
frames at which you explicitly define a value and allowing Nuke to interpolate the values in between. You can animate
most of Nuke’s parameters in this manner.
Set Keyframes
1. Use the <Viewer> node to move to a frame where you want to place a key.
2. Click the animation button next to the parameter you want to animate.
3. Select <Set key> from the drop down menu. The parameter’s input field turns cyan in colour, indicating that a
keyframe has been inserted. Nuke enters the auto-key mode: when you change the parameter’s value at another
frame, it will automatically create a keyframe for you. You can also set a key for all the controls in a node. To do so,
select <Set key> on all knobs from grey area of the properties panel from the right-click menu.
4. Go to the next frame where you want to place a key.
5. Edit the parameter’s value using the input field, regular slider etc. The moment you change the value, Nuke creates
or replace a keyframe.
6. Use the Viewer’s scrubber to preview the result.

TRANSFORMATION
LESSON 5
Light cyan field indicates a keyframe has been set Animation button
Set keyframe here
<Transform> node’s Properties Panel
To Delete A Single Keyframe :

1. Use the Viewer’s next keyframe and previous keyframe buttons to cue to the keyframe that you want to remove.
Notice that the scrub bar indicates keyframes with a light cyan mark.
2. Click the animation button.
3. Select ‘Delete key’ from the drop down menu.
4. Select ‘No animation’ to remove all keyframes from the parameter, and sets the static value to match that of the
current frame.
Current Frame
Indicator Keyframes
Selected Curve
Expression Field
Using The Curve Editor

To reveal an animation curve:
1. Click the animation menu button next to the parameter whose curve you wish to view. Select <Curve editor>.
The Curve Editor panel appears with the selected parameter’s curve. The vertical, or y axis, denotes the value of the
parameter. The horizontal, or x axis, shows the time in frame unit.
To Remove A Curve From The Editor :

1. In the parameter tree on the left, click the + and - signs to expand and collapse the hierarchy as necessary.

TRANSFORMATION
LESSON 5
2. Select a curve in the parameter tree, and press <Delete>.
To Zoom In Or Out In The Editor :

1. Click on the area you want to zoom in on or out of.
2. Press the + button to zoom in, or the - button to zoom out or scroll up with the mouse wheel to zoom in, or down
to zoom out.
To Add Points To A Curve :

1. Click on the curve you want to edit. The curve turns yellow to indicate it’s selected.
2. Control + Alt + click (pc) / Command + Alt + click (mac) on the part of the curve editor you want to add a point to.
You can add points both on the curve and outside the curve.
To Select Points On A Curve :

1. To select individual points, click on the point you want to select.
2. To select multiple points, Shift + click on the points, or drag a marquee around them.
3. To select all points, press Control + A (pc) / Command + A (mac)
To Interpolate Parts Of A Curve :

1. Select the point(s) between or around which you want to interpolate the curve.
2. Right click on the Editor. Select Interpolation and the type of interpolation you want to use. Choose Constant ,
Linear , Smooth, Catmull-Rom , Cubic, Horizontal, Break, Before > Constant or Linear or After > Constant or Linear.
To cut, copy, and paste selected points, expressions, or curves:

1. Right-click on the Curve Editor.
2. From the menu that opens, select Edit and the editing function you want to use on the entire curve, for example:
• Edit > Copy > Copy Selected Keys to only copy the points you have currently selected.
• Edit > Copy > Copy Curves to copy an entire curve.
• Edit > Copy > Copy Expressions to copy the expression that creates the curve.
• Edit > Copy > Copy Links to copy a curve and keep its values linked to the original curve, so that if you change the
original, your changes also affect the copied curve.
To zoom to a custom area in the Curve Editor, middle-click on the Editor and drag to select an area with a marquee.
When you release the mouse button, the Editor will zoom to fit the selected area in the Editor.

TRANSFORMATION
LESSON 5
To Repeat A Portion Of The Curve Throughout The Curve :

1. Right-click on the editor and select Predefined > Loop. The Loop dialogue opens.
2. In the First frame of loop field, enter first frame of the portion you want to repeat throughout the curve.
3. In the Last frame of loop field, enter the last frame of the portion you want to repeat. Click OK.
To Reverse A Curve :
Right-click on the editor and select Predefined > Reverse.
Adding Motion Blur
Setting the value to 0

produces no motion blur
The number of frames
the shutter stays open
Control when the sampling

of the input starts
Some nodes under the Transform menu have their own controls for adding motion blur to transformations. Transform,
TransformMasked , Card3D, CornerPin2D, Reconcile3D , Tracker and Stabilize2D. These controls allow you to create
motion blur without adding a separate node for it. Rather than averaging the results of several whole images computed
at steps over the shutter period, a number of samples are taken at many random times over the shutter period. This
effectively gives many more “steps” and thus a smoother looking result for a smaller total number of computations.
When using several of these nodes in a row, the motion blur is concatenated, and the last Transform in the chain
defines the motion blur applied.
In the motionblur field, enter the sampling rate. This affects the number of times the input is sampled over the shutter
time. The higher the rate, the smoother the result. In many cases, a value of 1.0 is enough. Setting the value to 0
produces no motion blur.
In the shutter field, enter the number of frames the shutter stays open when motion blurring. For example, a value of
0.5 would correspond to half a frame. Increasing the value produces more blur, and decreasing the value less.
Shutteroffset to control when the sampling of the input starts relative to the frame being rendered, analogous to when
the camera shutter opened to capture corresponding film or video footage you might have at the same frame.
Choosing A Filtering Algorithm

Spatial transformations involve remapping pixels from their original positions to new positions. The question arises as
to what values to assign remapped pixels. Particularly in high contrast areas can create problems with image quality

TRANSFORMATION
LESSON 5
For example, the figure above shows a close up a high contrast feature that has been rotated clockwise by 45
degrees. The remapped pixels have retained their original values, but the result is a highly aliased, or jaggy, edge.
The Filter selection in the <Transform> node is for dealing with problems due to the spatial transformation of the image,
such as ringing, aliasing, jaggy edges. The solution is to apply a more sophisticated filtering algorithm to determine
the values of remapped pixels—one that takes into account, in some fashion, the values of neighboring pixels. For
example, applying Nuke’s cubic algorithm to the above rotation, results in a softer, less jagged edge
Now that we know more about keyframing. Let’s continue with the project.
1. The transform control on the <Transform> node to control the scale, rotate and translate. Just click and drag to
move the Butterman layer around. Now look at the <Transform> node parameters. Before adding any keyframes, we
need to plan the keyframe animation paths to match her movement.
2. Let’s start the first key frame of butterman at the properties panel of the <Transform> node..
3. On the first frame, he is still in the box. Nuke has Auto Keyframing ability. After you set the first key, the Auto key
will kick in. So let’s position the Butterman to the first position. We have it fly out of the box so we want to move to
slightly below the open box. Set your first keyframe by going to Animation button and select <Set key>. Now move
play head forward and watch the lady’s eyes. See where she is looking at and change direction. Move the Butterman
by clicking on the transform handles and move it to the position we want.
4. Proceed to follow where she is staring and move Butterman according. As you can see every time you move the
Transform handle a new keyframe is setup. You can also click on the Curve Editor and see where your keyframes are.
Play back what you have set up and adjust accordingly. Now you have your transformation all setup, its time to look at
how to get the box in front.
For reference, you can set keyframes at the following :

Frame 1 : x 576 and y 72
Frame 30 : x 533 and y 216
Frame 39 : x 464 and y 596
Frame 43 : x 402 and y 610

TRANSFORMATION
LESSON 5
Frame 48 : x 214 and y 672
Frame 56 : x 828 and y 676
Frame 63 : x 544 and y 560
Frame 75 : x 524 and y 564
5. Now you can see Butterman flying around, in sync with the girls’ eye movement. You should also see the animation
path. If you do not want to see the path, you can toggle the overlay on /off by pressing the ‘O’ key.
6. But Butterman is coming out in front of the box. So we need to create a bezier to help mask that part out. Add a
<Bezier> node by clicking Draw > Bezier or Hotkey ‘P’.
7. Let’s start by drawing the Bezier mask. While pressing the Ctrl + Alt (pc) Option + Command (mac), click over the
viewer to draw a bezier shape around the box.
8. To adjust the bezier points, right click on the point and choose break. This will let you adjust the tangents
individually. Drag the points and adjust the tangents—the handles on each side of the points—to refine the rotoshape.
One of the features in Nuke’s bezier control is the ability to control the blur edge of each point.
9. To split the blur points out from a single point, select the point, right click to select <blur>. A secondary point will
appear. When you move either points, both points will move together. If you want to separate both points to increase
the distance between them, Control (pc) / Command (mac) select any of the points to move independently. In the
properties panel of <Bezier> node, under <extra blur> and <fall off>, adjust the values till you achieve the kind of blur
desired.
10. Now we need to animate this Bezier over time, following the movement of the box opening to create a moving
matte to make it look like Butterman iscoming out of the box instead of being in front of it.
11. Auto Key function is on for the Bezier. Now let’s animate the shape over time. For your reference, shape keyframes
are set at frame 1, 22 , 28, 34, 36, 43, 49, 55 and 75.
Now we have the mask, let’s use it. Its time to put the bezier in. We want Butterman to be in the box not in front of it.
We can just take the Bezier output and drag it into the <Merge> node we are using right now.

MASKING
LESSON
THE BOX
5
1. Pipe the Bezier(alpha) shape into the <Merge (over)> node. Now, Butterman is behind the box.
2. Add a <Blur> node to help soften the alpha out. Filter > Blur or Hotkey ‘B’. We are going to keyframe this blur so
it will only blur when Butterman is coming out. This makes it look like part of Butterman’s glow ‘leaks’ out of the box a
tiny bit before flying away.
3. Keyframe <Blur> ‘size’ to 0 at frame 30, then on frame 33 is set to about 13.8 and on frame 38, set it back to 0.
Bring in the Stars

1. The Stars need to be behind the box as well. We can use the same Bezier mask by Merging both Butterman
and the Little Star layer together. Hotkey ‘M’ or click under Merge > Merge to add the <Merge> node. Connect A to
Butterman and B to the Stars.
2. Attach this <Merge> node to the <Merge> node with the Bezier Mask and now both Stars and Butterman are
behind the box.
3. But the Stars are out too early. So we need to add another node to set when the Stars are blending in. Click Merge
> Blend to add the <Blend> node. This node is similar to an opacity function.

MASKINGLESSON
THE BOX
5
4. Set keyframes at Channel 1. Go to frame 29 and set Channel 1 to 0. Go to frame 30 and set Channel 1 to 1. Now
the stars suddenly appear as they pop themselves into the scene.
5. Add a Filter > Glow for the stars to have a little something extra for their layer.
6. Add an additional <Grade> node under the <Girl with the box> node to make her scene darker. Under Color >
Grade or Hotkey ‘G’. Play the compostiion to see the finished work.

LESSONLESSON
6 : PAINT
6
Using Paint
Nuke features a vector-based RotoPaint node to help with tasks like rig removal, garbage matting and dust busting.
You can draw Bezier and B-Spline shapes with individual and layer group attributes, including per-point and global
feather, motion blur, blending modes and individual or hierarchical 2D transformations. The Paint node accepts a
single foreground input and up to three background inputs. It requires only the foreground input and uses the optional
background inputs with the Reveal tool and the Clone tool.
To connect the RotoPaint node :
1. Click Draw > RotoPaint to add a new <RotoPaint> node or press <P> on the Node Graph.
2. Drag the <bg> input to the node that you want to apply RotoPaint to.
3. If you plan to reveal pixels from a background element, drag the bg1 input to the node whose output you wish to
use. Repeat the above as necessary with the bg2 and bg3 inputs.
RotoPaint tool settings
RotoPaint toolbar
These toolbars are placed in the Viewer. The vertical RotoPaint toolbar is for selecting the tool you want to use and
the horizontal one, RotoPaint tool settings, is for adjusting the currently selected tool’s settings before drawing new
strokes/shapes. The controls in this toolbar change depending on which tool you have selected at any given time.
For any changes you want to make to a stroke/shape after you’ve created one, you have to use the controls in the
RotoPaint control panel.
Drawing Paint Strokes

Any given RotoPaint node can hold many paint strokes and shapes. You can apply paint strokes using any of the
following tools
Select Points
Select All Select Curve Select Feather Points
Remove Curve Remove

Add Points Cusp Points
Points Points Feather

LESSON
PAINT
6
Rectangle
Beizer Tool B-Spline Tool Ellipse Tool
Tool
Brush Tool Eraser Tool Clone Tool Reveal Tool
Blur Tool Sharpen Tool Smear Tool
Dodge Tool Burn Tool
Let’s start by practicing on a few stills.

4. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in SeasideA and SeasideB. The media are all in
Lesson 6 / Media /Stills.
5. Attach them to the <RotoPaint> node. Select the <Brush> tool to start drawing on the Viewer pane. Notice on
top of the Viewer pane (as shown below), a list of parameters can be modified before you start drawing. The controls
change depending on which tool you have selected at any given time.
6. After you’ve drawn strokes/shapes, you can edit their order and group them with the Stroke/Shape list in the
RotoPaint control panel. By default, the newest stroke/shape/group will appear on top of the list.
Stroke/Shape list

LESSON
PAINT
6
7. The stroke/shape list provides an overview of existing parameters, showing, for example, whether the item is
locked, set invisible, or whether it has motion blur applied to it. Some controls can also be edited directly in the
overview by clicking on their icon.
Stroke/Shape List
You can edit the stroke/shape list in many ways, and use it to adjust strokes/shapes and how they’re displayed in the
Viewer Pane. You can create groups for sets of strokes/shapes in the stroke/shape list by clicking the Add (+) icon
below the list. It is a good idea to group them as it can get crowded when you start drawing. Here are some of the
tools to help you. Clicking on the icon switch the status of the stroke.
Change the color of your stroke/

shape in the stroke/shape list
Apply motion blur to your shape
Lock strokes/shapes to prevent

them from being edited Invert a shape Life status of the stroke
Hide a stroke, shape, or group Choose a indicate the stroke is drawn

blending mode with color, or with foreground
for your stroke/ or background source
Choose your overlay color shape
The Clone and Reveal Tool

Let’s start practising cloning.
1. Attach <SeasideA> to the <RotoPaint> Node. Once you select the <Clone> Tool, on top of the Viewer pane you
will see the below diagram.
Display the paint source

overlaid on the Viewer image
The clone transform show/hide the clone

settings toolbar transform settings
toolbar
2. Tick the <onion> function to display the paint source file overlaid on the image. This makes it easier to see which
area you are cloning. You can show or hide the clone transform settings toolbar by clicking on the clone icon as show
above.
3. To set the offset, hold down Control + left-click (pc) / Command + left-click (mac) at the source location, drag to
where you want to paint, and release.
4. Attach <SeasideB> to the <RotoPaint> Node. Now both images are attached to the same node as <bg> and
<bg1>. By using the Hotkey ‘C’, you can switch between the <Clone> and <Reveal> tool. The <onion> function is set

LESSON
PAINT
6
by default <0.5>. Enter an onion skin value to adjust the opacity of the overlay. You can also toggle the Hotkey ‘T’ to
enable or disable onion skin.
5. Start painting. The pointer overlay depicts both the source of the offset and the destination as a circle (the diameter
of which represents the breadth of the stroke).
Drawing Shapes
Any given RotoPaint node can hold several shapes.

6. Select the <Bezier> tool in the RotoPaint toolbar.
7. Draw a shape in the Viewer by clicking to create the outlines that make up your shape. While drawing, you can
click+drag to create a point and adjust its tangent handles. With the tangent handles, you can adjust the shape of your
curve.
8. Press <Shift> while moving the tangent handles to move both handles at the same time, keeping the angle con-
sistent.
9. Press Control + click (pc) / Command + click (mac) to temporarily break the angle.
10. To close your shape, press Return or click the first point of your shape. Changing to a different tool also closes a
shape. By default, closing a shape activates the <Select> tool.
11. With the <Select> tool active, you can Shift + click to bring up the transform handle box, which you can use to
further transform your shape or particular points in your shape.
Selecting the Output Format and Channels

In the RotoPaint control panel, you can select one output channel or many to indicate the channels where the results of
your changes should be stored. If you have no input connected, select an output format using format as show below.
12. You can use the output mask drop-down to select a channel where RotoPaint will output a mask for what it
rendered. By default, the channel is none, but if you choose a channel in the list, the output mask box will be checked.
The mask can be useful, for example, if you need to apply grain to the areas you’ve painted, but you don’t want to
double up the grain in other areas.
13. Premultiply multiplies the chosen input channels with a mask representing the paint strokes and shapes.

LESSON
PAINT
6
14. From the clip to menu, select how you want to restrict the output image:
• no clip - Do not restrict the output image.
• bbox - Restrict the output image to the incoming bounding box.
• format - Restrict the output image to the incoming format area (the default).
• union bbox+format - Restrict the output image to a combination of the bounding box and the incoming format
area.
• intersect bbox+format - Restrict the output image to an intersection of the bounding box and incoming format
area.
15. Format is used if RotoPaint has no input connected.
Setting the Project

16. Open a new script. The media files are in Lesson 6 / Media.
17. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Open_sea / open_sea.tif and connect it to the
<Viewer> node. There seems to be some digital noise (dirt) on some of the frames around 5. This happens quite a bit
in outdoor shots.
Digital noise or dirt from dirty

camera lens
Hotkey ‘P’ to add the <RotoPaint> node. Select the Clone brush. Use Shift + Click and Control + Click drag (pc) /
Command + Click drag (mac) to select the brush size and clone location.

LESSON
PAINT
6
Editing Existing Stroke/Shape Timing

When editing an existing stroke/shape, you can edit the range of frames during which a stroke/shape is visible. The
lifetime of a stroke/shape/group is also visible in the Life column in the stroke/shape list. By default, a shape is visible
on all frames, whereas a stroke is only visible on one frame, the frame it was painted on.
Icon Function
Unlimited Lifetime button. To make stroke visible for all frames (the default).

Now to End button. To make stroke visible from the current to end frame.

Current Frame Only button. To make stroke visible only on current frame.

Start to Now button. To make stroke visible from the beginning to current frame.

Set Range button. Enter the start and end frames for the range during which you wish the stroke to
appear and click OK.

18. Make sure you have selected <Stroke will only be visible in this frame>. This will make sure the stroke only applies
to this frame.
19. Continue with your clone brush and advance the frames with the right arrow key. You can also go backwards with
the left arrow key.
20. There should be other scratches till frame 11. After you are done, press play to check out your corrections.
Transforming Strokes/ Shapes/Groups (Transform tab)

To apply spatial transformations to your strokes, shapes, or groups, you can use the translate, rotate, scale, skew, and
center controls under the Transform tab.

LESSON
PAINT
6
• translate - to move the stroke/shape on x and y axis.
• rotate - to spin a stroke/shape around the pivot point. Use center to position the pivot point.
• scale - to resize a curve. Use center to position the pivot point.
• skew - to rotate the curve of your stroke/shape around the pivot point. Use center to position the pivot point.
Editing Shape Specific Attributes (Shape tab)

The RotoPaint control panel includes a set of controls that you mainly need when you’re editing the attributes of a
shape. You can find these, in the Shape tab in the control panel.
• adding and removing feather
• adding motion blur to a shape
Editing Brush Hardness (Stroke tab)

On the Stroke tab, you can set the hardness of the stroke using the brush hardness slider. When using a tablet, you
can also tie a stroke’s hardness to pen pressure by checking the hardness box next to pressure alters.
When you are animating a stroke or a part of it over a range of frames, you can use the write on sliders under the
Stroke tab in the control panel to adjust the order in which the dabs on the stroke appear over these frames.
• write on start - slide to choose where along the stroke length the paint begins. 0 is the start of the stroke, 1 is the
end.
• write on end - slide to choose where along the stroke length the paint ends.
Editing Brush Type (Stroke tab)

On the Stroke tab, you can choose the type of brush you want to use for the stroke. Select:
• paint - to use a normal paint brush.
• smear - to use a smear brush on the plate.
• blur - to blur your plate with the brush stroke.
• sharpen - to sharpen your plate with the brush stroke.
Editing Clone or Reveal Attributes (Clone tab)

When you are using the Clone or Reveal Tool, you can adjust the controls under the Clone tab to transform the input
that’s being cloned or revealed.
• translate - to move the source image on x and y axis.
• rotate - to spin the source image around a pivot point.
• scale - to resize the source image by adding or removing pixels. Use center to position the pivot point.
• skew - to rotate the pixel columns of the source image around the pivot point. Use center to position the pivot
point.
• filter - to choose the appropriate filtering algorithm.
• time offset - to clone or reveal pixels from a different frame. Time offset is either relative to the current frame (-1 is
the frame previous to the current one) or absolute (1 is the first frame in the clip).
Animating Strokes/ Shapes

All strokes/shapes that appear on more than one frame can be animated. By default, the ‘autokey’ option is on, which
means your changes to a stroke/shape will automatically create keyframes and animate your stroke/shape. You can
also access all the curves and shapes in the Curve Editor.
To animate strokes/shapes manually:
If you choose to switch the ‘autokey’ function off, you can still create key frames manually. You can set key frames to
the entire stroke/shape, or the stroke/shape’s curve, transformation or attributes. Activate <Select all> Tool (the pointer)
to see the RotoPaint Toolbar as shown below.

PAINT
Untick <autokey> to keyframe manually
Move to the frame where you want to create a keyframe and select your stroke/shape.Do one of the following:
• If you want to create a key that is set to animate the entire stroke/shape, right-click on the stroke/shape and select
set key > all.
• If you want to create a key that is set to animate a position, right-click on the stroke/shape and select set key >
shape.
• If you want to create a key that is set to animate transformation, right-click on the stroke/shape and select set key
> transform.
• If you want to create a key that is set to animate attributes, right-click on the stroke/shape and select set key >
attributes.
If you have ‘autokey’ turned off, you can only adjust a point in a shape/stroke at a keyframe. In other words, in order
to make changes to a point, you either have to move to an existing key frame on the timeline, or you need to create a
new key frame first.
To delete a key frame:

Using the Viewer timeline, scrub to the frame where you want to delete a key frame. In the stroke/shape list, select the
stroke/shape whose key you want to delete.
Do one of the following:
• If you want to delete a key that is set to animate the entire stroke/shape, right-click on the stroke/shape and select
delete key > all.
• If you want to delete a key that is set to animate a position, right-click on the stroke/shape and select delete key >
shape.
Ripple Edit
Rippling keyframes
Rippling keyframes allows you to adjust the position of a stroke/shape point on one frame and have that same
relative adjustment applied to the point across all frames or a specified range of frames. This way, you can make non-
animated changes to a stroke/shape which is being animated over a set of frames.
Check the ripple edit box in the RotoPaint tool settings. In the drop-down menu, select:
• all - to ripple all frames in your sequence.
• from start - to ripple frames from the first frame to the current frame.
• to end - to ripple frames from current frame to the last frame.
• range - to ripple a particular range of frames.

DUST BUSTING
DustBust Node
DustBust is another node that can help you help with tasks like rig removal and dust busting. Using the same image,
let’s use <DustBust> node instead to clean up the area.
21. Add a <DustBust> node to open_sea image node. You can find DustBust in Draw > DustBust.
22. By pressing Alt + Command (pc), Option + Command (mac), click on the viewer and you will get these boxes with
a dot in the middle. These are Dustbust boxes. You can move them around by click and hold on the middle dot and
drag them. Once you drag one of them over some area you want to dust bust you will see that it will suck in some of
the surrounding pixels and cover up the dust.
23. You can change the box shape by clicking on the corner and drag.
24. You can also change how the dusk bust box suck in the pixel by clicking and dragging the middle dot and extend a
line out. You can move the line around and see how it affects the dust bust effect.
25. You can press ‘O’ key to turn overlay off to check the corrections. Press ‘O again to see the vector lines again.
Change the edge hardness

to sharpen the edge
26. In the Properties panel of <Dustbust> node, you can change the edge hardness to sharpen the edge by moving the
slider to the right and left.
27. Experiment to see what suits your situation.

LESSON 7 : TRACKING
Tracking And Stabilising

In this lesson, we will be using a 2D tracker that allows you to extract animation data from the position, size, and
rotation of an image. Using these trackers' information, you can apply the data directly to transform and matchmove
another element. Or use it to stabilise the image.
Before you track, it’s important to playback the image several times. This will help you identify the best features for the
process, as well as any problems with motion blur or features moving out of frame. For some images, you may need
to filter or colour-correct the image to boost the visibility of features before you attempt to track them. Nuke saves the
result as animation data, so you can disable the filter nodes or colour correction after you get a successful track.
It is a good practice to apply a slight blur, degrain, or denoise filter to the image sequence before you start tracking the
footage.
Tracking An Image
The 2D Tracker can analyse the movement of up to four different features in a single image. Nuke generates one
animation curve or track for each feature. A single track is usually sufficient to record a feature’s horizontal and vertical
position across the 2D plane. Two or more tracks are required to extrapolate scaling and rotation.
Search Area
Pattern
Positioning Track Anchors

A pattern and search area accompany each track anchor. The pattern area surrounds the grid of pixels that the system
attempts to follow across multiple frames. This pattern should be as distinct as possible from the surrounding frames,
and remain visible throughout the majority of the sequence. For example, you might choose as a pattern a high-
contrast window corner which stays in frame throughout an entire shot. The search area defines the portion of the
frame in which the system looks for the pattern.
Positioning track anchors involves moving and sizing the boundaries of both the search and pattern areas. Start by
moving both boundaries over the pattern to be tracked, then fine tune the position and size of each. In the end, the
search area must be larger than the pattern area. The search area contains the space where the tracker will search for
the pattern. The pattern area contains the pixels that the tracker will attempt to “lock onto” for the track.
To move both the search and pattern boundaries : Drag on the frame to select both boundaries with the marquee.
Click on the border of either boundary, then drag both over the pattern to be tracked (stop when the pattern boundary
overlay’s x sits directly on top the feature).
To adjust the size and position of either the search or pattern boundaries : Click to the line-portion of either boundary
to select it. Drag to reposition or scale the boundary.
One-Point, Two-Point, Three-Point and Four-Point

• One-point tracking. Track one feature’s horizontal (x-axis) and vertical (y-axis) position, with little or no perspective

TRACKING
change on the image. You can apply this information to move other elements in the composite or apply the inverse
to stabilise the image.
• Two-point tracking. Track horizontal and vertical position for two features. The feature positions, relative to each
other, indicate whether the image is rotating clockwise or counter-clockwise (z-axis rotation). In some cases, two
tracking points is sufficient to calculate the scaling of the features, as well.
• Three-point tracking. Track horizontal and vertical position for three features. Provides all the benefits of two-point
tracking with an additional set of tracking data for more accuracy on z-rotation and scaling.
• Four-point tracking. Again, all the benefits of the lesser tracks with an additional set of tracking data. Three-point is
usually sufficient for most 2D tracking needs, but four- point makes it possible to distort and matchmove another
element into the four points, or corners, of the features you track. That’s why four-point tracking is typically called
cornerpin tracking.
Tracking And Trackers

Take the path of least resistance, when compositing a shot, with minimal rotoscoping work “ said by a wise old
compositing artists. This is the exercise that is typical usage of 4 point tracking. Example placing an image onto a
computer screen, watch, digital display, sign board etc. The node that we are using is under Transform->Tracker
node. This tacker node has 4 point tacking but you can selectively switch on or off the Trackers.
One of the keying strategy we use is to stabilise the shot first, before we do any keying or compositing. In this lesson,
that is what we are going to do. Together, there will be two scripts.
You can load the two finished scripts to take a look.
• watch_comp (the script which we use stabilise)
• watch_comp_primematte.nk (the script which we finished the comp)
Track the next frame
Track backward Track forward

Track backward the Range of Track forward the Range of Frames
Frames using frame dialog using frame dialog
Setting The Project

2. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Watch / watch.exr and connect it to the

TRACKING
<Viewer> node. The sequence that we are going to stabilise is the watch with the Green Key inside.
3. Click Transform > Tracker to insert a <Tracker> node before the viewer node.
4. Track the four dots on the watch surface. As you can see the tracking dots are just small dots without uniform
shape. It is not squared on. This actually is very common when you receive a footage that has been shot where you
do not have any control. As part of being a compositor, we have to clean up the tracking dots and reference crosses.
5. To clean it up, we have to track the dots, get the tracking data, clean up the green surface by removing tracking
points.
6. Set up your <Tracker> for 4 points tracking. Adjust the tracking pattern and search boxes accordingly. Track the
image.
Calculating The Track

Once you’ve properly placed the track anchors and sized the search and pattern areas, you’re ready to calculate the
track(s). You calculate tracks by using the buttons under Tracker controls in the Tracker properties panel. You can track
the sequence in either direction. There are situations when tracking backwards would allow you to get more accurate
tracks when a feature exhibits a lot of scaling— when the distance between the feature and the camera changes.
To calculate tracks :
1. In the Tracker properties panel, check the enable box for each track you wish to calculate.
2. In the Tracker properties panel, click either the frame forward or backward buttons to move to the previous or
next frame. Move through a few frames in this manner to ensure that all enabled track anchors are “sticking” to their
patterns. If a particular track anchor doesn’t stick, experiment with a different position.
3. Once all track anchors stick, click the Tracker’s track forward or track backward buttons to analyse the whole
sequence.
When calculating multiple tracks simultaneously, you may find that some tracks stick with accuracy to the pattern,
while others require resetting and reanalysis. When you’re happy with a given track, uncheck its enable box. This
protects it from recalculation, and let you test other location for trackers that are less successful. If you need to start
over with a given track anchor, you can reset the size of its search and pattern boxes and wipe its existing tracking
data. To clear a track’s animation data: Check the enable box for only the track anchor whose track you wish to
remove. Under Animation Controls, click the clear all button. The selected track’s transformational data is wiped. To
only clear animation forward or backward of the current frame, click clear fwd or clear bkwd.
Re-tracking Part Of A Track

A tracking pattern may become unusable when it moves out of frame, is hidden by another image feature, or because
of motion blur. When this happens, you can re-track the unusable part of the track with new search and pattern areas
while keeping the track data consistent. The end result is a continuous track calculated from multiple patterns.
To re-track part of a track with a new search area:

1. Check the enable box for only the track that requires re-tracking.
2. Cue the Viewer to the last frame where the existing tracking is usable.
3. Control+drag (pc) Command+drag (mac) the track anchor to reposition the search and pattern areas without
affecting the position of the track point. The offset allows Nuke to continue the track with the assumption that the offset
feature remains at the same relative distance to the original feature.
4. Click the Tracker’s track forward (or backward button, if you are tracking backwards) to continue calculating the
track using the new pattern. Because the track point has been offset from the new search area to the new search
area, the new track values continue smoothly from the existing ones.

TRACKING
Manipulating Track Curves And Smoothing Tracks

A track is essentially just keyframes data. So each track has animation curves which you can edit in order to refine a
track. You can also smooth tracks using the Tracker controls.
Moving Track Points With Curves:

1. In the Tracker properties panel, click the animation button next to the track you wish to edit, then select Curve
Editor. The Animation editor displays the x and y curves for the track (these plot the position of each track point over
time).
2. Select the points on these curves which you wish to manipulate. (Click to select individual points; drag to select
multiple points with the marquee; or press Crtl+A to select all points.)
3. Drag the points to adjust their values. As you do so, the tracker overlay on the Viewer changes shape to reflect the
new positions of the track points.
Smoothing Tracks
Once applied to an element, some tracks may be too much jittery. This is commonly caused by the Tracker too
precisely following the pattern. You can use the Tracker controls or apply smoothing filters to a track’s curves in order
to remove such jitter.
Method 1 of smoothing tracks :

1. In the Tracker controls, go to the <Transform> tab.
2. In the smooth fields, enter the number of frames you want to average together to smooth the transformation. You
can smooth the translate (T), rotate (R), and scale (S) separately.
Before smoothing After smoothing
Method 2 of smoothing tracks :

1. In the Tracker properties panel, click the animation button next to the track you wish to edit, then select <Curve
Editor>. The Animation editor displays the x and y curves for the track (these plot the position of each track point over
time).
2. Select the points on these curves which require smoothing. (Click to select individual points; drag to select multiple
points with the marquee; or press Control + A (pc) / Command + A (mac) to select all points.)
3. Right-click on the editor and select Edit > Filter to apply the smoothing filter. This sets new values on each point
based on the average values of their neighboring points. Enter the number of times to apply the smoothing filter in the
dialog that appears.
Applying Tracking Data Using Tracker Controls

The simplest way to apply tracking data to the input image or other nodes is to use the controls of the <Tracker> node
itself. Here, we look at using these controls to stabilise or matchmove footage. If you need to apply a cornerpin track to
another node, you need to do it via linking expressions.

STABALISE
Using the <Stabilize2D> Node

The <Stabilize2D> node is designed to remove unwanted camera movement, rotation, and / or scaling from an image
sequence. The node requires data from only a single track to stabilise movement; and two tracks if you need to
stabilise for rotation and / or scaling. The basic procedure for using <Stabilize2D> is to first use the Tracker node to
generate the required tracks, then follow the <Tracker> node with a <Stabilize2D> node. To this node, you apply the
tracking data in inverse form, thus negating the unwanted transformations.
Stabilising Elements
The <Tracker> node’s controls let you remove motion, such as unwanted camera shake, from the node’s input clip.
After tracking, go to the <Settings> tab of the Tracker properties panel. From the warp type pull down menu, select
the transformations that you want Nuke to take into account when stabilising the image, for example Translate /
Rotate / Scale. Go to the <Transform> tab. Under transform, select <stabilize>. Nuke stabilises the footage, locking its
elements to the same position within the composite.
Transform drop down menu
Continue With The Project

1. After the tracking is done, go to the <Transform> tab in the <Tracker> node. Click on the <transform> drop down
menu.
2. Select <stabilize>. Change the name of the Tracker to Stabilised_TRS. We are doing 4-points tracking with
Translation, Rotation and Scale. Check out the result and play it back.
3. Everything else moves except for the 4 black dots. Save the script.
4. Now we have the tracking data. We can import the data to another script later. Time to clean up the watch’s green
surface. Attach a <Paint> node to the stabilised node.
5. Click Draw> Paint to insert a Paint node after <Stablized_TRS> node. The dots and crosses are now locked down
by the Tracker. All we need to do is to clone the surround pixels to cover up the dots and crosses.
6. Use the Clone Tool. Change the size of the brush to fit what you want to do by pressing Shift + Click to change size
of the brush. To change where you clone from, hold down Control + Click (pc) / Command + Click (mac) then drag to
start changing.

STABALISE
Clone Tool
7. Start cloning and watch out around the edge. Now you should have a very clean watch surface.
8. Add a <Write> node to output your result as a file sequence. Open a new folder on the desktop and save the files
as ‘stablewatch.%04d.exr’ for this exercise.
We have just finished doing what we call a ‘Pre comp’. This is usually where we clean up tracking points and perform
general custodian duties. Now we are ready for the second part of the lesson.
There are many ways to composite this shot with graphics inside the watch. This is just one way of doing it. You will
no doubt find different ways and develop techniques once you get more familiar with NUKE. But for now, let’s take a
look at the finished script ‘watch_comp_primematte.nk’.

FINAL COMP
Setting The Project

Open a new script. The script files are in Lesson 7 / Scripts. First, we open the finished comp script ‘watch_comp_
primematte.nk’ to take a look.
Step One
We start by tackling the watch graphics first. (Step One)

1. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Graphics / watchgraphics.tif and connect it to
the <Viewer> node. This is the graphics sequence that we are going to put inside the watch.
2. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in stabWatch / stableWatch.exr and connect it to
the <Viewer> node. You can use the sequence that you have just written out or just use this sequence included in the
lesson.

FINAL COMP
PreProcess_Graphics Group
1. You will notice the watch graphics is 512 by 512. This information is displayed in the <Read> properties panel. The
graphics need to be reformatted to the right size.
2. Add a <Grade> node to control the graphics colour and especially black and white points. Click Color> Grade or
Hotkey ‘G’ to insert a <Grade> node before the <Viewer> node. Under the <Grade> properties panel, change multiply
to 0.58 and gamma to 0.94.
3. Click Transform > Reformat to insert a <Reformat> node after the <Grade> node. This is to reformat the watch
graphics into HD format. Make sure your Project Settings is set to the same format. Type ‘S’ to get to the Project
Settings.
4. Lastly, Click Transform > Transform to scale, rotate and move to match the face. Hotkey ‘T’. Under the <Transform>
properties panel, change translate to x -40 and y -75.
5. Now we start tackling the watch key (Step Two).

FINAL COMP
Step Two
1. First we need to key the green out of our watch. Connect the <Primatte > node to <StableWatch> image node.
The Primatte keyer includes a quick “Auto-Compute” option that evaluates your image and determines a good baseline
key. From there, you can easily tweak the settings and generate an acceptable matte. Select the green with select
Background color. Hold the Control (pc) /Command (mac) key down and sample the targeted background colour.
Release the mouse button and Primatte will start the compositing process.
2. The second and third steps in using Primatte require viewing the matte or alpha in the Viewer window. Press the ‘A’
key on the keyboard to change to the Alpha view. Change from <Select BG Colour> to <Clean BG Noise>. If there are
any white regions in the dark, `bluescreen area’, it is ‘noise’ (or shades of blue that did not get picked up on the first
sample) and should be removed.
3. If there are dark regions in the middle of the mostly white foreground object, that is, if the key is not 100% in some
portion of the targeted foreground, choose <Clean FG Noise> from the pop-up menu. Use the same techniques as for
<Clean BG Noise>, but this time sample the dark pixels in the foreground area until that area is as white as possible.
We just need a general key since we are not doing any comp using Primatte. We are trying to extract the green surface
as a Key / Matte / Alpha and use it to cut the Graphics. The Matte size needs to be adjustable, so an <Erode> Node
(Filter > Erode) was added to control the size.
4. The Blur will help the edge of the matte a bit. In the properties menu of Blur, under ‘Channel’ select <alpha> and
under ‘size’ set 2.8.

FINAL COMP
5. Now we start tackling the shadow part of the watch (Step Three). This is where additional details make a better
effect shot.
Step Three

FINAL COMP
Shadowkey Group (Step Three)

1. A bezier shape was drawn around the watch surface. This is to help exclude the rest of the watch. Get a <Bezier>
node by using Hotkey ‘P’ or Draw > Beizer. Holding down the control key, start drawing the bezier points on the
viewer.
A <ShuffleCopy>
node is used to
put the shape
into the alpha
channel of the
image.
2. A <ShuffleCopy> node can swap a maximum of 8 channels. The <ShuffleCopy> nodes is used to put the shape
into the alpha channel of the image. Follow the flow of the nodes and you will see. The <ShuffleCopy> node is under
Channel. One of the differences between <Shuffle> and <ShuffleCopy> nodes is <Shuffle> node only has one input
source but <ShuffleCopy> node has two input sources.
3. Add a <Premult> node before the <Keyer> node to premulitply the image.

FINAL COMP
4. Use the <Keyer> node to get the luminance signal. Click Keyer > Keyer to insert a <Keyer> node after the Premult
node. We want to keep the shadow that was cast on the watch surface by the bezel of the watch. Do not over blow
the key. Keep the shadow.
5. Using <ShuffleCopy> node, switch the green channel to the key / alpha channel of the watch surface graphics.
Now we had just translated the shadow of the watch surface to the new background graphics.
6. Add a <Premult> node and merge it back to main group.
7. To view the result, attach a <Viewer> node to the end of the script and press ‘A’ to check the alpha.
Step Four

FINAL COMP
Watch Face Group (Step Four)

1. By desaturating the green colour into grey, this will help make the comp more convincing. Nuke’s <HueCorrect>
node let you make precision adjustments to the levels of saturation in a range of hues. You do so via edits to a series
of suppression curves.
2. For the compositor, <HueCorrect> is obviously of greatest use in diminishing green, blue, or red screen spill.
Sample the colour by holding down the Control (pc) /Command (mac) key. A ‘red dot’ appear and will correspond the
colour information with the image in the <HueCorrect> node. Edit the curve by dragging down on control points in the
hue region that you wish to suppress.
3. In the HueCorrect properties panel, choose the sat and the lum channels.
4. We will also need to add a <ShuffleCopy> node to copy the key from primatte into the result of PreProcess_
Graphics Group. Now we have a watch surface with a slightly larger key.
Main Group (Step Five)

1. This is where we put the whole thing together. We take the <HueCorrect> node green watch surface and Merge it
(using over) with the Watch graphics Tree from Watch Face Group.
2. Notice the end result from <Merge> node is sent to ShadowKey group to further process the Watch Surface.
3. We no longer need the alpha channel coming from the Watch Face Group, so with <Shuffle> node we switch the
alpha channel to black.
4. The end result from ShadowKey group is merged back after the <Shuffle> node. This <Merge> node uses
<Conjoint-over>. What this does is it compares the mattes between image A and image B, and image A is shown if it
is bigger than image B. That is why we shuffle the image matte from the previous step to Black.
5. The Tracker node (Stablized TRS1) from the watch_comp (previously used to Stabilise the watch shot) is copied
over. Add another <Transform> node, go to the <Transform> tab in the Properties panel, and select <Add jitter> to
make the comp move.

FINAL COMP
Step Five

FINAL COMP
Change from <stabilize>

to <add jitter>
Keyframes generated
from the tracker data
6. You can add additional ‘glare’ to the watch comp by activating the nodes in the watch_comp_primatte.nk
7. View your finished comp in proxy, render a flipbook or write the comp out with a <Write> node.
LESSON 8 : 3D COMPOSITING
LESSON 8
Nuke’s 3D workspace allows you to setup a 3D composite for camera moves, set replacement, and other applications
where you need to simulate a “real’ 3 dimensional environment. Although the 3D workspace has many potential uses,
you’re most likely to use it—at least initially—to create pan-and-tile scenes.
Nuke is able to take high resolution images and create a parallex scene. These scenes are created with 2D image
planes arranged into a curved shape, and then rendered out through an animated camera to give the illusion of a
seamless environment.
Overview
We start by getting to know our way in Nuke, by learning how to set up a 3D scene in Nuke, and how to add objects,
cameras in the 3D workspace. You’ll also see how to texture objects, transform objects and cameras, and render out
scenes for use in other areas of your script.
The 3D nodes in Nuke appear as round shapes to differentiate them from nodes that perform 2D operations. You
cannot always link a round shape node (3D node) directly to a square node (2D node). However, you can apply an
image to a geometry shape like a card which is part of a Scene node. It will get clearer as we start with a simple scene.
Setting The Project

1. Open a new script. The script opens as a 2D scene. Let’s add a geometry sphere by clicking 3D > Geometry >
Sphere. Attached it to the <Viewer> node. Notice the viewer has been switched from 2D view to 3D view.
2. Type ‘S’ and set the Project settings to HD.
3. You can also switch to the 3D view by using the Hotkey ‘V’ or to other 3D views listed in the diagram. Once you
attached the <Sphere> node to the <Viewer> node. Besides the view chang, you are placed inside the sphere. Press
‘F’ to view the sphere from the outside.
3D WORKSPACE
LESSON 8
4. Bring in a camera by clicking on 3D > Camera.
5. To navigate in the 3D Viewer :
• Dolly: Press Alt (pc) / Option (mac) and middle-mouse-button drag.
• Pan: Press Alt (pc) / Option (mac) and left-mouse-button drag.
• Tilt: Press Control (pc) / Command (mac) and left-mouse-button drag.
• Spin: Press Control (pc) / Command (mac) and left-mouse-button drag.
• Roll: Press Control +Shift (pc) / Command + Shift (mac) and left-mouse-button drag.
• Look through camera: Select a camera object, press ‘H’.
• Fit the scene: Press ‘F’ to fit the entire 3D scene within the viewer.
6. The media files are in Lesson 8 / Media. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Stills /
Clouds.tif and connect it to the <Viewer> node.
7. If you press ‘H’, you will realize that the camera is still in the sphere. To see the camera, we must change the
viewing status of the Sphere.
8. Select the Sphere. Under the Sphere’s Properties panel, under display pop up menu, select <off>. Now you can
see the camera. Select the camera’s axis and translate in the z axis, out of the sphere position. Turn the display back
to textured + lines to see the sphere again.
9. To change the 3D Viewer display properties :

• Open the Preferences window (Shift + S), and select the Viewers tab.
• Make the desired changes to the 3D bg and fg colours.
• From the 3D control type list, select the navigation control scheme you want to use (Nuke, Maya, Houdini, or
Lightwave).
3D WORKSPACE
LESSON 8
• Click Save Prefs.
10. Connect <Clouds.tif> to the <Sphere> node. Straight away the clouds.tiff is mapped around the sphere. Next, we
are going to learn how to control the cloud map.
11. Because the cloud image is 2D, we can put a <Transform> node below the image to control the location and scale
of the image on the sphere. Add Transform >Transform node. Go to scale and type in 0.5. The image is now scaled
down but the sphere remains at the original size.
12. Now to scale the sphere. Because the sphere is a 3D geometry, you cannot link the transform node directly to it.
You need a node from the 3D > Modify > TransformGeo.
13. Add TransformGeo below the Sphere. In the Properties panel, go to uniform scale and type in 1.5. Now both the
sphere and the cloud map is scaled up.
3D WORKSPACE
LESSON 8
2D Image and
Transform Nodes
(Square Node)
3D Geometry and
3D Transform Nodes
(Round Node)
Camera Views
To see what the camera sees, we must have a camera. We have already added the camera. So let’s look through it
To look through a camera:
1. Press ‘V’ to make sure you are looking through the 3D perspective view, and not one of the orthographic views.
2. The camera and camera icon must be selected to view through that chosen camera.
Toggle to lock your Select a camera from
camera’s view the list
3. This selection does not change the camera used for rendering. This changes only the camera to “look through” for
the current 3D Viewer. Cameras in the current data stream automatically appear in the list of cameras you can select.
To select a camera that doesn’t appear in list, double-click the camera node to open its panel, and it will be added to
the list.
The Scene Node

Regardless of its location in your script, the Scene node is the highest-level node in the scene hierarchy because it
references all the elements in a 3D workspace—all the geometric objects, cameras, and materials. Combining all the
elements in a 3D workspace. Your script may contain multiple Scene nodes, cameras and 3D render nodes. So let’s
add ours at the end of the current tree.
• To add a <Scene> node: Click 3D > Scene. Attach the <Scene> node after <TransformGeo> node. Now all that
above is grouped into a single scene.
3D WORKSPACE
LESSON 8
The ScanlineRender Node

Every <Scene> node in a script should be connected to a <ScanlineRender> node, which tells Nuke to render the
results of the scene and defines the camera to render the scene from. The <ScanlineRender> node also allows you to
toggle between a 2D and 3D view of the scene.
Select the <Scene> node and add a <ScanlineRender> node:

1. Choose 3D > ScanlineRender from the toolbar. Connect the obj / scn input to Scene 1.
2. Connect the cam input to Camera1.
3. Connect the optional bg input to composite a background image into the scene. If you attach a <Constant> node,
its resolution becomes the output resolution for the ScanlineRender node. Under image > Constant.
Hotkey ‘Tab’ or on the viewer, select 2D, now you will see how this 3D scene looks in 2D. Add a <Write> node at the
end to render the scene to your chosen format.
3D Scene Geometry
Nuke includes several options for inserting 3D geometry into your scenes. You can create primitive shapes, such as
cards, cubes, and spheres, as well as import models created in other 3D applications.
GEOMETRY
LESSON 8
These are the types of objects you can include in a Nuke 3D scene, and each object is represented by a 3D node in
the script:
• Cards
• Cubes
• Cylinders
• Spheres
• OBJ (Wavefront) objects
• Axis
• Cameras
• Lights
Transform Handles Of A 3D Object

Transform handles appear when a 3D object with transform capabilities is loaded into the Properties Bin. The colours
of the handles correspond to the axes available in 3D space: red transforms the x-axis, green transforms the y-axis,
and blue transforms the z-axis.
To move an object with the transform handles:

• Drag an object to move it on any axis.
• Shift + drag to constrain movement to one axis.
To rotate an object with the transform handles:

• Control + drag (pc) / Command + drag (mac) to rotate the object on any axis.
• Control + Shift + drag (pc) / Command + Shift + drag (mac) to constrain the rotation to one axis.
Working with Cards

A card is the simplest type of object you can add to a scene (and probably the type you will use most often). It’s merely
a plane onto which you can map a texture—typically a clip you are using as part of a pan-and tile setup. A card object
may be deformed as a bilinear or bicubic object with controls contained in the card’s parameters. Card nodes have
extended bicubics (bicubics with more control points). They allow you to subdivide a card, giving you finer control for
warping an area.
Deforming Card Objects

The Deform tab on the <Card> node Properties panel let you convert the card into a mesh surface that may be pulled
and reshaped. A bicubic deformation offers the greatest degree of surface elasticity. You can add any number of
control points on the card and translate these points and their tangents in any direction. The control point tangents
exert a magnetic-like influence over the objects’ surface.
Modifying Objects Using an Image

With the <DisplaceGeo> node, you can modify geometry based on an image. When using the node, each vertex is
displaced along its normal with a value corresponding to the image pixel the vertex’s uv attribute points to. The higher
GEOMETRY
LESSON 8
the pixel value, the greater the displacement.
Modifying Objects Using A Perlin Noise Function

The next lesson we will be using the <ProcGeo> node. It let you modify your 3D objects using a Perlin noise function
that creates seemingly random noise. For example, you could use the <ProcGeo> node to generate animated noise
for rippling waves or clouds, or to create a terrain from a flat card.
Setting The Project

2. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Still / Grass1.tif and connect it to the
<Viewer> node.
3. Click 3D > Geometry > Card to insert a <Card> node. Insert a <Camera> node and a <Scene> node as well.
Attach Grass1.tif image to the <Card> node.
4. Under the properties of the <Card> node, under rotation x, type in -90. The card now should be laying down flat.
Move the camera in the z axis until you can see the whole card. Increase the rows/columns to 200 / 200. A higher
number will create a more detailed terrain.
5. Click 3D > Modify > ProceduralNoise to insert a <ProcGeo> node anywhere after the <Card> node and see your
changes.
6. In the Properties panel of the <ProcGeo> node, under <Orientation>, select Y. Under Y size, type in 8.4. Now you
can see terrain.
7. If you click the play button, you will see the terrain animating. This is great if you are making clouds or waves. But
for the terrain, you don’t want it to move.
8. So under <Speed>, type in 0. Now it does not move.
9. Proceed to add a <Constant> node and <ScanlineRender> node as before. Go to the 2D view and you can see the
3D scene in a 2D comp.
GEOMETRY
LESSON 8
Adding Lights
3D scenes always look better with the lights on. You can add lights in Nuke like other similar 3D software. The nodes
under the Lights panel let you control the lighting in your scene. Using these nodes, you can bring objects out or push
them back, create an illusion of depth, simulate the conditions in the real world, or simply alter the feeling of the scene.
Nuke features four types of light you can use in your 3D scenes: direct light, point light, spot light, and environment
light.
Direct Light
A direct light is a light that emits parallel light in one direction. It appears to illuminate all objects with equal intensity,
as if it was coming from a far away source. Being at an infinite distance from the objects, direct light has orientation,
but no position. A real world example of a direct light is the sun. You can use direct light to simulate sunlight and
moonlight, for example.
GEOMETRY
LESSON 8
Point Light
A point light is a point in 3D space that emits light in every direction. A real world example of a point light is a light bulb.
You can use point light to simulate light bulbs, lamps, and candles, for example.
Spot Light
A spot light is a point in 3D space that emits a cone-shaped light in a given direction. A real world example of a spot
light is a desk lamp.
Environment Light
An environment light emits multi-coloured light based on an input image. This image-based lighting is generated using
High Dynamic Range Images (HDRI). When HDR images are created, several differently exposed images are combined
to produce a single image of the surrounding environment. As a result, HDR images have a wide range of values
between light and dark areas, and represent the lighting conditions of the real world more accurately.
Light type, Colour and Intensity of the Light node
To use environment light, you first need to shoot a real life environment as an HDR image. Using the Environment Maps
node, you then convert this image into a spherical mapped image. The sphere is used to surround the 3D objects, so
that the mapped image colour illuminates them.
To finish the scene, let’s add a single light into the scene.
1. Select 3D > Lights > Light to insert a <Light> node into your script.
2. For the light to affect a scene, it must be attached to it. Attach <Light> node to the <Scene 1> node. Instantly, you
GEOMETRY
LESSON 8
can see that the light is influencing the geometry. In the Properties panel of the <Light> node, under light type, select
<Point>
3. Change the colour of the light slightly to a yellow tint and increase the intensity. The whole scene will be much
brighter now.
4. To control how much light the object gets from the light source (based on the distance between the object and the
light source), use the falloff type menu. A Linear type diminishes the light at a fixed rate as it travels from the object,
whereas Quadratic and Cubic types diminish the light at an exponential rate. If you select <No Falloff>, the distance
between the light source and the object does not affect the lighting.
5. Change the different fallout type to see the different effect. You can keyframe the lights to move on your terrain.
Projection Cameras
In addition to viewing and rendering a 3D scene, cameras can also project a 2D still image or image sequence
onto geometry in the scene. This is similar to the front-projection systems used in practical photography, where a
background image or other element is projected onto the stage and photographed with other elements.
Projecting Textures With The Project3D Node

The <Project3D> node projects an input image through a camera onto the 3D object. To use the <Project3D> node:
1. Select 3D > Shader > Project to insert a <Project3D> node after the image you want to project. Connect a Camera
node to the <Project3D> node’s cam input. Change the name of the camera to Project_Camera. Under the properties
panel of this node, you will find settings for the projection camera. If the projection is used for the reconstruction of a
real set with real cameras, then camera data like focal length and focal distance can be adapted inside Nuke’s Camera.
2. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Still / Clouds.tif and connect it to the <Project
3D> node.
PROJECTION
LESSON
CAMERA
8
3. Insert a <3D geometry> node, for example a cube after the <Project3D> node and connect it to a <Scene> node.
4. Move the Projection_Camera away from the cube, and the results is that the clouds is now projected onto the
cube.
5. Insert a <ScanlineRender> node from 3D > ScanlineRender. Add a <Constant> node to the bg as before. But add
a new camera to the scene.
6. This new camera will be seeing the projected result, but not controlling the projection.
7. Attach <ScanlineRender> node to the <Viewer> node and you can see the scene in 2D view by pressing ‘tab’ or
change on the right side of the Viewer.
PROJECTION CAMERA AND CREATE A PARALLEX
LESSON
SCENE
8
Parallax Scene
In this exercise, we are going to create a parallax scene, with high resolution stills and moving elements and create a 4
sec pan shot of a landscape. You can start by opening the script in Lessons 9 / Scripts /Parallex.nk. We start from the
furthest layer first, the clouds.
CREATE A PARALLEX
LESSON
SCENE
8
Step One
Setting The Project

2. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Stills / Sunset.tif and Small clouds.tif and
connect it to the <Viewer> node.
3. Go to 3D > Geometry > Card to bring in the <Card> node. Attach <Sunset.tif> to the <Card> node.
4. In the card properties, type in scale x 1.5, y 1,5 and z 1.5. This is to make the card bigger for the scene. Translate
the card to x 0.08, y -0.176213, and z -0.0279.
5. Duplicate the <Card> node and swap the image to <small clouds.tif>. Small clouds.tif is a small potion of sunset
.tif with alpha channel. Because of that, a Premult node has been added to small clouds’ card. Premult is in Merge >
Premult. Add a rotation in the small clouds of y 180 in the card properties.
6. Move Small clouds’ <Card> node to x 0.16 y 0.2056 z 0.284319. Scale xyz to 1.7. Viewing the 2 cards in 3D, you
can see that the 2 cards are one in front of another. This is to give the illusion when the camera pan,that the clouds are
more realistic.
7. Now we can use the <MergeGeo> node to join this 2 cards into one node so that we can rotate them together.
With the <MergeGeo> node, you can merge your 3D objects together to process all of them at the same time. For
example, after merging your objects, you can use a <TransformGeo> node to move the objects together, or add an
<ApplyMaterial> node to apply a global material to them. Click 3D > Modify > MergeGeo to insert a <MergeGeo> node
after the 3D cards. Point both cards to the <MergeGeo> nodes.
8. Axes are very useful in the 3D world. An axis object works as a null object by adding a new transformational axis to
which other objects may be parented. Even when objects already have their own internal axes, it’s sometimes useful to
parent in a separate axis. We are going to use an axis to rotate both cards at the same time.
CREATE A PARALLEX
LESSON
SCENE
8
9. First we need to add an <Axis> node. Click 3D > Axis. To rotate, add another <TransformGeo> node. Attach
the axis source of the <TransformGeo> node to your own axis. Make sure <TransformGeo> node comes after
<MergeGeo> node.
10. Then in <Axis> node Properties panel, rotate x 23 degrees. Now both cards stay parallel but rotated.
Animating the Camera

1. We need to check to make sure the pan animation with the camera is what we want first. This is because the
positioning of the elements depend on the camera moves.
2. Type ‘S’ for Project settings and set it to HD.
3. We are going to create 2 keyframes with a linear interpolation. But first, the camera’s position in the 3D space.
4. Place the camera in at the first keyframe at x 0.2293 y -0.0909 z 1.5560. Set a keyframe there by clicking on the
animation button and choose ‘Set key’. The cyan colour will appear on the information keyframed Go to the last frame
99, and type in x -0.1164 y -0.060 z 11.71. Nuke automatically sets a new keyframe after the first keyframe is inserted.
CREATE A PARALLEX
LESSON
SCENE
8
5. Now to check the scene in 2D. Attach the clouds’ tree to a <Scene> node. Then the <Scene> node to a
<ScanlineRender> node. The keyframed camera to the camera source of the <ScanlineRender> node and a
<Constant> node to the bg source.
6. Attached a <Viewer> to see the scene in 2D. A nice slow pan across a sunset scene. Now to add some trees.
Adding Elements
1. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Tree.tif and Other tree.tif and connect it to the
<Viewer> node.
2. Add 3D > Geometry > Card. Attach both trees to the 2 separate <Card> node like the clouds.
Step Two
3. Put both trees in the following coordinates. Tree’s <Card> node : translate x -0.252 y -0.031 and z 1, rotate y 180
and scale at xyz 0.3. Other Tree’s <Card> node : translate x 0.159 y -0.094 and z 0.5, no rotation and scale xyz at 0.3.
4. To make the scene more realistic, we are going to defocus both trees so that they don’t look so sharp. Add Filter >
Defocus to both trees images and set them to defocus at 1.2.
5. Now for keyframes. We are going to darken and defocus other tree as the camera pans across. Add Filter > Grade
to the other tree. Select Grade properties. On the first frame, under Gamma, set it to 0.9. On frame 99, set it 0.8.
6. Now for the <Defocus> node. Under the Properties panel, on the first frame under defocus, set a keyframe there.
On the last frame, set it at 4.4.
7. Now the other tree darkens and defocuses as the camera pans across.
CREATE A PARALLEX SCENE AND IMPORT CAMERA
LESSON
DATAS
8
Adding The Snow

1. Once again, Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in snow /snow.tif and connect it to
the <Viewer> node.
2. Duplicate the <Image> node and add 2 new <Card> nodes, attaching the snow images to each of them.
3. Once again, we set the snow in the 3D scene. One in front of the clouds, the other in front of the trees.
4. Choose one Snow <Card> node and translate it to x 0.358, y 0.017 and z 0.086. The other snow node is place
closer to the camera. This is to give an illusion of depth. Its x is -0.022, y -0.082 and z 0.6.
5. Now go to the 2D Viewer and add a <Write> node to render the scene out.
Importing Camera Data

Often in realistic comp, we need to import camera data from other sources. For the next exercise, we used Andersson
Technologies LLC’s SynthEyes™ to generate this data.
Import Export
other selected
camera’s camera’s
channel channel file
file here here
IMPORT CAMERA
LESSON
DATAS
8
Before the exercise, we have sent Lesson 8 / Media / background / 3D background to SynthEyes to extract the
camera data. Inside SynthEyes, you can export data to many formats. Nuke 5.1 is one of them. We exported the
camera data into a standalone *chan file, so that we can built our 3D scene from scratch.
Setting The Project

1. Open a new script. The script opens as a 2D scene. Let’s add a camera by clicking 3D > Camera.
2. Type ‘S’ and set the project settings to HD. Select the <Camera> node and open the Camera’s Properties panel.
3. Click <import chan file> and go to Lesson 8 / Media / cameradata.chan. Instantly, the camera data is imported into
the Nuke Camera.
4. Now we import the Nuke script in Lesson 8 / Scripts / Walking_girl.nk. We import by going under File / Import
Script. The girl is already keyed using Primatte. To see how the whole script comes together, let’s open the final comp
in Lesson 8 / Scripts / 3Dcamera.nk.
Step One
5. There are some distinct problems you can see before merging. The girl footage is a shot with video fields and will
need to be deinterlace before combining with a camera that is shaking. Her colours need to be colour corrected to
match the backgrounds as well.
6. So let’s tackle the Deinterlace problem first. Deinterlace in Nuke is a Gizmo and can be found under Other > All
Plugins. If you cannot see the list, select ‘Update’ and the list will show up.
IMPORT CAMERA
LESSON
DATAS
8
Understanding Gizmos
Nuke allows artists and technical directors to create gizmos, which are simply groups of Nuke nodes that may be
reused by other artists. These are equivalent to Shake’s macros. Studios commonly use gizmos to consistently
apply certain colour grading techniques, process incoming footage according to a particular conversion formula, and
process outgoing footage in preparation for film printing.
A gizmo is a <Group> node that you create and save in a separate .gizmo file in your Nuke plug-in folder. Nuke scripts
can use this gizmo just like any other node type. Saved scripts only contain the name and control settings for the
gizmo; the definition is in the gizmo file and it is read at the same time the script is loaded into Nuke. Thus, you can
alter the implementation of the gizmo and change all the scripts that are using it.
Continue With Our Project

7. A Gizmo is already created for deinterlacing. Add the <Deinterlace> node to the girl footage. You can see that the
gizmo created used NTSC as the standard for deinterlacing. So we need to open up this gizmo and adjust it to our
needs.
8. Select the <Deinterlace> Gizmo, Click on the ‘S’ button of the gizmo’s properties menu to open the gizmo.
9. Select both the <Reformat> node, in their Properties panel, under output format, select HD 1920 x 1080. The girl
should be back to normal.
10. Add a <Card> node from 3D > Geometry > Card, assign the output of the interlaced keyed girl to the <Card> node
as the image.
11. Add the Girl to the <Card> node to a <Scene> node, and down stream to a <ScanlineRender> node. Assign the
cam source of the <ScanlineRender> node to the Camera with the data.
12. Now to merge the girl and the background together. Add a <Merge> node after the <ScanlineRender> node. Input
that as A and Background as B.
13. The girl is now moving with the background. But it is in the wrong location in the 3D space. Select the <Card> node
of the girl and set these location : x 19.6007 Y 1.32 Z -0.31099. Now you should see the girl coming in on the left and
stopping around the center.
14. Now to <ColourCorrect> node. Add A <ColourCorrect> node in between <Deinterlace> and the <Card> node.
Also add a <LightWrap> node to make the comp for convincing. LightWrap is another gizmo in Others > All Plugins >
LightWrap. LightWrap is set with diffuse at 4 and Intensity at 3.
IMPORT CAMERA
LESSON
DATAS
8
Step Two
15. The background is less saturated than the girl. At ColourCorrect’s Properties panel, untick green, under Master
<saturation 0.75> <contrast 0.95><gamma 0.85><gain1.2>, inn Shadows (saturation 0.9).
Applying The TimeBlur Filter

When a fast moving subject is recorded on film or video, its edges appear to smear as a result of the object’s
movement while the shutter is open. The longer the shutter remains open at each frame interval, the more obvious this
effect.
IMPORT CAMERA
LESSON
DATAS
8
TimeBlur simulates this phenomenon by sampling its input at ‘divisions’ times over ‘shutter’ frames starting at the
current frame plus ‘offset’.
Timeblur is commonly applied to garbage masks that are tracked to a fast moving feature. The time blur averages the
incoming mask image over the shutter period, better match the motion blur in the original image and creating a more
convincing integration.
1. Click Time > TimeBlur to insert a <TimeBlur> node into your script. Place it after the <Merge> node.
2. Set the shutter <1> or shuffleoffset <0.06>.
3. Add a <Write> node at the end and it’s ready to be written out.
LESSON 9 : TEMPORAL OPERATIONS
LESSON 10
This lesson is about the temporal or time-based operations in Nuke. You learn how to distort time by slowing down,
speeding up, or reverse clips, applying motion blur with TimeBlur Filter.
Distorting Time
Time distortion changes the length of time required to playback a clip in your composite. These operations generally
fall under one of two categories: retiming and warping.
Retiming is the process of slowing playback by adding frames, or accelerating playback by subtracting frames.
Warping is the process of slowing down, speeding up, or even reversing playback on a clip without necessarily altering
the overall length.
Simple Retiming
Nuke’s Retime node let you change the playback time for all the frames in a clip or for range of frames within the clip. It
does this by dropping or duplicating frames. You can also use it to reverse the clip playback.
Setting the Project

2. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in hand / hand.dpx and connect it to the
<Viewer> node. This was a Red file (R3D ) format. Nuke 5.2 now can read Red files directly into Nuke and converted
them into a dpx format.
Reading a Red File (R3D)
• When you read a R3D file, there are Properties panels in the <Read> node by default tohelp you decode into
TEMPORAL OPERATIONS
LESSON 10
REDspace. The gamma curve is also set to REDlog. As R3D (Redcode Raw Video Image) is a raw format, inside
the <Read> node, the debayer function is still on debayer detail.
• You can also control other settings like exposure, contrast, brightness.
• For this lesson, the actual red file had been exported into dpx using <FrameRange> and <Reformat> node to
select a portion of the file and reformat into a HD size dpx file.
• For your reference, a diagram of the Red file properties is included in this lesson.
3. Add a <Grade> node to adjust the black and white points of the image. Under Color > Grade or Hotkey ‘G’ .
4. Click Time > Retime to insert a <Retime> node into your script.
5. Enter a value in the speed parameter. Values higher than 1 increase playback speed; values less than 1 decrease
playback speed.
6. Check the reverse box if you want to play the clip backwards—making the last frame the first, the first frame the
last, and so on. Increase the shutter parameter to enable frame-blending.
<in> and <out> frame
Higher values
increase speed
Increase shutter to enable

frame blending
To retime a range of frames in a clip :

1. Choose Time > Retime to insert a <Retime> node into your script.
2. Check the boxes for input range and enter the “in” and “out” frames.
TEMPORAL OPERATIONS AND OPTICAL
LESSONFLOW
10
Frame Blending
The <FrameBlend> node interpolates frames by generating an additive composite of the frames that precede and
follow it, rather than creating mere copies between the existing frames. This method creates “ghosting” around all fast
moving features and may look odd when viewed as part of a still frame, but will contribute to smoother motion during
actual playback.
Ghosting No Ghosting
OFlow Retiming
The <OFlow> node generates high-quality retiming operations analysing the movement of all pixels in the frames and
then rendering new “in-between” images based on that analysis. This node can also add motion blur or enhance the
existing motion blur in the image.
Switching Timing
Methods
Set the speed of

the output clip
OPTICAL
LESSON
FLOW
10
Setting The Project

2. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in under “xxxxx” and connect it to the <Viewer>
node.
3. Click Time > OFlow to insert a <Oflow> node into your script.
4. Set the speed of the output clip. A value of 0.5 will slow the movement down.
5. There are 3 methods of calculation - Frame / Blend / Motion. This sets the interpolation algorithm.
• Frame - the nearest original frame is displayed.
• Blend - a mix between two frames is used for the in-between frame. This is quick to render and is useful when
tweaking the timing on a curve before setting the method to motion.
• Motion - vector interpolation is used to calculate the in between frame.
6. In this lesson, we are going to use <Source Frame> to control the speed change.
7. You can map input to output frames to retime the clip by switching Timing from <Speed> to <Source Frame>.
8. Type ‘S’ for Project settings and set the frame range from the original ’82 / 108’ to ’82 /220’.
9. Under <OFlow> node Properties panel, select ‘Source Frame’ under Timing.
10. Go to frame 82 to set the first keyframe. Under Frame, click on the keyframe icon and choose ‘Set Key’ on the
contextural menu.
Change from Speed
to Source Frame Animation button
11. Go to frame 200 and set the next keyframe by setting the Frame to 93. At frame 93 in the original clip, the hand just
reaches the keys. By setting the keyframe at 200, you effectively stretch frame 93 to frame 200.
12. Go to frame 220 and finish the Optical flow exercise by setting another keyframe ‘108’. You just moved the last
frame of the original clip ‘108’ to frame ‘220’.
OPTICAL
LESSONFLOW
10
13. Go the animation button and select <Curve Editor> to view the animation curve. Select the different methods to
see the interpolation.
OFlow Parameters
The following table describes the different parameters in the <OFlow> node’s controls.
OFlow Parameter Function

Method Sets the interpolation algorithm.
• Frame - the nearest original frame is displayed.
• Blend - a mix between two frames is used for the in-between frame. This is quick
to render and is useful when tweaking the timing on a curve before setting the
method to motion.
• Motion - vector interpolation is used to calculate the in between frame.
Timing Sets how to control the new timing of the clip.
• Speed - select this if you wish to describe the retiming in terms of “double
speed” or “half speed”.
• Source Frame - select this if you wish to describe the retiming in terms of “at
frame 100 in the output clip I want to see frame 50 of the source clip”. You’ll
need to set at least 2 keyframes for this method to work.
Frame This parameter is active only if timing is set to Frame. Use this to specify the source
frame at the current frame in the time bar. For example, to slow down a 50 frame clip
by half set the Frame to 1 at frame 1 and the Frame to 50 at frame 100. The resulting
animation curve will result in a half-speed retime.
Speed This parameter is only active if Timing is set to Speed. Values below 1 slow down the
clip. Values above 1 speed up movement.
OPTICAL
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Filtering Sets the quality of the filtering when producing in-between frames.
• Normal - uses bilinear interpolation which gives good results and is a lot quicker
than extreme.
• Extreme - uses a sinc interpolation filter to give a sharper picture but takes a lot
longer to render.
Warp Mode Sets how to control the new timing of the clip.
• Simple - this is the quickest option, but may produce poor results around moving
objects and image edges.
• Normal - this is the default option with better treatment of moving objects and
image edges.
• Occlusions - this is the advanced option which attempts to reduce the level of
background dragging that occurs between foreground and background objects.
Correct Luminance Local motion estimation is highly dependent upon the idea that the brightness of
objects don’t vary through a sequence. Where brightness varies rapidly - for example
a highlight moving across the bodywork of a car - the motion calculation will perform
poorly. The luminance of a shot can come from other sources too - such as an overall
flicker problem. In these cases where there is a global luminance shift, toggling this
control on will allow the local motion estimation algorithm to take account of overall
brightness changes between frames.
Automatic Shutter Time Calculates the shutter time throughout the sequence automatically.
Shutter Time Sets the equivalent Shutter Time of the retimed sequence. A shutter time of 1 is
equivalent to averaging over plus and minus half an input frame which is equivalent to
a shutter angle of 360 degrees.
Shutter Samples Sets the number of in-between images used to create an output image during the
shutter time. Increase this value for smoother motion blur, but note that it takes much
longer to render.
Vector Detail Adjust this to vary the resolution of the vector field. Large vector fields take longer to
process, but contain more detail and may help to isolate smaller motion in the scene.
A value of 1 will generate a vector for every pixel. A value of 0.5 will generate a vector
at every other pixel. For some sequences, a high vector detail near 1.0 generates too
much unwanted local motion detail and often a low value will give a better result.
Smoothness Vector fields usually have two important qualities: they should accurately match
similar pixels in one image to another and they should be smooth rather than noisy.
Often it is necessary to trade one of these qualities off against the other. A high
smoothness will miss lots of local detail, but is less likely to provide you with the
odd spurious vector. A low smoothness will concentrate on detail matching, even
if the resulting field is jagged. The default value of 0.5 should work well for most
sequences.
Block Size The vector generation algorithm subdivides the image into small blocks, and
separately tracks them. Block Size defines the width and height of these
subdivisions. Smaller values will produce noisy data, whereas larger values may
produce data that is lacking in detail. This value should rarely need editing; some
sequences may benefit from using large block sizes to help the algorithm track
regions better where the algorithm isn’t “locking on” to the overall motion in the
sequence.
Tolerances For efficiency, much of the local motion estimation is done on luminance only - i.e.
using monochrome images. The tolerances parameters allow you to tune the weight
of each colour channel when calculating the image luminance. These parameters
rarely need tuning.
Weight Red The red weighting used when calculating the vector field.
Weight Green The red weighting used when calculating the vector field.
Weight Blue The blue weighting used when calculating the vector field
OPTICAL
LESSONFLOW
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Show Vectors Switch this on to draw the motion vectors over the image.
About Shows the version number of this node.
Warping Clips
Warping refers to slowing down, speeding up, or even reversing select frames in a clip without necessarily altering
its overall length. For example a clip that slows down midway and speeds up again to finish the movement. You
can achieve such a warp by sculpting the curve in Nuke’s TimeWarp curve, which is a part of the <Retime> node’s
parameters.
speed up
slow down
The basic “rules” for editing the warp curve are as follows:
• To slow down motion, decrease the slope of the curve.
• To speed up motion, increase the slope of the curve.
• To reverse motion, create a downward sloping portion on the curve.
To warp a clip:
1. Click Time > Retime to insert a <Retime> node into your script.
2. Click the TimeWarp tab to reveal the TimeWarp curve.
3. Sculpt the TimeWarp curve according to the rules above. ( Control + Alt click (pc) /Command + Option click (mac)
to insert keyframe knots on the curve; Control + drag (pc) / Command + drag (mac) to reposition keyframe knots;
Control + drag (pc) / Command + drag (mac) to rotate a keyframe knot control handles.
4. If you want to enable frame blending on the output, either input a value larger than one in the <Retime> node’s
shutter parameter, or insert a <FrameBlend> node prior to the <Retime> node.
Applying The TimeBlur Filter

When a fast moving subject is recorded on film or video, its edges appear to smear as a result of the object’s
movement while the shutter is open. The longer the shutter remains open at each frame interval, the more obvious this
effect. TimeBlur simulates this phenomenon by sampling its input at “divisions” times over “shutter” frames starting at
the current frame plus “offset”.
EDITING
LESSON
CLIPS
10
Time blur is commonly applied to garbage masks that are tracked to a fast moving feature. The time blur averages the
incoming mask image over the shutter period, better match the motion blur in the original image and creating a more
convincing integration.
To apply motion blur to a clip:

1. Click Time > TimeBlur to insert a <TimeBlur> node into your script. Place it downstream from the element to which
you want to apply motion blur.
2. In the TimeBlur properties panel, set divisions to the number of times you want to sample the input over the shutter
time. For images with fast-moving content higher values will be necessary to eliminate “steppiness” or banding in the
output.
3. Set shutter to equal the span of time (in frames) over which the input should be sampled. A shutter time of .5 is
typical and would correspond with a camera shutter of 180 degrees.
4. Set the shutteroffset to control when the sampling of the input starts relative to the frame being rendered,
analogous to when the camera shutter opened to capture corresponding film or video footage you might have at the
same frame.
5. Increase the shutter to ‘5”. Click the play button to see the change.
Editing Clips
As a node-based system, Nuke doesn’t have a timeline. But you can still perform basic editorial operations.
Slipping a clip refers to moving it backward or forward in time.
1. Click Time > TimeOffset to insert a <TimeOffset> node into your script. Place it downstream from the element to
which you want to slip.
2. Attach a <Viewer> node to this node, so you can see the effect of your changes.
Cutting a clip refers to shortening it by removing frames from its head or tail.
1. Click Time > FrameRange to insert a <FrameRange> node into your script. Insert it downstream from the element
to which you want to cut.
2. Attach a <Viewer> node to this node, so you can see the effect of your changes. Adding the <FrameRange> node
to shorten the clip from ‘108’ to ‘101’.
Splicing refers to joining clips head-to-tail, thus allowing action to flow from one shot to the next. When you splice
EDITING
LESSONCLIPS
10
clips, you have options for:
• Fading to or from black.
• Dissolving from the first to second clip.
• Slipping the combined clip in time.
1. Click Time > AppendClip to insert an <AppendClip> node into your script.
2. Attach its 1 and 2 pipes to the clips you want to join. (The clip attached to pipe 1 will precede the one attached to
pipe 2.)
3. Attach a <Viewer> node to this node, so you can see the effect of your changes.
4. In the Fade In and Fade Out fields of the <AppendClip> node properties panel, type the number of frames, if any,
you want to fade to or from black.
5. In the Cross Dissolve field, type the number of frames, if any, of overlap you want between the first and second clip.
LESSON 10 : WARPING
Nuke’s warping and morphing tools allow you to distort elements in an image, apply and correct lens distortions,
and morph one image into another. The nodes designed for these operations include the <GridWarp> node, the
<SplineWarp> node, and the <iDistort> node. In this chapter, we focus on the <GridWarp> and <SplineWarp> nodes.
The process of warping uses only one image.
Warping
Warping refers to manipulating an image so that elements in the image are distorted. Warps are transformations that
only affect some of the pixels in an image rather than all of them. For example, you might make an animal’s eyes bigger
or a person’s smile wider without affecting the rest of their features.
Warping Images Using The GridWarp Node

The GridWarp node allows you to warp images by transferring image information from one bezier grid onto another.
When using this node, you first create the source grid, which defines where to warp from. Next, you create the
destination grid, which defines where to warp the image to. This grid can be a duplicate of the source grid, or you can
draw it separately. When you manipulate the destination grid, the corresponding warp is applied to the source image.
Setting The Project

1. Open a new script. The media files are in Lesson 10 /mini_cooper.nk.
2. Add the <GridWarp> node between <Premult> and <Merge> node. Click under Transform > GridWarp to insert a
<GridWarp> node.
3. Connect both the src and the dst input and a Viewer to the image.
4. When the GridWarp properties panel is open, you can see the source and destination grids appear as small
overlays in the viewer. The source grid is pink, and the destination grid blue. In the following steps, you use the pink
source grid to define which areas you want to warp and the blue destination grid to define where to warp these areas
to.
5. To make the grids the same size as the input image, click the ‘image size’ buttons under both Source Grid and
Destination Grid.
WARPING
Hide the grid
make the grids the same size as the input image
lock the grid
make the grids the same size as the input image
6. For now, check hide under Destination Grid to hide the blue destination grid in the Viewer. This way, you can’t
accidentally distort the image yet.
7. When Warping, the pixels around the area do move because accommodating the change this way often produces
WARPING
more realistic results. However, the distortion lessens the further you get from the moved pixels. You also have some
control over which pixels are moved and which are not, and can isolate the warp to a small area.
8. The ideal situation, the subject you are going to warp is a subject you can key out or rotoscope to isolate it from its
background before you create the warp. This way, you can be sure that the background stays intact. The mini cooper.
exr has alpha channel and the shadow and the background are all separate elements. So this is an idea situation.
9. You can use the grid lines to isolate the areas you do not want to warp. You do this by adding lines between the
area you intend to warp and the area you don’t want to change. We want to move only the front and back of the mini
cooper. The middle section of the car is not warping. So let’s add more points to the grid.
10. Click on <add> button on the source grid and hide the destination grid. Click on an existing grid line in the Viewer.
If you click on a horizontal line, a vertical line is added to the grid. If you click on a vertical line, a horizontal line is added
to the grid. The lines can be further apart in the areas that you don’t intend to warp.
11. When you select a point, four tangent handles appear around it. You can use these handles to modify the curves
connecting the points.
12. To move several points together, draw a marquee around them and use the transformation overlay that appears.
Try enlarging the front wheel. Select the points surrounding the wheel and the 2D Transformation Overlay will appear
for you to adjust.
13. Now we need to put keyframes to see the warping animates. Go to frame 1 and set keframe in the distortion field.
WARPING
‘0’ is the distorted wheel and ‘1’ is the original. Set the original at frame 30. Now you can see the warping animation.
Animation button
You can continue the exercise by warping the front and back of the car. If you want to see the whole animation, open
script /grid_morph.nk.
14. The shadow of the car needs to warp as well. Select the <GridWarp> node , under Edit > Clone or Alt + K (pc)
Option + K (mac). Attach the cloned node to the background_shadow.tif. Now when you adjust one warp, the other
will follow as well.
15. To better see what the warped image looks like, press ‘O’ on the <Viewer> node to toggle the overlay off. To
compare the original and warped images, press D repeatedly on the <GridWarp> node to disable and enable it.
Clone
Node
16. If you see changes in the areas you don’t want to warp, go back to modifying the destination grid.
17. In addition to performing creative manipulations on the shapes of the subjects in your images, you can also use
warping to simulate different types of film or video lenses or to remove unwanted lens distortions.
MORPHING
Here are some of the controls:
Control What it does

reverse Check this to invert the distortion.
submesh resolution Set the number of subdivisions that are created between bezier curves in the grid. The
higher the value, the more accurate the distortion between the grid lines.
distortion The overall distortion is multiplied by this amount. The lower the value, the less the image
is distorted. At 0, you get the source image, while at 1 you get the destination image. At
0.5, the distortion is halfway between the source and the destination images.
Morphing
Morphing refers to dissolving two images together so that the subject of one image seems to change shape and
turn into the subject of the other through a seamless transition. A morph can be easily noticeable or very subtle. An
example of a noticeable morph would be a man turning into a woman or one animal turning into another, whereas a
transition from an actor to his stunt man would result in a much more subtle morph.
Morphing can be a time-consuming task, but it can be made easier by good advance planning of the shots. The more
similar the characteristics, position, and movement of the subjects you want to morph are, the easier it is to morph
them together. The process of morphing use only two images.
Setting the Project

1. We are going to bring in 2 different watches. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring
in orange_watch/orange_watch.exr and watch_still.tif and connect them to the <Viewer> node. It is much easier to
control the process of warping and distorting images when the subject is isolated from the background. This might
involve keying or more commonly by rotoscoping the subject and separate the elements out.
2. Further isolation of parts of the subject is needed in order to get the morph done in sections, eg, the watch face
and watch strap morph separately. For this exercise we have two watches that are shot on a dark drop cloth. The
shots are locked down so it is just a matter to isolate the watch and do the morph. The dark drop cloth has a pattern
on it which we do not need.
3. Here are the basic steps. The watch straps and and watch faces have to be separated. This can be done using
Bezier spline to create the matte to ‘cut’ the elements out. Open the elements script to see how the elements are
created. Open script: Lesson 10 / Scripts / elements_watch.nk. Press 1 to 4 to see the different inputs from each of
the process trees.
4. One of the process tree ‘Iso for Watch Band’ uses two Bezier to get the watch band out. <WholewatchBezier>
node is the outside of the entire watch and <InsideGreenwatchBezier> node is the inside of the watch. After the watch
MORPHING
strap elements are separated, we are ready for warping.
5. We have two watch faces to deal with. One has a green face that needs a digital display graphics and the other
one has an orange face. In the script you should see ISO_for_watchband. This is a simple task to get the watch band
isolated. Watch out for the two shapes that used in this roto. Inside GreenWatch Bezier’s Colour was change from
black instead of leaving it white. This punch a hole in the WholeWatchBezier shape. The bezel and watch surface are
treated separately.
6. Lastly, a simple Bezier to isolate the whole watch from the background. This will help the warping. As you can see
after isolating the portion of image a <ShuffleCopy> node is use to combine the Bezier to the image and a premult is
added.
7. This will add Alpha to the image. Now we have R, G , B and A. This enables us to cut the portion of image we
need out of the original.
8. Finally we write out each of the process tree.
Setting Up The Warp

Now it’s time to bring in the separate elements. First, let’s deal with the elements between the two watch faces.
MORPHING
Setting The Project

2. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Graphics / watchgraphics.exr and Watch1_
prep / iso_orangeface.exr and connect to the <Viewer> node.
FrameRange And AppendClip Node

3. As a node-based system, Nuke doesn’t have a timeline. Nevertheless, you can still perform editorial operations that
you might associate with a timeline. You can slip clips (move them forward or backward in time), cut them, or splice
them to other clips. You can also add a <FrameHold> node to create freeze frames in your clip.
4. To limit the range of the image, we can set up <FrameRange> node. Under Time > FrameRange and add it after
the <Transform> node. In the Properties panel, set the frame range to 124 to 149. Now Nuke is going to read in only
that range of images.
5. Splicing Clips (AppendClip Node) refers to joining clips head-to-tail, thus allowing action to flow from one shot to
the next. When you splice clips, you have options for:
• Fading to or from black.

• Dissolving from the first to second clip.
• Slipping the combined clip in time.
6. <AppendClip> node allows you to join multiple sequences to make one long image sequence .Add the
<AppendClip> node after <FrameRange> node to append the clip and create a dissolve between watchgraphics.exr
and iso_orangeface.exr. Set Cross Dissolve to 15 frames.
MORPHING
7. Add a <Constant> node to the <Bezier> node. Set the <Constant> node to HD format. A Bezier with soft edge is
drawn. By right clicking on the Bezier control points, you get the options out. Choose the smooth option. When click
Control + Alt (pc) Command+ Option (mac) on the bezier lines, you can extend the soft edge as shown in the next
diagram. You want to pick up a bit of the detail of the green screen on the edge.
The graphics merge with the morphing image
8. Add a <ShuffleCopy> node, attaching 1 to the <Bezier> node and 2 to the <AppendClip> node. Choose <Alpha>
for 1 and RGB for 2. Add a <Premult> node after <ShuffleCopy> node and this element is ready to be used.
MORPHING
Wrapping The Elements

We have two separate warps set up. Face Spine Warp and Watch Band Spline Warp. Now that our watch face
graphics is ready, let’s merge them together first.
1. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Watch1_prep / iso_greenface.exr.
2. Type Hotkey ‘M’ to bring in the <Merge> node. Set the Merge source A to the Watchface process tree and source
B to iso_greenface.exr as shown.
3. Add a <HueCorrect> node to suppress the green image of iso_Greenface.exr.
Warping An Image Using The SplineWarp Node

The <SplineWarp> node deforms an image based on multiple bezier curves that you create. The source curve
defines where to warp from, while the destination curve defines where to warp the source image to. Unlike with the
<GridWarp> node, you can draw these curves anywhere on the image rather than only add points on the existing grid
lines. The controls for adding and modifying points are similar to the controls of the <Bezier> node.
Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Watch1_prep/iso_orangeface.exr.
1. Under Transform > Splinewarp, add a <SplineWarp> node with the source attached to the <Merge> node and the
destinations to iso_orangeface.exr.
2. We are warping between two different watch faces using a <SplineWarp> node. The trick of setting up SplineWarp
is to keep it simple. The watch faces and the watch bands are individually controlled by two separate Splinewarp.
This will give better warp control and warp animation when you are testing and experimenting your warp’s timing.
MORPHING
3. Make sure show both curves is not checked and show is set to blend. The <Spinewarp> node has very little
parameter. The Show options in the properties menu allows you to look at either the Source/Src shape and
Destination/dst shape. To animate the warp, make sure autokey is checked in the <SplineWarp> node’s controls. This
way, the curves you will soon create will automatically be set as key shapes for the animation.
4. These are the Bezier shape that is going to warp from and to. Source to Destination. To add a shape press and
hold Option + Command + click. You will be adding Bezier line. The Bezier line is not a closed shape. To close the
curve right click on the starting control point and you will get a contextural menu. Pick and choose the close curve
option when you finish drawing.
5. Go back to the Parameter window and switch to show Dst/Destination shape. You will notice a copy of the shape
is drawn for the destination too. All you need to do now is to manipulate the Dst shape to the state that you want your
final shape to be.
6. There is a set of controls that let you set and see what is happening to your shape warps. First use show with
blend option. This will allow you to see what the warp going to look like when you manipulate the distortion slider.
The blend slider contorls blending between the source and destination images. Play with different settings of distortion
and blend to get a feel of what is happening between your warp shapes. Remember to untick Autokey. We will leave
keyframe setting for later. Keyframing is easier to set if we use the Curve Editor panel.
7. The above pink beizer shape is the source shape that we want. You can see that the pink bezier shape has very
simple control points, only 4.
8. The Blue Bezier surrounding the orange watch face is the target. Once you get the shape right, it’s time to look at
the keyframes.
MORPHING
Keyframing The Warp

1. We have set up a 50 frame animation for the morph. Next to the distortion and blend sliders there is a set
MORPHING
Animation button. This button allows you to set keyframes. The thing to remember is that Nuke has auto keyframe.
Once you set one keyframe, the auto keyframe start.
2. For distortion and blend, frame 1 is 0, at frame 24, distortion is 0.060, blend at 0.0012. At frame 35, distortion is 1
(no keyframe here for blend), and at frame 37, blend is at 1 (no keyframe for distortion).
3. This completes the watch face. Try changing the keyframes’ location till you are happy with the results. Now for the
watch band.
Keyframing The Watch Band
4. Type Hotkey ‘R’ or contextual menu under Image > Read to bring in Watch1_prep / iso_watchnew.exr and Watch1
/ iso_orangewholewatch.exr.
5. Under Transform > Splinewarp, add a <SplineWarp> node with the source attached to the <iso_watchnew.exr>
node and the destinations to <iso_orangewholewatch.exr>. We are warping between two different watch using a
<SplineWarp> node.
MORPHING
6. As before, to add a shape and press hold Alt + Command (pc) or Option + Command (mac) then click. You will be
adding and reshaping the Bezier shape for the source and the destination and set keyframes.
7. Distortion values : frame 1 is 0, frame 20 is 0.05, frame 28 is 0.89 and frame 34 is 1. Blend values : frame 25 is 0,
frame 31 is 0.24 and frame 39 is 1.
8. The following diagram is the combined curves of both <Warp> node. Notice that it is all a play of timing offset of
Distort first and Blend later.
Finishing The Comp

1. Now that both the watch face and the watch band have been morphed. It’s time to merge. This warp exercise is
more advance than the typical square to circle. It is more about understanding how to extract portions of an image
and warp creatively.
LESSON 11 : STEREOSCOPY COMPOSITING
LESSON 11
What is Stereoscopic imaging?

Stereoscopic imaging or 3-D (three-dimensional) imaging is any technique capable of recording three-dimensional
visual information or creating the illusion of depth in an image. The illusion of depth in a photograph, movie, or other
two-dimensional image is created by presenting a slightly different image to each eye. The easiest way to create depth
perception in the brain is to provide the eyes of the viewer with two different images, representing two perspectives of
the same object, with a minor deviation similar to the perspectives that both eyes naturally receive in binocular vision.
One way of viewing stereoscopic images is by making anaglyph images. Anaglyph images are used to provide a
stereoscopic 3D effect, when viewed with 2-color glasses (each lens a chromatically opposite color, usually red and
cyan). Images are made up of two color layers, superimposed, but offset with respect to each other to produce a
depth effect.
Nuke let you work on stereoscopic material just like you would on any other images. However, there are also a few
stereo-specific settings and nodes that you need to be aware of when compositing stereoscopic material. This lesson
teaches you how to set up your stereo project, read in, color correct, use the <stereo> nodes, and render the final
output.
Setting the Views for the Script

1. Open a new script. Click under Edit > Project Settings or Hotkey ‘S’. Go under Views tab in the properties menu.
Every time you have a new script, the Main View is created. This time we need stereoscopic views.
Add and Delete Views here
Setting Your Stereoscopic Views
2. At the bottom, click ‘Set up view for stereo’. The left and the right view will be created automatically. Now your
views are set for stereoscopic project. Tick “Use colours in UI?” to make the Viewer’s left and right views use the
colors defined in the Project Settings.
Left and Right View Selection on top of the Viewer
SETTING UP BASIC STEREOSCOPIC
LESSON
SCRIPTS
11
Reading A Stereoscopic Pair

Now the view is set, we can read in Stereoscopic Pair as a single <Image> node. But there are some rules that must
be followed.
1. The views must be set to left and right before reading the Stereoscopic Pair.
2. The files must be named correctly, for example Bear.left.001.tif and Bear.right.001.tif.
3. Both left and right files must be in the same folder.
Setting The Project

1. Open a new script. The media files are in Lesson 11/Media/3ds Bear.
2. Instead of just selecting the files, select one of the files and change from 3dsbear.left.%04d. tif 1-66 to
3dsbear.%V.%04d.tif 1-66. When a variable like %V is used, Nuke reads in the missing inputs and combines all inputs
into a single output.
3. The image sequences will come in as a single node. Connect the <Image> node to a <Viewer> node. Click on the
left and right view selection to see each of the views.
Displaying Views In the Viewer

1. Once you have a single stereoscopic image node in your script, there are many ways to display the views.
2. Select Views > Stereo > SideBySide to insert a <SideBySide> node.
3. If you want to swap the views around in the <Viewer> node, click the swap button. The <Viewer> node displays the
two selected views simultaneously, so you can easily compare them.
To Display A Blend Between Two views :

1. Select Views > Stereo > MixViews to insert a <MixViews> node into your script. Delete the <Sidebyside> node.
2. This node displays a blend between two views in the <Viewer> node, allowing you to check how elements in these
views are aligned.
3. In the MixViews controls, use the views buttons or pull down menus to select the two views to blend between.
4. To control the blend between the views, adjust the mix slider. Setting the slider to 0 or 1 displays only one of the
views. Values between 0 and 1 produce different blends between the views.
LESSON
SCRIPTS
11
Converting Images Into Anaglyph

You can use the <Anaglyph> node to convert your inputs into anaglyph images, which produce a 3D effect when
viewed with 2-colour anaglyph glasses, usually red and cyan. Anaglyph images are made up of 2 color layers,
superimposed but with content offset to produce a depth effect.
To Convert Your Images Into Anaglyph :

1. Select Views > Stereo > Anaglyph to insert an <Anaglyph> node in an appropriate place in your script. Delete the
<MixViews> node.
2. Use the views controls in the Anaglyph properties panel to select which views you want to use for the left and the
right eye. Nuke converts the input images into grey scale anaglyph images. The left input is filtered to remove blue and
green, and the right view to remove red.
3. To add colour into the images, drag right on the amtcolour slider, or insert a value between 0 (grey scale) and 1
(coloured) into the amtcolour input field.
4. To control where the images appear in relation to the screen when viewed with anaglyph glasses, enter a value
in the horizontal offset input field. Shift the horizontal offset to change the apparent depth of the image. To have the
images appear in front of the screen, you would usually enter a negative value. To have the images appear further
away, you would usually enter a positive value. (This is not the case if you have swapped the left and right views
around.)
LESSON
SCRIPTS
11
Adding color back to anaglyph image
Shifting the horizontal offset limits the ‘ghosting’ effect seen commonly
in stereoscopic work
If your files are not in the same folder or in the right naming format, then you will need to use the <JoinViews> node.
Joining Two Separate Files Into One Stereoscopic Image Node
1. Read in both 3dsbear.left.tif and bear.right.tif image sequences using Image > Read or the Hotkey ‘R’ as before.
2. To insert a <JoinViews> node, select Views > JoinViews.
3. Connect the inputs of the <JoinViews> node into the appropriate <Read> nodes. There should be an input for each
view you have created in the project settings. The inputs are labeled with the name of the view.
4. If you have assigned colours to the views and checked <Use colours in UI?> on the Views tab of your project
settings, the connecting arrows will reflect the view colours. If this does not happen and the arrows are black, you may
have connected the inputs the wrong way around. Check that you have connected each <Read> node to the correct
input of the <JoinViews> node. Nuke combines the inputs into a single output.
SETTING UP BASIC STEREOSCOPIC SCRIPTS AND COLOR CORRECTION
LESSON
IN S3D
11
A lot of times you would want to extract all views, process them individually, and then merge them together, using the
SplitAndJoin menu items. It first extracts all the views you have set up in your project settings and then merges them
back together. It’s no different to use several <OneView> nodes together with a <JoinViews> node, but makes working
faster, because you do not need to add each node in a separate go.
Color Correction In S3D

In many cases, the colors between the left and right views come in with differences between them, as in the case of
3dsBear. The left side is more red and the right side has more green. Now we are going to learn how to use a single
<MultiView> node to control which side to apply the color change.
Selecting Which Views To Apply Changes To

By default, Nuke applies any changes you make to all views of the processed node. To apply changes to a particular
view only (for example, the left view but not the right), you must first split the view off in the node’s controls.
Setting the Project

1. Open a new script. The media files are in Lesson 11/Media/3ds Bear.
COLOR CORRECTION
LESSON
IN S3D
11
Before Spliting
After Spliting
2. Instead of just selecting the files, select one of the files and change from 3dsbear.left.%04d. tif 1-66 to
3dsbear.%V.%04d.tif 1-66. When a variable like %V is used, Nuke reads in the missing inputs and combines all inputs
into a single output.
3. The image sequences will come in as a single node. Connect the <Image> node to a <Viewer> node. Click on the
left and right view selection to see each of the views.
4. First we add a <SideBySide> node so we can visually see both sides at the same time. Under Views > Stereos >
Sidebyside.
5. Apple a <HueCorrect> node above the <Sidebyside> node. Click the view button next to the control you want to
adjust. From the menu that opens, select Split off [view name]. For example, to apply changes to a view called left,
select <Split off> left. An eye appears on the view button and the node gets a small green dot on it in the Node Graph
COLOR CORRECTION
LESSON
IN S3D
11
to indicate that views have been split off.
6. Click on the eye again and select ‘split left’, now you can choose if the changes that you make affect both eyes
different amount by sliding the mix number.
7. Add another <HueShift> node and add ‘5’ to the hue rotation to shift the overall hue. Because the node does not
have a split, the change is applied to both.
8. Now the colors look a lot closer. Add another <Anaglyph> node to see all the changes.
Rendering Stereoscopic Images

You can render several views using a single <Write> node. When using the stereo extensions for the .exr file format,
Nuke writes the output of both views into a single file. With any other file types, the views are written into their
respective files.
To Render OpenExr Files:

1. Select Image > Write to insert a <Write> node in an appropriate place in your script.
2. You can also click on the split icon and chose to split off left or right depending on the view you are looking at.
3. In the <Write> node’s controls, select exr from the file type pull down menu. From the views pull down menu, select
the view(s) you want to render, for example left, right.
4. Adjust any other <Write> node controls as necessary and click <Render>. Nuke prompts you for the frames to
render. Nuke writes several views into a single file.
Rendering Files In Other Formats :

1. Select Image > Write to insert a <Write> node in an appropriate place in your script.
2. In the Write nodes’ Properties panel, select the file type of your images from the file type pull down menu.
3. When entering names for the rendered image sequences, you can use the variable %V (capital V) to represent the
words left and right (or any other full view names) in the filenames, for example filename.%V.%04d.exr. To represent
the letters l and r (or the first letters of any views), use the variable %v (with a lower-case v) instead.
4. When rendering, Nuke then fills this in with left, right, l, or r, and renders all views you specify in the next step.
5. Adjust any other <Write>node Properties panel as necessary and click <Render>. Nuke prompts you for the
frames to render as well as the views to execute.
RENDERING
LESSON
IN S3D
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6. Nuke renders several views, but writes them into separate files. If you did not specify a view in the filenames (using
either the name of the view, its first letter, or a variable), you can only render one view.
Reproducing Changes Made To One View

When rotoscoping, creating paint effects, or doing other operations dependent on image locality, you can have
changes made to one view automatically reproduced in the other. This applies to the <Paint> node, the <Bezier>
node, and any nodes, groups, or gizmos that have controls for x and y coordinates. To reproduce changes made with
the above nodes, groups, or gizmos, you need a disparity field that maps the location of a pixel in one view to the
location of its corresponding pixel in the other view.
You can create a disparity field using The Foundry’s O_DisparityGenerator plug-in, which is included in the Ocula plug-
in set, or a 3D application. Ocula is a unique collection of plug-in tools that solve common problems with stereoscopic
imagery, It is not included in the basic Nuke software.
LESSON 12 : RENDERING
Nuke supports a fast, high-quality internal renderer, with superior colour resolution and dynamic range without a
slowdown in the workflow. These are some of the key features of Nuke’s rendering engine :
• Multi-threaded rendering to take advantage of multiple processors in its calculations.
• Scanline (as opposed to buffer-based) rendering allows you to immediately see portions of render output.
• Calculations performed with 32-bit precision, using linear light levels.
Previewing In A Nuke Viewer

When you connect a viewer to a given node’s output (by selecting the node and pressing a number key), Nuke
immediately starts rendering the output in the viewer using all available local processors.
Keep in mind the following tips in order to speed up this type of preview rendering:
• First, if you don’t need to evaluate the whole image, zoom into the area of interest. Nuke will then render only the
portion of scanlines visible within the viewer.
Alternatively, you can use the viewer’s region of interest (ROI) feature to render only a portion of the image, while seeing
that result in the context of the whole image. Click the viewer’s ROI button to toggle on /off this render feature.
Region Of Interest
Region Of
Interest
Flipbooking Sequences
Flipbooking a sequence refers to rendering out range of images (typically at proxy resolution), then playing them back
in order to accurately access the motion characteristics of added effects.
Two options for flipbooking within Nuke :
• You can enable automatic disk caching of rendered frames, then play these frames back using Nuke’s native
viewer. This option does not let you define a specific playback rate.
• Or you can render out a temporary image sequences to FrameCycler, a RAM-buffering playback utility which is
automatically installed with your copy of Nuke and plays back sequences at the defined frame rate.
Flipbooking Within Nuke

To flipbook image sequences inside the Nuke viewer, you must first enable the automatic disk caching of rendered
frames. You do so by setting two preferences that define the location and size of the cache. Once you set these
preferences, the Nuke viewer automatically saves to disk 8-bit-per-channel versions of every frame it displays. When
PREVIEWING
you play through sequences in the viewer, it reads, where possible, from this cache of pre rendered images, making
real-time play back possible (depending, of course, on image resolution and your hardware configuration).
Let’s bring in a script in Lesson 8 / Scripts / Parallex.nk. Press the play button and the image sequence begin to
cache the prerendered scene. In the menu under Nuke 5.2 / Preferences or Hotkey ‘Command’, you will display the
preferences dialog window.
To enable automatic disk caching of rendered frames:

1. In the disk cache field, enter the path name of the directory in which you want to store the flipbook images (for
example, c:/temp).
2. From the disk cache size drop down, select the number of gigabytes you want to allow the image cache to
consume (5 is the recommended value).
3. Click the Save Prefs button to update preferences and then restart Nuke.
The viewer will now cache each frame it displays in the directory specified. When you click the playback buttons on the
viewer, or drag on the scrub bar, Nuke will read in images from this cache.
Autosave filename and path
Disk cache’s Size and Path
Note that the cached images have unique names reflecting their point of output location in the script. This means that
you can cache images from multiple nodes in the script without overwriting previously cached images.
Flipbooking within FrameCycler

To flipbook an image sequence inside FrameCycler:
RENDERING
1. Select the node whose output you wish to see flipbooked. That should be <ScanlineRender> node.
2. Select the <ScanlineRender> node, which should be the last node of the script and right click to add Render >
Flipbook selected (or press Alt + F (pc) / Option + F (mac)). Nuke renders as a temporary sequence the output of the
selected node using the frame range and resolution defined in the script’s settings. This may take a few moments.
3. Once the render is complete, Nuke launches Framecycler and loads in the temporary sequence. You can play it
back and view it using Framecycler’s media controls.
Flipbook Node
Note If you select a <Write> node in the step above, you must first click its Render button in order to manually render
its output to the destination defined in the file field. This step is necessary only in the case of <Write> nodes.
FrameCycler
Flipbooking within FrameCycler
RENDERING
IRIDAS was founded in 2000 in Munich, Germany. IRIDAS Framecycler comes packed with many features to
complement flipbooking. FrameCycler is the industry leader in uncompressed playback of frame-based and video file
formats at SD, HD, 2K, and higher resolutions. FrameCycler applications are used by content creators to review their
work, by filmmakers and postproduction facilities for digital dailies, and in venues for entertainment, education, and
research. Log onto www.iridas.com for more information.
Rendering Output
Nuke can render images locally— on your workstation— or it can be setup to render images on a network render farm.
Before rendering, verify that your project settings have the correct output format and proxy format selected.
Render Resolution and Format

To view and change the proxy resolution for the current script file, choose Edit > Project Settings from the menu bar, or
press ‘S’ with the mouse pointer over the Node Graph or the Properties Bin.
From the Project Settings properties panel, you can select a new render format from the list of predefined resolutions,
and toggle proxy rendering. You can also choose the new option under either full size format or proxy format or use the
proxy scale fields to define custom render resolutions for the composite. When rendering in proxy mode, use the pull
down menu on the right to select whether to use the resolution defined under proxy format or proxy scale.
Output (Write) Nodes

With the correct resolution and format selected, you then insert <Write> nodes to indicate where you want to render
images from the script.
Delete the <Flipbook> node and add a <Write> node instead. <Write> node is usually placed at the bottom of the
compositing tree to render the final output. However, a <Write> node has both In and Out connectors, so it may be
embedded anywhere in the compositing tree.
** If you are rendering .mov files, you can choose the QuickTime codec from the codec pull down menu, and adjust
advanced codec options by clicking the advanced button. If you are using 64-bit Windows, you cannot render
QuickTime files. This is because Apple has not released QuickTime for 64-bit Windows.
FILE FORMATS
Full Res Name

Proxy Name
Metadata Information
Executing Renders
You can execute renders for a single <Write> node or all <Write> nodes in your compositing script.
To render a single <Write> node:
1. Connect a <Viewer> node to the <Write> node you want to render and verify that the correct resolution is displayed
for output.
2. If necessary, press (Control + P (pc) / Command + P (mac) to toggle between full-res and proxy resolution. The
displayed output resolution will be used for rendering.
3. With the desired <Write> node selected, choose Render > Render selected (or press F7).
4. Nuke prompts for a frame range. Enter the start and end frames, separated by a comma (i.e., 1,100), and then click
OK. To render all <Write> nodes in the script: Choose Render > Render all (or press F5).
Supported Image Formats

The following table lists the supported image formats. The extensions listed under “Filename Extension” let you specify
the image format; use these as the actual filename extensions or the prefix to indicate output format for the image
sequences.
Format Bit Depths Read/Write Filename Identifier

CIN 10 (log) read and write cin
DPX 8, 10, and 16 read and write dpx
EXR 16 and 321 read and write 2
exr
GIF 8 read only gif
HDRI ? read and write hdr
LESSON 12
JPEG 8 read and write jpg, jpeg 3

PNG 8 and 16 read and write png (8-bit), png 16 (16-bit)
Maya IFF 8 and 16 read only iff
SGI 8 and 16 read and write sgi, rgb, rgba (8-bit
sequences) sgi 16 (for 16
-bit sequences)
Softimage® PIC 8 read and write pic
TIFF 8 and 16 and 32 read4 and write tif, tiff (8-bit sequences)
tif16, tiff16 (16-bit sequences)
ftif, ftiff (32-bit sequences)
Truevision® TARGA 8 read and write tga, targa
RAW 5 n/a read only n/a
Wavefront®RLA 8 read only rla
XPM 6
8 read and write xpm
YUV 8 read and write yuv
Quicktime 8
n/a read and write
7
mov
R3D n/a read only Redcode Raw Images
1. Exr handles 16- and 32-bit float. This 16 is also called “half float” and is different from the 16-bit integer that all the
other formats that support 16 use.
2. Adjust compression levels using the Write node’s properties panel, quality slider on the Data tab.
3. If utilized, the compression schema on imported TIFF sequences must be LZW®
4. DSLR raw data files. These are only supported via the dcraw command-line program, which you can download
from the dcraw website. Bit depth and other specifications depend on the device. Some devices may not be
supported.
5. This is the text-based format in which Nuke’s interface elements are stored.
6. This format does not specify resolution, so Nuke assumes a width of 720 pixels.
7. QuickTime is only supported on 32-bit Windows and Mac OS X.
INDEX
2D tracker 84–98 40–44, 41–44, 42–44, 45–59, 47–59, 51–59, 56–59, 85–98,
3D 10–29, 35–44, 38–44, 44, 49–59, 50–59, 68–76, 99–118, 100–118, 92–98, 141–148, 152–154, 153–154, 158
101–118, 102–118, 103–118, 104–118, 105–118, 106–118, conjoint-over 40–44
107–118, 108–118, 109–118, 111–118, 112–118, 114–118, Constant 56–59, 71–76, 103–118, 105–118, 135–140
115–118, 116–118, 141–148, 143–148, 148, 158 container 18–29, 38–44
3D workspace 99–118, 102–118 copy 39–44, 40–44, 56–59, 71–76, 80–83, 81–83, 96–98, 137–140,
32-bit floating point 60–66 149–154
Copy 39–44, 40–44, 56–59, 58–59, 71–76
A cornerpin 85–98, 87–98
CornerPin2D 72–76
AdjBBox 37–44, 38–44
Crop 35–44, 36–44, 37–44
alpha 25–29, 38–44, 41–44, 44, 45–59, 46–59, 53–59, 56–59, 57–59,
Curve Editor 8–29, 23–29, 24–29, 56–59, 70–76, 71–76, 73–76,
58–59, 62–66, 64–66, 65–66, 75–76, 79–83, 92–98, 111–118,
87–98, 123–127, 137–140
130–140
anaglyph 2–3, 141–148, 142–148, 147–148 D
Anaglyph 2–3, 141–148, 142–148, 147–148
anchors 84–98, 86–98 data 30–44, 17–29, 21–29, 25–29, 84–98, 37–44, 38–44, 84–98,
animated 18–29, 23–29, 54–59, 80–83, 99–118, 105–118 85–98, 86–98, 87–98, 102–118, 88–98, 124–127, 108–118,
AppendClip 127, 134–140, 135–140 114–118, 115–118, 116–118, 154, 124–127, , 11–29
atop 40–44 de focused 53–59
auto BG 51–59 Deform 104–118
auto FG 51–59 Degrain 51–59
Autokey 55–59, 137–140 De Interlace 116–118, 148
autosave 32–44 depth 38–44, 60–66, 106–118, 114–118, 141–148, 143–148, 154
difference 41–44
B Disable 14–29, 18–29
disjoint-over 41–44
Backdrop 18–29, 19–29
disparity 2–3, 141–148, 142–148, 147–148
background 10–29, 11–29, 15–29, 16–29, 18–29, 34–44, 41–44,
DisplaceGeo 104–118
42–44, 44, 77–83, 46–59, 47–59, 48–59, 49–59, 50–59, 51–59,
divide 41–44
52–59, 53–59, 54–59, 59, 77–83, 79–83, 80–83, 92–98,
Dolly 100–118
103–118, 124–127, 108–118, 115–118, 116–118, 117–118,
down-res 33–44
124–127, 130–140, 130–140, 130–140, 131–140, 132–140,
dpx 149–154
53–59
Draw 54–59, 74–76, 77–83, 80–83, 81–83, 82–83, 88–98
Bezier 54–59, 56–59, 74–76, 75–76, 94–98, 132–140, 133–140,
Dustbust 82–83, 83
135–140, 136–140, 137–140, 140, 148
black outside 37–44 E
BlackOutside 37–44, 38–44
blackpoint 47–59, 48–59, 60–66, 61–66 Eraser 77–83, 78–83
Blur 9–29, 46–59, 72–76, 57–59, 75–76, 92–98, 46–59, 92–98 Erode 46–59, 92–98, 46–59, 92–98
bounding box 35–44, 37–44, 38–44 exclusion 41–44
brush 79–83, 81–83, 82–83, 88–98 expression 18–29, 71–76
exr 149–154
C eye dropper 47–59, 61–66
cache 149–154 F
camera 45–59, 72–76, 86–98, 88–98, 99–118, 100–118, 102–118,
103–118, 105–118, 108–118, 109–118, 111–118, 112–118, file browser 30–44, 32–44
113–118, 114–118, 115–118, 126–127 Filter 9, 46, 76, 57, 87, 73, 75, 92, 113, 119, 113, 117, 46, 125
card 99–118, 104–118, 105–118, 111–118, 113–118, 116–118 filtering 26–29, 36–44, 73–76, 124–127
Card3D 67–76 flipbook 149–154
chan 2–3, 141–148, 142–148, 147–148 Flipbook 48–59, 151–154, 152–154
Channel 10–29, 25–29, 38–44, 39–44, 45–59, 49–59, 76, 92–98, foreground 10–29, 11–29, 17–29, 34–44, 41–44, 47–59, 48–59,
94–98 49–59, 50–59, 51–59, 52–59, 59, 77–83, 79–83, 80–83, 81–83,
channel set 25–29, 38–44, 39–44 92–98, 124–127
checkerboard 34–44, 35–44 Four-point tracking 85–98
chroma 52–59, 54–59, 79–83 fps 22–29
CIN 149–154 frame 21–29, 22–29, 23–29, 34–44, 35–44, 36–44, 37–44, 40–44,
clone 20–29, 81–83, 82–83, 88–98 47–59, 48–59, 54–59, 55–59, 61–66, 67–76, 68–76, 69–76,
cloned 18–29 70–76, 72–76, 73–76, 74–76, 75–76, 76, 79–83, 80–83, 81–83,
ColorCorrect 61–66, 62–66, 63–66 82–83, 84–98, 86–98, 112–118, 113–118, 117–118, 118,
ColorLookup 62–66, 63–66 120–127, 121–127, 122–127, 123–127, 124–127, 125–127,
colour 8–29, 10–29, 11–29, 13–29, 15–29, 25–29, 26–29, 29, 35–44, 126–127, 140, 149–154, 130–140, 131–140, 134–140, 138–
60–66, 45–59, 46–59, 47–59, 49–59, 50–59, 51–59, 52–59, 140, 139–140, 140, 149–154, 150–154, 120–127, 151–154,
53–59, 58–59, 60–66, 84–98, 84–98, 61–66, 79–83, 62–66, 152–154, 153–154
63–66, 65–66, 91–98, 92–98, 107–118, 96–98, 108–118, Frame Blend 121–127
112–118, 143–148, 124–127, 115–118, 116–118, 149–154, FrameCycler 149–154
53–59, 53–59 frame range 21–29, 22–29, 34–44, 48–59, 122–127, 134–140,
colour correction 8–29, 10–29, 26–29, 60–66, 61–66, 63–66, 65–66, 151–154, 153–154
84–98 FrameRange 132–140
Colourspace 35–44 Freehand 77–83, 78–83
complement 53–59, 152–154
composite 11–29, 38–44, 27–29, 45–59, 38–44, 40–44, 41–44, 45–59, G
85–98, 52–59, 88–98, 99–118, 89–98, 119–127, 103–118,
gain 26–29, 61–66, 62–66
121–127, 152–154, 27–29
gamma 26–29, 61–66, 62–66, 64–66, 91–98, 117–118, 120–127
compositing 2–3, 10–29, 11–29, 26–29, 32–44, 34–44, 35–44, 38–44,

INDEX
Garbage 54–59 126–127
geometry 99–118, 101–118, 103–118, 104–118, 108–118, 109–118, motionblur 72–76
158 multi channel 38–44, 42–44
gizmo 116–118, 148 multiply 41–44, 44, 91–98
gizmos 116–118, 148 Multi-threaded 149–154
global frame range 21–29, 34–44
grade 48–59, 61–66 N
Grade 43–44, 44, 47–59, 48–59, 60–66, 61–66, 63–66, 76, 91–98,
nesting 18–29
113–118, 120–127
Node Graph 8–29, 9–29, 11–29, 12–29, 18–29, 19–29, 23–29, 24–29,
grain 9–29, 20–29, 51–59
29, 146–148, 152–154
Graph 8, 8–29, 9, 9–29, 9–29, 11, 10–29, 11–29, 12, 12–29, 12–29,
nodes 45–59, 8–29, 9–29, 10–29, 11–29, 12–29, 35–44, 37–44,
18, 18–29, 18–29, 19, 19–29, 23, 23–29, 23–29, 24, 24–29,
38–44, 16–29, 17–29, 18–29, 56–59, 19–29, 20–29, 21–29,
25, 25–29, 29, 146, 146–148, 152, 152–154
23–29, 60–66, 67–76, 67–76, 67–76, 72–76, 72–76, 84–98,
green screen 53–59, 135–140, 158
87–98, 102–118, 94–98, 98, 102–118, 104–118, 106–118,
grid 130–140
141–148, 128–140, 148, 111–118, 116–118, 141–148,
grids 84–98, 128–140, 129–140, 130–140, 131–140, 132–140,
144–148, 150–154, 151–154, 152–154, 153–154, 145–148,
136–140
147–148, 11–29, 12–29
GridWarp 128–140
Noise 51–59, 52–59, 92–98, 105–118
Group 18–29, 19–29, 20–29, 91–98, 94–98, 96–98, 116–118
non-integer 78–83
H
O
HDRI 149–154
Ocula 2–3, 141–148, 142–148, 147–148
highlight 11–29, 16–29, 60–66, 124–127
OFlow 121–127, 122–127, 123–127
Histogram 60–66
One-point tracking 84–98
Hue 16–29, 57–59, 65–66, 96–98, 147–148
opacity 55–59, 56–59, 75–76, 79–83
HueShift 15–29, 16–29
OpenEXR 40–44
I out 9–29, 13–29, 15–29, 23–29, 26–29, 40–44, 41–44, 42–44, 44,
45–59, 46–59, 48–59, 49–59, 52–59, 56–59, 60–66, 61–66,
image data 37–44, 38–44 63–66, 68–76, 71–76, 73–76, 74–76, 75–76, 82–83, 83, 84–98,
interpolation 23–29, 56–59, 71–76, 112–118, 122–127, 123–127, 86–98, 88–98, 89–98, 90–98, 92–98, 98, 99–118, 100–118,
124–127 106–118, 114–118, 118, 120–127, 130–140, 132–140,
133–140, 135–140, 149–154
J output 8–29, 9–29, 11–29, 14–29, 18–29, 21–29, 26–29, 32–44,
35–44, 36–44, 37–44, 38–44, 39–44, 40–44, 59, 60–66, 56–59,
jaggy 73–76
60–66, 67–76, 61–66, 62–66, 77–83, 74–76, 77–83, 82–83,
JoinViews 2–3, 141–148, 142–148, 147–148
89–98, 103–118, 122–127, 116–118, 122–127, 123–127,
jpeg 149–154
124–127, 133–140, 125–127, 126–127, 141–148, 149–154,
K 142–148, 144–148, 146–148, 147–148, 149–154, 150–154,
151–154, 152–154, 153–154, 39–44
Keyer 13–29, 45–59, 49–59, 56–59, 63–66, 94–98, 95–98 over 9–29, 10–29, 13–29, 14–29, 17–29, 18–29, 23–29, 27–29, 28–29,
keyframe 55–59, 56–59, 68–76, 70–76, 73–76, 80–83, 108–118, 40–44, 41–44, 42–44, 43–44, 44, 46–59, 53–59, 54–59,
112–118, 113–118, 122–127, 125–127, 137–140, 139–140 63–66, 68–76, 69–76, 72–76, 74–76, 75–76, 78–83, 82–83,
keying 45–59, 50–59, 52–59, 53–59, 85–98, 132–140, 158 84–98, 86–98, 87–98, 95–98, 96–98, 104–118, 118, 124–127,
125–127, 126–127, 130–140, 152–154
L overlay 26–29, 41–44, 46–59, 67–76, 74–76, 78–83, 80–83, 83,
84–98, 87–98, 130–140, 131–140
layout 19–29, 29
Layout 9–29, 29 P
LightWrap 17–29, 48–59, 59, 116–118
lock range 34–44 Paint 77–83, 78–83, 79–83, 80–83, 81–83, 82–83, 88–98, 148
loop 72–76 pan
Panning 13–29, 21–29, 99–118, 104–118, 111–118, 112–118,
M 113–118
Pan 100–118
mask 18–29, 38–44, 40–44, 44, 63–66, 64–66, 67–76, 74–76, 75–76,
panes 8, 8–29, 9, 9–29
118, 126–127, 132–140
parallex 99–118, 110–118
masks 38–44, 118, 126–127
pattern 84–98, 86–98, 87–98, 132–140
matchmove 84–98, 85–98, 87–98
Perlin 105–118
matte 41–44, 42–44, 44, 45–59, 49–59, 51–59, 52–59, 54–59, 63–66,
Plugins 48–59, 59, 115–118, 116–118, 148
64–66, 74–76, 79–83, 92–98, 96–98
plus 13–29, 42–44, 43–44, 44, 118, 124–127, 125–127
Maya 149–154
polyhedrons 50–59
merge 17–29, 40–44, 43–44, 45–59, 46–59, 68–76, 74–76, 75–76,
Premult 46–59, 56–59, 58–59, 94–98, 95–98, 111–118, 128–140,
96–98, 111–118, 116–118, 136–140, 140, 145–148
135–140
Merge 17–29, 40–44, 41–44, 42–44, 43–44, 44, 46–59, 48–59,
pre-multiplied 46–59
56–59, 59, 68–76, 75–76, 95–98, 96–98, 111–118, 112–118,
Primatte 12–29, 13–29, 45–59, 49–59, 50–59, 51–59, 52–59, 53–59,
116–118, 118, 128–140, 136–140
54–59, 56–59, 59, 92–98, 115–118
MergeGeo 111–118
Primatte RT 49–59
Metadata 10–29
Primatte RT+ 49–59
midtone 60–66
ProcGeo 105–118
MixViews 2–3, 141–148, 142–148, 147–148
Project Settings 21–29, 32–44, 91–98, 141–148
morph 132–140
Properties 8–29, 9–29, 11–29, 14–29, 15–29, 32–44, 39–44, 77–83,
morphing 128–140
96–98, 104–118, 105–118, 108–118, 116–118, 152–154
Morphing 132–140
Properties Bin 9–29, 11–29, 14–29, 104–118, 152–154
motion blur 72–76, 84–98, 86–98, 118, 119–127, 121–127, 124–127,
Proxies 32–44

INDEX
proxy 78–83, 32–44, 33–44, 49–59, 34–44, 98, 149–154, 152–154, Stabilize2D 72–76, 88–98
152–154, 152–154, 32–44, 32–44, 32–44, 153–154 Stack 79–83
Stereo 2–3, 141–148, 142–148, 147–148
Q stereoscopic 2–3, 141–148, 142–148, 147–148
Stereoscopic 2–3, 141–148, 142–148, 147–148
Quicktime 149–154
Straight 46–59, 101–118
R stroke 78–83, 79–83, 80–83, 81–83, 82–83
subdivide 104–118
R3D 119–127, 121–127 suppression 46–59, 50–59, 52–59, 53–59, 57–59, 65–66, 96–98
range 21–29, 22–29, 34–44, 45–59, 46–59, 48–59, 49–59, 51–59, swatch 47–59, 61–66
56–59, 57–59, 58–59, 60–66, 61–66, 65–66, 67–76, 79–83,
96–98, 107–118, 119–127, 120–127, 122–127, 134–140, T
149–154, 151–154, 153–154
Three-point tracking 85–98
RAW 149–154
tif 149–154
Redcode 149–154
Tilt 100–118
Reformat 35–44, 36–44, 91–98, 116–118
TimeBlur 116–118, 148
reformatting 35–44
timeline 21–29, 22–29, 23–29, 80–83, 126–127, 134–140
region of interest 28–29, 149–154
TimeWarp 125–127
remapped 72–76, 73–76
Tool bar 9–29
render 149–154
track 84–98, 85–98, 86–98, 87–98, 88–98, 124–127
Render 9–29, 48–59, 103–118, 147–148, 151–154, 152–154, 153–154
Transform 35–44, 36–44, 37–44, 38–44, 67–76, 68–76, 72–76,
resolution 33–44, 153–154
73–76, 85–98, 86–98, 87–98, 88–98, 91–98, 96–98, 101–118,
Retime 120–127
104–118, 111–118, 128–140, 136–140, 139–140
Retiming 119–127, 121–127
transformations 67–76, 72–76, 88–98, 128–140
Reveal 77–83
TransformMasked 67–76, 72–76
RGBA 38–44, 40–44
translate 67–76, 73–76, 87–98, 91–98, 100–118, 104–118, 113–118,
ROI 28–29, 149–154
114–118
Roll 100–118
tree 8–29, 9–29, 11–29, 16–29, 18–29, 19–29, 40–44, 56–59, 59, 70–
rotate 27–29, 67–76, 68–76, 73–76, 87–98, 91–98, 104–118,
76, 71–76, 102–118, 113–118, 132–140, 133–140, 136–140,
111–118, 112–118, 125–127
152–154, 158
Roto 9–29
Two-point tracking 85–98
rotoscope 130–140
rotoscoping 54–59, 132–140, 148 U
rotoshapes 45–59
Roto shapes 9–29 under 9–29, 27–29, 29, 32–44, 33–44, 35–44, 38–44, 40–44, 42–44,
round? 78–83 43–44, 44, 45–59, 46–59, 49–59, 60–66, 63–66, 65–66, 67–76,
68–76, 72–76, 74–76, 75–76, 76, 80–83, 81–83, 85–98, 86–98,
S 90–98, 92–98, 94–98, 100–118, 105–118, 106–118, 108–118,
111–118, 113–118, 114–118, 115–118, 116–118, 117–118,
S3D 2–3, 141–148, 142–148, 147–148
119–127, 122–127, 128–140, 129–140, 131–140, 132–140,
Saturation 65–66
134–140, 136–140, 139–140, 141–148, 150–154, 152–154,
scale 13–29, 32–44, 33–44, 36–44, 67–76, 73–76, 84–98, 87–98,
153–154
91–98, 101–118, 111–118, 113–118, 143–148, 152–154
Scanline 149–154 V
Scanline Render 116–118, 148
Scene node 102–118, 105–118, 109–118, 113–118 Value 65–66
screen 41–44, 26–29, 27–29, 46–59, 42–44, 49–59, 65–66, 50–59, vector 9–29, 77–83, 80–83, 83, 122–127, 123–127, 124–127
51–59, 53–59, 54–59, 85–98, 135–140, 96–98, 143–148, Viewer 8, 9, 11, 21, 26, 27, 60, 61, 67, 69, 70, 80, 81, 86, 87, 92, 100,
143–148, 144–144, 27–29 102, 128, 129, 130, 131, 141, 142, 146, 149, 153
script 11–29, 12–29, 13–29, 16–29, 20–29, 28–29, 35–44, 38–44, Viewer Pane 21–29, 26–29
45–59, 49–59, 60–66, 61–66, 65–66, 68–76, 77–83, 81–83,
85–98, 88–98, 90–98, 99–118, 105–118, 107–118, 111–118, W
115–118, 118, 119–127, 120–127, 122–127, 125–127, 126–
warp 88–98, 125–127, 128–140, 130–140, 131–140, 136–140,
127, 127, 128–140, 134–140, 141–148, 142–148, 143–148,
137–140, 140
145–148, 147–148, 150–154, 152–154, 153–154
Warping 119–127, 125–127, 128–140, 129–140, 136–140
sequence 22–29, 34–44, 38–44, 49–59, 68–76, 84–98, 86–98,
whitepoint 48–59, 60–66, 61–66
88–98, 89–98, 90–98, 108–118, 124–127, 134–140, 149–154,
150–154, 151–154 X
shadow 38–44, 39–44, 40–44, 43–44, 44, 60–66, 64–66, 93–98,
95–98, 130–140, 131–140 xpm 149–154
Shuffle 43–44, 44, 56–59, 94–98, 96–98
Shuffle Copy 56–59 Y
shuffleoffset 118
YUV 149–154
shutter 72–76, 117–118, 118, 120–127, 124–127, 125–127, 126–127
Shutteroffset 72–76
SideBySide 2–3, 141–148, 142–148, 147–148
smoothing 87–98
specular 38–44, 43–44, 44
spill 46–59, 49–59, 65–66, 50–59, 52–59, 53–59, 53–59, 96–98, 53–59
spill suppression 50–59, 52–59, 65–66
Spin 100–118
splice 132–140
SplineWarp 132–140
Sponge 52–59
stabilize 85–98, 86–98, 88–98

a Fatbars Limited ™ Training Services
Certified Series :
Level 1
Certification Digital Compositing with Nuke 101
This certified course, Nuke 101, introduces students

to the primary feature set and basic interface of
Nuke. Nuke has a unique channel based approach
and supports stereoscopic imaging, state-of-the
art image based keying and full 3D compositing
including the capability to import geometry, lights,
cameras and shaders. Using customized visual
effects shots created for this course, students will
learn to combine live action shots with computer-
generated elements, using blue and green screen
shots, combining motion tracking data into Nuke’s
3D compositing world and creating multi-layer
composites using Nuke’s node tree organisational
structure.
Certification
By attending this certified course, you will receive
an official completion certificate from The Foundry
Training Central Asia. Differentiate yourself to
employers, and prospective clients as a Certified
Nuke End User. By passing certification exams, you
become a Certified Nuke End User for a chosen level.
All certificate issued is recognized by The Foundry

and successful candidates will be listed in the
official The Foundry Training Central Asia Website :
www.thefoundrytrainingcentral-asia.com
AUTHORISED TRAINING CENTRAL ASIA
Fatbars Limited
www.fatbars.tv
Book Level Beginning / Intermediate ISBN 978-988-18465-1-8

Computer Book Shelf Category Visual Effects Printed and bound in Hong Kong , SAR, China
Lesson files included with this book

Digital Compositing With Nuke 101 (PDFDrive)

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a Fatbars Limited ™ Training Services

AUTHORISED TRAINING CENTRAL ASIA

Certified Nuke Training Series

Digital Compositing with Nuke 101

www.TheFoundryTrainingCentral-Asia.com copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

Stereoscopic images courtesy of Stereostock Limited -http://store.3dstereostock.com/

The Foundry Training Central Asia copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

The Foundry Training Central Asia copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

LESSON 1 : GETTING AROUND NUKE

LESSON 2 : FILE BROWSER AND REFORMAT

The Foundry Training Central Asia copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

LESSON 4 : COLOUR CORRECTION

The Foundry Training Central Asia copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

• Transforming Strokes/ Shapes/Groups (Transform tab) 82

The Foundry Training Central Asia copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

LESSON 9 : TEMPORAL OPERATIONS

LESSON 11 : STEREOSCOPY COMPOSITING

The Foundry Training Central Asia copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

Read Image #1 Read Image #2

Image Keyer Blur Filter

Image #1 Over Image #2

Write Results to Disk

The Nuke Window

Node Graph / Curve Editor Pane

The Foundry Training Central Asia Pg 8 copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

The Foundry Training Central Asia Pg 9 copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

TIME Retiming image sequences.

CHANNEL Channel management.

COLOUR Applying colour correction effects.

KEYER Extracting procedural mattes.

MERGE Layering background and foreground elements.

TRANSFORM Translating, scaling, tracking, and stabilizing elements.

3D 3D compositing nodes and tools.

METADATA Metadata Information of the selected material.

OTHER Additional operators for script and viewer management.

The Foundry Training Central Asia Pg 10 copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

Hotkey for the node

Understanding Nodes And The Node Graphs

Working With Nodes

The Foundry Training Central Asia Pg 11 copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

Node Graph / Curve Editor Pane

The Foundry Training Central Asia Pg 12 copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

Customizing The Nodes

The Foundry Training Central Asia Pg 13 copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

Managing The Properties Panel

Lock The Properties Bin

The Foundry Training Central Asia Pg 14 copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

Other Controls On All Properties Panels

Reverts any changes made

Changes the colour used for the node’s

The Foundry Training Central Asia Pg 15 copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

The Foundry Training Central Asia Pg 16 copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

Bend connecting arrows

The Foundry Training Central Asia Pg 17 copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

Indicator Examples Indicator’s Description

The node has been disabled using an expression.

One or more of the node parameters are animated over time.

One or more of the node parameters are being driven by an expression.

Grouping Nodes With The Backdrop Node

The Foundry Training Central Asia Pg 18 copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

Grouping Nodes With The Group Node

The Foundry Training Central Asia Pg 19 copyright © Fatbars Limited 2010

To view the nodes nested inside a <Group> node:

• Transforming Strokes/ Shapes/Groups (Transform tab) 82