When the first beta of Nuke 7 was available I was excited to have a look. I was hoping for some very basic fixes. I have never liked the tracker. The tracker in Nuke has always felt half baked. The RotoPaint node has huge problems. If it weren't for paint being universally horrible in compositing packages, the foundry would field a huge amount of support email.
The Foundry has done a lot to address these very problems.
The tracker really seems to be reworked. Even the math the tracks use to find the pixels from the last frame seems different. The one feature that is really great is how most of the controls are in the viewer now. You dont have to float the properties panel over the viewer. Shake had a tracker that did this and this makes tracking so much easier when there was a lot of tracking to do. You can have as many trackers as you want, adding them til you have your whole scene tracked. A really great feature. You can average tracks as well which is really handy if you have high frequency jitter in a plate. You can also start your track by hand, tracking the points you need. Then have Nuke track within those key frames. You then can go thru and fix the sections were there are problems. It's also very handy, and implemented very well. The Foundry has also added the ability to create transforms and cornerpins right from the tracker. No more dragging and making cornerpins. I wont miss doing that at all. The Nuke Tracker is now really good.
Rotopaint is looking better. The RotoPaint feels less buggy. I'll explain. RotoPaint has always felt broken and by using it you were headed down a path that might not have a end. Sure it was fine for painting a quick clean plate or touching up some hair in the few frames for a challenging greenscreen comp. But anymore that you where headed into a world of hurt. To many times I have or someone I know has been burned by the RotoPaint Node. I have watch an artist get up and walk because the only paint we have is Nuke. The best painters I know have always hated the paint in Nuke. It's getting better. The onionskin still doesn't have the option to invert your overlay. A must have for low contrast painting.
Framehold and Timeoffset for the 3D system. I'll say it again "Framehold and Timeoffset for the 3D system".
The modeler has been reworked. Building out scenes is quicker, easier and much more fun. The new geo nodes that allow for Extrusion and Bevel are great. I can't wait for Modo to start working its way into Nuke.
Here are some additional links for more information.
I am looking forward to diving more into Nuke 7 and using it in a real world environment.