8

Last week The Foundry released a new version of Nuke. In the past Nuke has always enjoyed a wonderful update cycle, with what Russell Dodgson calls RotoPaint bounces [agreed some of the bugs in the RotoPaint node so bad it's kinda embarrassing for The Foundry] the updates have always been really good. This time is no different. Nuke 8 has new tools and make overs to older ones. Everyone seems to be talking about the new match grade and the new text tool.

Match Grade used to be a tool kinda like the furnace plug ins, they sometimes work[in ideal situations only]. The new tool seems to work pretty good and will be helpful to have LUTs being made for your inputProcess. Clients are used to seeing their movie look how they have been seeing it all thru out post. Match grade is working pretty well for me. This will make QuickTimes easier to make for clients.

There are two features that might be overlooked.

The first of these I think shows how The Foundry feels about the GPU. The GPU acceleration used to only be in NukeX. Now full GPU acceleration is in Nuke. The second of these features is the Blinkscript node. Which makes it easy for TDs [or any Nuke artist with C++ programming skills] to make custom nodes that run on the GPU. You can setup complex nodes that render really fast on your supported GPU.

The full frame processing in the viewer is so good. So many times the supervisor says zoom in on that as he works over your shoulder, you zoom in only to have to wait for Nuke to redraw that part of the frame. Enable this feature and fear no more. It's simple but nice.

The camera tracker in Nuke 8 has been reworked and their is some new stuff in their that seems really cool. I have been playing around with the Stills Solver and it works really well. The interface to the node has changed so have a look here.

Help has been completely redone. It's really good. It was a little strange having Nuke drop you into your browser but the help is great. Movies and step by steps if you are using the tool for the first time.

You can grab a copy to play with for 15 days for free from The Foundry. You can also see a great presentation from the Nuke8 event in London.

I'm off to see what broke in RotoPaint.