All language subtitles for nuk902-class01

hello welcome to class No. 1 of level 2 for nuke

for trainers

my name is Matt Leonard

and in this first class of

our second level

we're gonna be looking at

preferences inside of nuke

and not the most glamorous thing

but something that you're gonna find useful

and something that I know people

are gonna wanna know about as you're teaching them

also gonna be looking at some more utilities

including the precomp node and the discach node

and was gonna be looking at the contact sheet

and the layer contact sheet

so this class is gonna be one of those

classes that isn't gonna be project focused

but I think it will still be

of great benefit

and I thought this would be a good class to start the

new level with okay

the first thing I wanna do before we get into

the preferences is have a quick talk about this caching

and we're gonna be looking at this caching later on

in the class

but I wanted just to

kind of go into some of the details of it at this point

the reason why I'm doing it

the very beginning of the class

and not when we get into the disc caching

is because this will also affect

some of the things we're gonna see in the preferences

so seem like a good

point to talk about the uh

disc caching

now to talk about this caching

we also need to understand hash

and hash is an identifier

which stores and receives data

from the tree

and this is actually a ideal

or kind of a number

so if we come across

having selected this readnote

and I come down to edit nodes

and info viewer

this comes up

this viewer information comes up

tells us lots of

really useful things

gives us information about the file size

gives us information about the paths

etcetera etcetera

but the thing that is most interesting

with regards to caching and hashing

is that we can actually physically see the hash ID

or the hash version

here at the very top

now if I was to

come in and do an update

having reloaded the input

as I'm gonna take the read one

and I'm gonna hit reload

and we can know that when you put the mouse over

it tells you that it reloads the image from the disc

what it also does is it changes the hash ideal

the hash version

so if I press update

we now get a new hash version

okay the other time that the hash version is changed

is when a knob is changed

that makes a difference to the image

so if you do something that affects the image

in the tree

then that's also going to adjust the hash

and it's the hashing

that tells the disc hash when to update

so let's now come across and talk about cashing

and specifically

let's start with the viewer

cash the viewer cash actually

caches every frame it views to disk

when you play through the segments

it then tries to read that cash whenever possible

so we know that when we hit play

it runs through quite slowly

and what is now doing is it's caching

those frames to disk

when we then rewind and hit play again

often it plays faster

and the reason why it does that is because

the disc cash is actually reading off that information

off the disc

which is kind of stored and has ready access to

now you can also add a cash

to other parts of the scene via the Disc Cash note

and this is what we're gonna be talking about later on

in the class

but you'll find that down here in

the menu here at the bottom under Disc Cash

okay so I'll just bring it in for the moment

now when would you need to use this discach node

the kind of thing you'd wanna use it on is when

you always find that a

node in your tree is just constantly flashing yellow

so it's constantly being processed

something like the bilateral

that would be where it would be useful to

put a disc cache node in there

okay and that would go underneath the node

such as the bilateral

now if you need to clean the disc cash

then you come in to render

and clear this cash here

and that will

clear all of that out of the uh

of the disc

now the disc cache node caches to disc

scan lines on its input

as they are requested by its output

and this can be really useful for a number of reasons

first off if you have a really large composite

you can break the notary into sections

and cash any branch that you're no longer working on

so this would be a good place to put a disc cash node

also if you're reading a file from a network drive

then if you add a disc cash note after the read

that's gonna speed up your composite

cause what it's gonna do is

it's actually then going to start reading

off of your local disc as opposed to the network disc

so that's obviously gonna be faster in most cases

and another reason you may wanna use the disc cash note

is before you do a roto or roto paint mode

and that's just gonna help speed up the flipping

of frames now

both the disc cash and the viewer cash notes

are saved in the same folder or directory okay

and you'll see that once we get into the preferences

where that is

so a lot of people ask

how can I speed up nuke

and this is one of the ways

you can use the caching folder

and have it connected into a fast raid

or a fast disc

and that's definitely gonna help you

and unlike the viewer cash

the disc cash note affects your render

and is always saved in floating point

where the viewer isn't always

so that's a general overview as to how the caching

and the hash works inside of nuke

so we're gonna get more into that later in the class

but I just wanted to explain that bit

at the outset

cause we're gonna be dipping into that as I said

as we get into preferences

and then as we come and look at

this cash and memory caching later on in the class

so from here

let's now get into looking at the preferences

now in Windows and Linux

you're gonna find your preferences under headed

and down here at the bottom

but on the mag

they are under the nuke

name menu here

and we've got preferences

okay so what we have is a whole series of tabs

and under each tab is obviously the specific

set of preferences that that tab

is covering

so let's just do a very brief overview

preferences tab

this basically deals with setting things like

colour schemes

um automatic backup of files

memory usage

um certain node defaults

so you can set those kind of things

and script command

dialogue defaults

the windows

this is settings

for window positions tool tips

windows snapping

etcetera The Control Panel

is settings for the behaviour of

the Control Panel itself okay

then we have appearances

and this obviously deals with changing the colours

the fonts the um

interface appearance

then we have the node colours

and this enables us to

adjust settings

for changing the colour of different nodes

and the viewer overlay

the note graph itself is a very useful one

this enables you to change the appearance of the

note graph for examples

the colours fonts

backgrounds grids

dots and the note behaviours within it

then we have the viewer and again

this is another very useful one

this enables to change the settings

of the viewer

colours controls

interactions

speeds and the buffer bit depth of the viewer

finally we have the script editor

and these are settings

for changing the behaviour and syntax

highlighting

colours for the script

editor okay

so let's begin to work through these

and we're not probably gonna go through

all of them

or all of the

things in here

but I'm gonna give you

the most useful ones

or the ones that you probably need to be aware of

which I'm guessing are gonna be 80% of what's in here

now obviously

the manual covers everything

to do with the preferences so

if you need to go back and refresh yourself

or just wanna get take a look at that

I would highly recommend going and checking out

the uh the manual

and if you search for preferences

tab that will

get you to the right page

okay top of the

preferences

we have the presets

this enables us to

pick a style

so we can have

the standard

which is what we've been using

up until now

or you can have silver

which is this

now sometimes I do

use this when I'm teaching

I don't find it very

um high friendly when I'm working

but what sometimes happens is

you end up teaching in a room

that doesn't have

the best lighting conditions

especially if

the room is brighter than you'd want

this is actually

easier to see on a

projector than

the dark version is

so sometimes I will switch for

to this just for

purposes of teaching

in an over bright room

now we can change the

overall look of Nook

and then save that as a preset

obviously we've just got standard

and silver in here

but we could save our

own presets

and use that

but that's gonna involve a bit of

scripting or

a very small amount of scripting

and we'll come to that

at the end of

the preferences

so we won't jump into that straight away okay

the next section down

this next button

we have the script

command dialog

defaults to TCL

now basically

when this is on

the script commands that you

use inside of

nuke will be

tickle or TCL

if you turn it off

it's going to revert to being Python okay

so depending on

if people wanting to

use TCL or Python

in their script commands

this is the

button to switch on

and off honesty

co off is Python

now the next one we

have is the show

menu from previous

item under cursor

now what does this do

when this is checked

which is obviously by default

right click menus are

opened with

the previous

selected item

under the cursor

let me give

you an example

just Butch this over

and I right click

and I go to image

and I go to

constant click

we get a constant

if I right click again

um cursor on

mouse is directly

over the constant

so we can grab it again

and I find this incredibly useful

and I know we've talked about this in the past

if I turn this off

and I right click

you can now

see that that

he's actually lost

so again if I come to constant

right click again

you can see

we're back to kind of a default position

we don't have

that highlighted for us

so generally

I would keep this on

I find that much

more useful

now it's probably

also worth noting

and as you saw then

as you change

the preferences

you don't have to close it

for them to take effect

now you got

two other options

if you save

the preferences

having made changes

it saves them into

your nuke preference

file in your home directory

and so if I make some changes hit save

that's then

kind of hardwired into nuke

next time you start nuke

they'll be there okay

if I make some changes

and suddenly decide

I shouldn't have

done that you

can revert to saved

and that will then

call up the

file and preferences settings

based off of

the last time

you pressed

save preferences

but if you just wanna make some changes such as

um change the

shame menus

on previous

item on the cursor

that we just looked at

the minute you make a change in

the preferences

that kind of becomes

available to

you straight away

and if you then just hit close

it will just make those changes

for this current session

and nuke so

if you were to

stop nuke and restart it

it wouldn't restart

with where you last were

it would restart

based on the last time

you use these

save preferences right

let's go down to

our next section

the files and

path first off

we have this

auto save file name

and this basically gives you

the directory

structure and

the name of

the auto save

that's gonna be

taking place

okay so you

can change that

if you want to

I personally find that

where it is

works absolutely fine

auto save after idle

basically if

you don't do

anything 5 seconds

it saves incredibly

useful Force

Auto save after 30 seconds

this basically means if

you aren't idle

for 5 seconds

then after 30 seconds

it will save

anyway whether

you've been idle or not okay

so pretty straightforward

next up we have memory

the first thing

we have is this

cash memory

usage percent

this is basically

the percent of memory that you

are going to be

giving to nuke

while it's working

so the default is 50

and that means that 50% of

your system

memory will be used

for nuke leaving

the other 50% to

run your OS

run Photoshop

whatever else

you've got open that

you need okay

if you wanna change it

obviously you

can do that

next up we have disc cash

and this is

the folder where

when you use

your viewer

and you play

your viewer

and it's obviously

cashing that to disc

that's the location of that

viewer cash okay

then we have

the disc cash size

so this determines

in gigabytes

how big that disc

cash will be

and 10 seems to be

a pretty good amount um

then you have

the paint disc cash

and that's again

face similar

it sets the maximum size

for the Roto

Paint disc cache

so you wanna

make sure that

that's a good amount

and 10 gigabytes

seems to be ample

for anything

I've ever seen

then we have this

nuke memory

available for paint

and again this is

uh 60% memory

so this sets

the limit of

the memory uses

for the Roto paint

and again I find 60%

seems to be

absolutely fine

and then finally

you have the

undo history size

in megabytes

so basically 50

megabytes is

put aside for your

undo history

and I know if

you're like me

undo is a very

useful thing

and then you can set

the minimum

undo entries

which is four

so you're always gonna have

four undoes

so people ask

what happens if my undo

history size

is exceeded

it basically just loses

the old stuff

adding the new stuff

to the top of

the list so

you'll always

be in a good

place next up

we have a node

defaults new merge

nodes connect to

the a input

what this does

is basically determines

whether the

a or the B side

of a merge is

connected to this

selected node

you have so

let me give

you an example

let's make a

checkerboard

and then with this on

I press m for merge

and you can see that the a side is added to the merge

let's delete it

turn this off

now when I click my checkerboard and hit m for merge

the B side is selected

and this is the way I tend to work I prefer

the B side to be selected and the a side to be empty

so that's what that does

and then you have auto key photo shapes

this is again if we press 0 in the note graph

you can see that we have at the top here

once we come in and

we begin to make some changes

let's add this

and we come across and you can see that we have

auto key is already switched on here

and you see over here too

now if this is switched off

then next time we make a Roto node over Roto

let's make some changes

you can see the now auto keys switched off again

I tend to keep that switched on

I find that really useful

finally we have allowed trial mode in OFX plugins

now this is to do with

how nuke handles rendering of these tools

one setting

if it can't find the license for the RFX plugin

it produces an error

as long as obviously

the plugin honors the internal error setting properly

and with the other

it renders with a watermark

right let's go across to the next tab

the Windows tab

okay top of the list

we have tool tips on

or if you unselected tool tips off

obviously depending on where you put your mouse

you get lots of useful tool tips

if this is switched off

you lose all of those

so if you feel you don't want tool tips

then people can switch it off

here the position section

this deals with kind of windows

now when you do things like open up floating windows

the colour picker

things like that

nuke basically remembers where they were saved

and if you wanna clear that information

so they end up in their kind of

default position or general positions

you can then come in

just clear them

here I find it

I hardly ever need to do that

unless you get yourself in a situation where

you move it

across to one monitor

and then you don't have that monitor for some reason

and you can't find your colour palettes or your various

um stored positions of Windows

you can just come in and clear it and they'll

return to that default position

floating Windows

this is really kind of a Linux based thing

and it basically

is used to fix problems with floating Windows

and it depends on whether you're using the GNOME

or the KDE as to which one of these you use now

if you're gonna be teaching people that are using Linux

you may wanna have a quick look at this to uh

just work out

what's the best way for them to uh

have this operating

but it's very much gonna depend on

whether they are using

one or the other system

and how you're floating windows

or their floating windows are gonna kind of interact

with the whole Linux

um UI and things like that

the windows end up in front or behind and

things like that OK

then we have this show dialog under the cursor

now when this is checked

pop up dialog boxes appear

in the current position of the cursor

when it's not checked

they kind of appear in the middle of

the nuke user interface

you might wanna keep this on

I tend to keep this on all the time

the next section under Windows is snapping

now this enables you to kind of work with any kind

of floating windows that you may have

so the first one is snap when moving windows

so what does this do

when it's checked

you can move floating windows

and windows snap to the screen edges

and other floating windows

so you can see that if this is on

and I make a floating window

so let's make

so this rotor

I'm gonna hold down

command or control

double click

can see now as I move it basically snaps

to the edge

you can just see it

kinda snapping there and there

and if I was to open another one

then you can see also this one

kind of wants to snap

you can kind of see them

snapping to each other okay

so that's what that does

I tend to not use it so much

and then you can snap if power

without touching

so basically

that does the same thing

but it works

based on the threshold below

to determine

whether the windows that are come

become parallel to each other

then snap to each other

again I tend to not use that either

but if people wanna

use a lot of floating windows

and want them all snap together then uh

these are the options to use

next up is the

script loading

now the first one is

reopen viewers when loading a saved script

now this is really interesting

basically when it's checked

you can open a safe script

and any viewers that were in the

script are opened

in the viewer pane

so this is really useful

just to make sure that all your viewers

open correctly

okay next up

we have use window layout from

saved script

now I find this really useful

this basically

enables you to

rearrange your interface

based off of the script that's been saved

from a previous setup to say

I rearrange my interface

and I put properties

panel viewers

notegraph etcetera

in different places

and I save my script

normally when you

reopen nuke

and it defaults to its normal kind of foundry layout

if you were to

reopen that last script

the last script will kind of

abide by the default

layer of nuke

or whatever layout

you currently had set

if you have this option on

it says okay

when this was saved

everything was in a slightly different position

I'll reestablish those

pain positions

so that is your kind of back to where you were

not only with

your script

but also in

the layout of your UI

so I tend to keep that on

I find that

really useful

the last section is

the file browser

now the only option is

the start file browser

from most recent used directory

so it's again

very straightforward

it basically

keeps you at

the place that

you were last night when

you went to a certain folder

so for instance

if I press R for read

and I come into my

nuke folder

and I come in

to include and open FX

and I just open this

so obviously

not gonna do anything

cause it's bad

but if I then go to read again

I'm back in that same folder

but if I turn this off

you won't end up

at that most

recent used

directory okay

so let's get rid of this

and move to

our next tab

which is our

Control Panels

okay first up at the top

new panels go

now this is a

drop down menu

of three methods

we can say that a

new panel goes in its own window

and that means that

each control panel appears in its own

floating window

so if we put this on

and let's make

a blur node

you can see

the blur node

instead of appearing on our

properties over here

pops up in its own

floating window

let's make a grade node

again the grade node then appears in its own

floating window

so that's that option

let's get rid of these

the second option down

which is the default option is

the top of the

control panel

so if I make a blur

it appears at the top

if I then make a grade

it then appears at the top

and if you have

multiple uh

windows open in the

properties panel

at the same time

such as say 3

you can see what would happen

would be if we again delete this

just come out to our blur then make a grade

the grade then goes above the blur

and if we make say another node

say roto node

it then goes above that one

so that the new node is always appearing

at the top of the properties panel

if we set it to bottom

then it's pretty obvious what's gonna happen

blur appears first

and then the grade node

instead of appearing above the blur appears below okay

I tend to keep it at the top

I find that most useful

then we have the maximum loads in the properties bin

but I tend to keep mine set to 1

we've already talked about this

but if you need multiple ones

like I just showed you with 3 open at one time

you can adjust this number

okay next up

we have these four check boxes

first one is reopen

acts like a new pain

now this basically if checked

and you reopen a floating control pain

Luke opens the pain in the same position as a new pain

even if you move the pain to a new location earlier

by default I just find this is much better switched off

okay then we have double click moves pane

pretty straightforward

when it's on

you can basically double click on a node

his control panel is already open

to move the control panel to a place

where the new panel goes

so pretty straightforward

if we have say a grade node or blur node

a grade node

roto node color correction node

and we have this say set to four

and we go through these

they're all in here

if we want it to go to

the top of the control pain

we double click to move it

double click on grade

it now goes to the top

okay so that's what that does

the next one up is the closed

properties panel when empty

so basically made a blur

and a grade

and then we selected them

it just then closes the properties panel finally

we have expand collapse panels in the properties bin

to match the selection

so let's put this on

make a grade

a blur and a colour correct

you can now see that the ones that aren't

currently selected

and the only one we have selected it at the moment

is the colour correction node

everything else just minimizes

so this would be an alternative to saying

I do want the

properties panel to have multiple nodes in it

but I really don't want them all open

and cluttering the place up

if you set this option

depending on which one you click on

would depend on which one opens

so they're all in here

and as you click

they then just open

but what they don't then do is rearrange their order

but if you double clicked on blur

it would then obviously use

the option 2 above

which moves the paint to the top

okay so this could be a happy medium

if you do want multiple things in here

if nothing is selected

the properties panel is left open here

and you can see everything in here

and you could open and close it yourself

if required

if you don't want it to clear the properties panel

you can use our

heart removal pains here

and that would get rid of them again

double clicking on them

but then reopen them

okay so I'm just gonna get rid of those

I'm gonna leave that on for the time being

now the final thing is the input button does

first off what is

the input button says

make a grade node

the input button is this button here

it's the one that looks like a node

with an input and an output

or two inputs and an output

so let's make a couple of notes

let's make a Grade

a roto a blur

colour correction

and a transform

okay so first option

which is the default option is the

it selects the input node only

so if we click it

and we see this drop down menu

let's choose the uh

the blur first

drop down menu

the input is the roto

so it basically selects

the roto node

we can also

select the second option

which is scroll Node Interview

so if we click on say

the transform

and then do colour correction

it basically if the colour correction is off screen

like over here that we come to transform

choose the colour correction

it then moves that into screen so when it was off

it moves it in so again

just through way of illustrating that

we have the transform

we say we want to look at the input

which is the colour correction is off screen

but with scroll node into window selected here

when we click it then brings it into the view here

the final option is center the node

and this is the one I find most useful

so let's again just mess these around a bit

imagine you're very messy

we come to our blur

and we come to here

and we say we want to look at the photo

so we click it

now centers the photo directly in handograph okay

so depending on what you want

select it only

which means don't make any changes or move it

scroll the node

interview or centre the node well

I find centre the node is often the best one

so I'm gonna leave mine on there

next up we have our appearance tab

so the appearance panel

as we said earlier in the overview

controls the whole appearance of nuke

and this is what you can change to customize nuke

and then save it as a preference later

so first off

you obviously have

everything to do with the fonts that we're seeing

so you can use the standard kind of Helvetica or aerial

or if you want

you can go nuts and use a tight face like this

if you find that useful to uh

to use personally

uh you're most certainly not gonna find that useful

so let's just come back and set it to Helvetica

you can determine whether it's bold

italic size

etcetera and again

sometimes I increase the size

if you're working on a projector

and it's a little bit blurry or not as clear as

people need who are sitting kind of at the back

if you've got a larger class

you could potentially increase this and all goes

a little bit kindergarten

but it may be helpful for people

who are can't see at the back when you're teaching okay

so I set that back to eleven

then you just have whole bunch of things here that

enable you to change the overall UI colour

so you've got things like background

this obviously changes the background

colour of most of the UI

in fact if I mess with this

you'll be able to see it

and I can then revert to changes

so this is the whole UI interface

so you can uh

get some very cool uh looks if you want

if you wanna change it to the default

you right click and you just set colour to default okay

so that's an easy way to do it

you got your base and again

if I adjust that

you can see it's kind of this colour here

set the defaults

um any highlights

you can change the colour of labels

the colour of buttons

um animation uh marks

in here or keyframe marks appear in the timeline

the playhead at the moment you can see it's orange

come in and make it say uh blue colour

so you can see now we have a blue play head

set to defaults

then in and out Mark

as you can see they're kind of this

ready colour

to those things

the next section deals with the file browser colours

and we know that if we go to the read node

this is our file browser

so we can adjust things like cued item colours

which at the moment are grey

or we can change the focus colour and the focus colour

changes the colour of the highlighting

that indicates the mouse

um pointer is focused on an item

so if I select this you can see

we get a colour here

okay so I changed the focus colour

to maybe uh let's go with the blue

read now you can see we're getting a blue colour there

okay get rid of that and reset it

most of the time

you never gonna wanna change these file browser colours

then we have the file browser option

sequence display mode either hashes or the

percentage d here

now we don't we open a file and it's multiple files

often we can see percentage 4 d

which tells you've got 4 zeros

now this is where you can change it to be

either that or hashes

so if I was to read in a file

you can see that at the moment we're getting hashes

and I select it

we get hashes here

but if I cancel this

change it to percentage d

and do read again

now you can see instead of hashes

we've got percentage o 4 d

and this means we would have four zeros

so be 0 0 0 1 0 0

0 2 etcetera

and again that appears down in the names there

so this will also affect how you save things

so you can either have it useful as percentage A

4D when you save

or you can just use the hashes okay

but it's the display mode

you can use

either or if you actually typing in by hand

again that is all of the display options

pretty straightforward

I'm just gonna revert to save

in case I messed anything up that I shouldn't have done

next up is the node colour

now the node colour

we've already talked about this to some degree in

earlier classes

this basically enables

you to determine what nodes are coloured in what way

and we used it early on to actually find nodes

so first off

we have the two top options

autocolour and shade node autocolour

this basically

colours the nodes based on the classes below

so with this on

these then take effect

and then shaded nodes

this basically just adds the shading that we see here

then we have these

colours that determine the colour of our nodes

so if you choose anything that has besier or roto in

such as a roto node

it gets given the green colour

if you make anything like a rectangle

flood text node

ramp etcetera

so if we make a ramp

can you then get that colour

and it applies to the file names

that's what it's looking for okay

so for instance

if we look at 3D

we've got access camera

scene card or scan line

so if we go to 3D and we come across to say her

her depth solver

do you notice this comes in and it's grey

it's grey because we don't have

projection or silver in any of these classes

especially not in 3D

if we were to add in here project

so this would cover both the projection solver

and the project node

you can now see the minute I do that

it then becomes the red colour that any 3D nodes are

next up we have this user 1 and 2

and this can be used for tools that you're bringing in

that are kinda custom tools or gizmos

and say that you have a whole bunch of gizmos

that you've made

um as part of an industrial light magic toolset or

a double neck toolset or a wetter toolset and the

all those gizmos that you're using a prefix with the

say the name

uh DD for digital domain

they will then

all take on the colour that you choose here

so let's say we will have a red colour

any gizmo you bring in with a prefix of DD

will then be given that note colour

so it makes it very easy

to see what are your custom tools or gizmos etc

so I'm just gonna reset that back to its default colour

finally we have other colours

now this is

anything that doesn't abide by any of these rules

gets given this colour

and that was why when we bought in our

projection solver

it initially was grey again

let's just come in to

say our transforms

and let's go with say

well merge node rather

let's go with say

a switch node

you see this comes in

grey because it doesn't have switch in here

we were to add switch

it then isn't

other notes because it's part of the merge tool set

and then it becomes that blue colour

if it doesn't abide by these

it becomes grey

then remember we're talking about node colours

we've got the colour of the text

the colour if it's selected

so when I select it goes this colour

the selected input

what colour that becomes and the GL colour

and this changes the colour of the viewer overlays

Kay next up we have the notegraph tab

now top of this we have Auto Label

now what is an auto label

if we make a node for instance like a blur node

you can see here where it has in brackets all

this is an auto label

telling us that all the channels are being used

so if I was to change that to say rgba

and then just say take out the green channel

you can now see that it tells us the red

blue and alpha channels are being used

okay so that would be an auto label

also say we make a roto node

and let's just make a mask

so just go ahead and add a rectangle

put this in the alpha channel

and then let's say we make a grade node

and in the grade node

we're going to switch on

masking based off of that alpha channel

see here the auto label tells us that we're using the

RGB channels for grade

and it's being masked based on the alpha channel

so the auto label button

basically turns these on and off

so you can either have it clean

or you can have it with the additional information

let's go ahead and get rid of those

now the next one is highlight running operations

now this is basically the yellow flashing that you see

the icons do or the nodes do

when you're running something through nuke

do you often see the outline of the nodes just flashing

yellow as they're being processed

this basically just turns that on and off

next up we have this node name background

this is basically a an opacity slider

and it deals with adding colour behind extra long names

so make a constant node

the name at the moment fits nicely inside the node

but see what happens when it doesn't

so if I just copy this and paste it a couple of times

let's give us some space

you can see here that

the actual background of the node extends over the text

it's this line that affects the opacity of that

that's the node name background

delete that

put it back to its default

then we've got things like the node name font

which is obviously have better

you can make it whatever you need

then we have the tile size

and this is how big each of the nodes are that we makes

if we made a grade nodes that size

and then we have snapped node

now this is normally on

and this basically aligns the nodes together

so if we added a blur

can see that as we move it

it's it kinda snaps there

you can feel that snapping into place there

and that's what this does

snap to node

it just aligns them

either that way or it will also do it this way

you can just feel that snapping in when you're doing it

may not be visible

but it is snapping

then we have this grid size

now the grid size

doesn't make any sense until you show the grid

and the minute you show the grid

you then notice that you have

these lines that will enable you

if you switch the snap to grid on

to then snap the node directly onto the grid

cause you can then snap the grid

and you can change the grid size to whatever you need

most of the time I leave those off

and then the snap threshold

this basically just defines

the maximum number of pixels

um in which the snapping will kind of uh

lock into place

next we have a series of colours

the first one is literally the

colour of the node graph itself

so you can make that a different colour if required

then you have the overlay colour

and that's literally the colour of the grid

you see in the background if you use that

and then the elbow colour

which is the colour of this diamond

when you had a dot node or an elbow node here

okay so that changes that colour

then we have arrows

now I find this really useful

I tend to keep the first arrow bright red

and then the third one bright red

and what do these do

these are relating into the order or direction in which

the composite is being created

so if we go down or to the right

which is what I would advise building your composite in

it then gives you a black arrow

if for some reason you start building upwards

or cross to the left

it gives you a red arrow telling you that

you're basically building in the wrong direction

and as you begin to move back to the right direction

that red slowly begins to fade back into the black

colour okay

then we have the Cove expression arrows

and the clone arrows

once they've been enabled

we could take this grade

right click

edit and clone

and you see that we have a pinky salmony colour here

that colour is controlled by here

and we can also

if we have an expression set up

have the colour of the expression line defined here

now you can also turn these on and off

visually in the Night Graph by using

either the buttons that we see here or Alton E

Alton E or use the buttons here

okay now the next section

is really just to do with the look of the nodes

arrows coming in and out

so we have the connection top arrow length

so that's the length of the arrow

we have the arrow coming in from the left or the right

you can change the size of that

so that'll be your mask

you could adjust the output connection arrow

you could increase that

you could increase the arrow head length

and the arrowhead width

and you could also change the

actual thickness of the line here

so again let's just reset those

holding down control or command

and just clicking anywhere on the line to reset those

then we have allow picking of connection arrowhead

this is very straightforward

at the moment

you can pick the arrowhead

drag it off

if you turn this off

you can't pick the arrowhead

but you can pick the other end

switch it back on

you can grab the arrow head

or you could connect as always the end

then we've got allow

picking of arrow

elbow to create dot

but we know that if we hold down command

or control and click

we can pull out an elbow joint or a dot node

if you turn this off

then holding down the button as I am now

you don't get anything happening

so that's just on or off

now it works

final thing

almost the final thing is the drag to insert

only works near the middle of the arrow

now say we made a new node here

let's say a colour correction node

we know that the moment if we drag this over

it adds it in

whole line goes white when this is switched on

can see when we're at the top or the bottom

the line doesn't go white

only when you drag to insert

near the middle does it go white

and the last thing is just the oval

size of the dot node

so if we would add a dot

this just defines how big it is

so let's just now move across to the viewer

okay so the viewer tab

this deals with a lot of things happening

actually in the viewer itself

so first thing we have new viewers go on own window

now basically when this is checked

which it normally isn't

each new viewer

you create basically appears in its own floating window

otherwise it appears as separate tabs

so make a new viewer

you see it just appears as a separate tab

if this is switched on

creating a new viewer gives you a floating viewer okay

so that's pretty straightforward

the next down is prevent auto zoom for new viewers

now this is normally off

what this basically does is if you switch this on

and your a being between

two images of different resolutions

it basically changes how the viewers

keep the centre of that image

so if we make some colour bars

and we copy them and paste them here

and we make these ones smaller

to a uh 6 44

80 and we do 1 2

and we're gonna do a wipe

you can see that

basically wiping but the resolution is different

this is zoom to the full extent where this one isn't

if you turn it off like would be the default

now they're both auto zoomed

for that viewer

you can see a slight change here in the edges

as you would expect for the

huge quality difference between

a 2K image and a 6:40 image

but that's basically what you're getting

cause a reasonably new feature in the preferences

to the next one is when viewer is closed

delete its node

so this means if we have two viewers

obviously because of our new viewer

in its own window up here turned off

we get the tab

the tabs here

now if I was to come over and say close the tab

the viewer by default disappears because this is on

if I turn this off

make a new viewer

and then I delete the tab or close the tab

know that the viewer now remains here okay

so by default this should be on

and you don't end up with lots of

new viewers that you don't use

next that we have

apply lookup table to colour channels only

now when this is checked on

which obviously isn't by default

uh lookup tables are only applied to the red

green and blue channels

when it is not checked on

so in its standard

position the lookup tables applied to all the channels

so that's a good thing

next up we have the view buffer bit depth

and this sets the default viewer open gel buffer depth

so float uses full float textures

half float converts to 16 bit

half float and bite uses 8 bits with air diffusion

and that's the default

now a new cassette to 8 bit

software deforms

error diffusion in the conversion of the internal

Floatpoint image data to 8 bit

this is to avoid

appearance of banding due to the reduced bit depth

without this

people often mistaken the assume the banding they

see is actually present in their image data

and try and blur the image or something to remove it

softening the actual image unnecessarily

however because nuke actually works internally at

floating point

there was actually very little likelihood that

the banding is actually taking place

when Geo buffer depth is set to half float or float

and order dithering is applied

rather than error diffusion

the next checkbox

use the GPU for viewer when possible

when this is checked on

the view applies its effect

IE the raid

gamma or the viewer process note in the GPU

when it's possible

have in some cases

like when the monitor output is enabled

or GPU buffer depth is set to bytes

in the viewer settings

effects must still be computed in the GPU

the next checkbox

used GPU for inputs when possible normally

the viewer only attempts to run its own effects

such as the grade or gamma

or the viewer process

again on the GPU itself

however when this box is checked

any note connecting to the viewer

also computed on the GPU when possible

it's worth noting though

that this cannot be done for all the notes

because not all notes have GPU implementation

if nodes are computed on the GPU

the colour values displayed in the viewer

will be inaccurate

and this is because they show

the colour from the last node computed in the GPU prior

to transfer the image onto the graphics card

next up we have a texture size

and this is basically

the size of the texture map for the Opengl preview

you can set it to a 2 5

6 half a k 1 k

2 k whatever you need

I find um 5:12 is fine

unless you're doing some really detailed work

you need to specifically see something

accurately in the viewer

you don't have the

background and foreground colours for 2D and 3D

now we've talked about changing the 3D

colour background

um so that you can see that

we did that

in I believe

week 9 probably

of level one

you also have the foreground colours

and this basically changes the colour

of the border and text in the 2D view

or the 3D view okay

and then you do have our

viewer select colour

and this just

changes the colour of the

select for 3D

so again I tend to just leave that as is

then we have the whole interaction section down here

you can tell

um nuke that the middle button pans

and the left and middle button click together

zoom if you wanna do that

we have our 3D control types

which identify

keep set to Maya

and we talked about this in class 9

we then have things like

they handle sizes of

these are the

sizes of the

control handles that appear in the viewer

for some things like warps

busy eyes transformation handles

anything like that

5 is pretty good

if you wanna make them bigger you can

but they can get a bit

overwhelming

if you make them too big

the handle pick size again

this is basically

the size of the pickable area of handles

so if you have a value of 10

which we have

within 10 pixel radius

you can now pick

the icon size here

this basically controls

the size of the 2D transformation overlay

things like the 3D camera

3D object normals

3D axis on the viewer

stuff like that

okay so by default

is set to 50

seems like a good enough value for me

next up we have the icon scale

if we get a 3D

and we make a card

review the card

can see in here

we have our icon

if we set this down to zero

the controls that we're seeing

pretty much always drawn the same size

regardless of

how much we're zoomed

okay if we set it to

one first off

they go super huge

and the controls now scale with display image

or the 3D scene

as you zoom in and out

you can see

the closer you are

the bigger they get

the further away you go

the smaller they get

somewhere around North Point 1

which is the default

it roughly stays

the same size

wherever you are

next up we have the

object interactive speed

and this sets

how fast mouse movements rotate

and translate

3D axis and cameras

the lower the value

the finer the movement

okay so it's

reasonably low

at the moment

and then the camera

interactive speed

this is very similar

it sets how fast

the mouse movement tumbles and rolls

the 3D view

so the moment

you can see

it's not too bad

we crank it right up

let's crank it up to say ten

see now just goes nuts

and you hardly have to move your mouse at all

okay so keep that at one

if you need to get really fine

you can crank it right down

and now you can see

I move my mouse and it's hard to doing anything

put it up a little bit

see now to do lots of

strokes across the viewer to get it to do a move

then we have Roto Spline

now all these are very similar

you've got the colour of points

curves and transforms

and then the oval line width

and whether you have a shadow when you draw that photo

spline okay

so reasonably straightforward

those things

last up is the script editor

now we have the font

again for the script editor

we have the input section

then we have clear input window on successful

script execution

and what this basically means is

any successful execution of a Python statement example

would disappear from the input panel

of the graph editor and appear in the output panel

so that's normally what we want

echo the Python command to output window

this basically means anything that you do on nuke

does appears in the output panel of the script editor

and this is a way you can

for example

select a node from the toolbar

and have the Cosmoning Python displayed

so you can actually use this to help you

figure out what Nuke's doing

so let's make a script editor

and let's now grab a blur node

and now back in the script editor

we can see the actual command to do that is nuke dot

create node blur

if we were to

for instance

make a light

such as this light

again we can see that we are making light too

so really useful just to have

some kind of an idea as to what nuke is doing

we then have just highlights

so keywords strings

double quotes or single quotes and comments

just the colours we're gonna be seeing in the script

editor okay

so I'm gonna revert to save

and I think that's pretty much everything in

the preferences top to bottom so again

all this is explained in a lot of detail in the manual

so if you wanted to look into some of this in

any more detail

that's a brilliant place to go okay

so let's make a new session of nuke

and let's now have a look at how the precomp node works

let's have a look

we have a precomp node here

now what does the precom node do

but it basically enables you to take a section of a

composite that you may want someone else to work on

or you just may want to be separate

and it splits it out into this precomp setup

which is basically a nuke script

and the precomp node itself reads that nuke script

so you could have somebody else working on a section

say a part of the background plate

or a key or something

that then feeds into your main composite

and instead of having all that extra

nodes and extra functionality built into your script

all you have is this pre comp node

and every time the person

or yourself is working on the other section saves

you can then update yours or reload your precom mode

and it will

update all their changes into your new script

so let's have a look at how this would work

let's make a very

very basic script

let's make say a constant

let's just make it say a grey colour

let's then go ahead and come down to say a noise

we can add some noise

and then we just wanna mask that noise

so let's come in and go to say a ramp

and we're gonna drop the ramp in above

so if we have a look at the ramp here

we can just see that we're gonna go from

uh say black to white

and we're gonna take this

and we're gonna output it into a new layer

we're just gonna call matte

okay so if we come and look in matte we have hey

black to white ramp

and I'm gonna set the ramp here

just got everything in place

I'm just gonna go with a smooth

okay so we've got

all that taking place

they're gonna come to our noise

come back to our GB

and let's just do a mask of

our noise based on that ramp

so we only get noise at a certain part

I'm gonna invert it

so we now just get noise at the bottom

and then gonna come in and I'm gonna add for instance

a uh checkerboard

gonna make this a little bit smaller

so 1 k gonna merge it on and for merge

remember it's connected in with the a

that's because I am have that set in my preferences

instead I could have it set to uh

the B side so that whatever

selected the merge note then applies the B side to it

but that's okay for this

now just transform that into position

let's say there

and let's also add a grade note where we just gonna

just multiply up the colours

maybe by red

so we should end up with

a little bit of something going on

let's go with a 1 and 0 and 0

we're not seeing anything because we're only looking at

the red channel

which is obviously no good to us

so that gets us this

and then let's add in

let's just say a piece of text on here

so we're gonna do a merge here

gets to be again

we don't need to do this but I'm just doing it so that

I can show you different aspects of the pre comp mode

normally would obviously do this all in

all in the pipe in one go

so I'm just gonna call this a checker

board and let's just go ahead and make it

a little bit bigger

centre it up and maybe we could go ahead and just uh

make it a bold version of Ariel

okay so that's what we've got

now let's say that the checkerboard and the

text we wanted to pass over to somebody else to work on

we wanted them to carry on building

the checkerboard section while we continue to work on

the radiated noise information part of the comp

what we do is we take all of this

and we would come up to other

and we would say precomp

and what we get is this box to the precomp script path

this is the actual name of the precomp

so we're gonna just save this to the

desktop for the time being

and I'll just save it in here

and it's obviously worth

giving it some kind of a useful name

so I'm just gonna call it checkerboard

underscore precomb

underscore v a one

now the precumb render path

this would be if we were gonna render this

where they would end up going

so let's come in here

and set that to be the same path as our

Nook script

and we'll give it the same name as well

copy this keep our hashes so that we're gonna get

multiple zeros

the channels that we want are just gonna be RGB

we're not interested

in any other channels for the actual rendered version

we don't wanna keep them at

but if you did wanna keep them at

you may want to say all layers

but we don't want to for this instance

and then we can decide what we're gonna do with these

selected notes that we're making the precomp from

we could either add a backdrop

hence kind of being able to label it up and say

this is what

the section of the comp did before we use the precump

we can delete it

which is what we're gonna do

or we could say no change

so just leave it exactly as it is

we're just gonna go with delete

now when I hit okay

it's gonna make a new script

that will then load and look at

it will have a saver in it

that will be able to save the checkerboard out

has this image with these files preset in it

so just be like a normal right note

and then we'll see all this disappear

so let's hit OK

and there it does it

and you can see that we have some issues here

where this is basically kind of smearing across

so we'll come back and look at that in a moment

now let's go ahead and load in the precomp

so here it is

if we have a look at it

we're gonna get this

now why are we getting this

the reason why is

if we come back and look at our other one

we can see this is 2K

and yet this is set to 1024

so we need to go to our project settings

and just make sure that is set to 2K

which it looks like it is

but our black outside here

a checkerboard

this is just obviously needing a larger format

so what we would need to do is make a constant node

that we would have is 2K

and then we would just merge these in merge

and that's gonna fix that

and this all needs to come down a bit further

just so we keep the file size

now this wouldn't always be the case

that you'd need to do this

but for this one we do

we just need to

make sure that we're gonna keep all of our

structure in place with regards to how big things are

so now we view this

see we're getting this

and we just need to swap the inputs

and then we're back on track

so you can see now that we have the right mode

and if we just view the output

we don't necessarily need the output though

it's good to keep it just so

you know what the actual output of the pre comp is

if we look at our right node

you can see that we preset this up

to save out the information here with the correct

RGB channels

so let's say we make a change here

we go to our grade and we we're working away and

the supervisor says okay

instead of red

I really want blue

so you just come in and you go okay

let's go with the blue

and we can just save this

I'm just gonna do control or alt

so I'm just gonna do control or command save

back to the script

now we come to our precomp

we hit reload

it then reloads in that precomp

referencing the original note script

so if I go back

and then we come in here again and he says okay

I've changed my mind actually

I think green's gonna be a better colour

closes down again

save it back into a precomp and then reload

and again we can see that taking place

now what happens if we say actually

we now need to control the text ourselves

how would that work

well if you have a look at precomp has this input

and when we come back in here

you can see that input is actually

the input of the text

we delete the input

save reload

the input goes away

so that tells us that we can actually control the input

of certain parts of the precom ourselves

so let's come in here and let's take off this text note

and we're gonna add an input

so I'm just gonna do INP for input

or you can come over to other

and we can choose an input here

we're just gonna attach this by double click

we can call it text input

so you know what that is

take our text

we just cut it

come in here and paste it

now with one thing I forgot to do again

was obviously to save

so I save that and then when I reload in my precomp

in my main comp

we now have a text input which I can then apply

all looks the same

but now we have the text here

and if I make a change to it checkerboard say green

it's then able to be controlled from our end

as opposed to

the person working on the checkerboard's end

now what happens if the precom then becomes too heavy

because it's obviously referencing a nuke script

what we can do is we can say right

we just wanna bake this into some files

so we can go to render

and it brings up this execute button

and we can say

how many frames do we wanna render

let's just do one

we click okay

and it renders it down here

you can now see that the precomp is actually reading

and here we've got read file from output

so it's basically turn this precomp node

almost into a read node

reading in the saved version from

this right down here that we set up

okay so that's all saved there

and we're good to go

if um this person now makes a change

so they say okay

with my checkerboard

I'm gonna blur it because that's what's needed

and I'm gonna add a bit of a blur they save

come back to this

main composite

and we reload

we get an error coming up

and the error basically

says that it cannot read from file

file does not match input

and what this is saying is

that what you've saved as

a set of opening XR

files now doesn't match the actual new script itself

so we would turn off read from file

and now you can see everything is good

if we came to render again and re rendered it

we're now updating the render

along with updating the precom

nucscript okay

so that is your pre comp note really

really useful

you can run them across networks

whatever you need to do

and it can just save a lot of time

and give a lot more flexibility to enable other

artists to do more work

now under the advance section here

you can name an output node

and enable it if you hadn't already done it

when you made the precomp

so if you remember

we made the precomp

and we said

let's make an output node

which is gonna be a right node with some

EXR files that we're gonna be saving

which is this right node here

if we hadn't defined that right at the beginning

you could use this advance tab here

to put that in at this point

now the final thing is what would happen if

you just wanted to load a precom from scratch

you know one exists

you just wanna bring it into your scene

where you would just come in and grab the precom load

come into file

navigate to where that is

which we have on our desktop here

and when you view it

you just get that

which is exactly what

you would get if you viewed this

minus obviously the text

which is feeding into the top of it okay

so that's the precomp node

so I'm gonna

save this as the

main precomp composite

so I'm gonna call it main precomp

underscore composite

dot nuke now put that in your nuke folder along with uh

this one as well

so make sure I save that

okay from here let's have a look at the discache node

so the disc cash note

as I said works really well in different situations

one of them would be if you just had

a certain branch of your composite that you wanted

to pre cash or disc cash

so let's choose for instance

this section here of the 3D fairies

so if we come in and view that

and let's just make sure we're seeing some 3D fairies

there was one there

okay so let's just zoom in so we can see that

and let's now add from the other menu a discach node

now first thing is the channels

and the channels menu

lets you select which channels are gonna be cashed

so in our instance

we're probably gonna want to cash all of them

so we'll just leave it on all

but obviously

if you just wanted to cash the Alpha channel

or just wanted to cash

the uh Z depth or what have you

you can choose it there

nuke then caches the selected channels

at the current frame

at the current zoom level

so I'm obviously zoomed in here

so all we're caching is what we see

or what the viewer sees

more importantly

now from this point on

nuke refers to the cache data instead of

constantly recalculating the output from the

preceding notes

and if we pan or zoom around

we basically enable

new parts of the image to be cached

okay now if you wanna cash more than just

the current frame in the zoom level

we can click the pre cash button here

and this opens up the pre cash properties

and you can enter in the frame range in the

dialog box here

okay so you can have global custom

uh viewer alright

you can input your own okay

when you hit okay

it then goes away

and precalculates that cash

so I'm gonna just cancel that

that all lines will be cached

regardless of what is being shown in the viewer

if you then do that

and what's really nice is

where required images are partly cached already

nuke only calculates the missing areas of that image

that's excellent

news for speeding things up

now on top of the disc cash

we also have memory cash

so let's just delete

say that and let's come in

and say we want to memory cash

the coloured control here

the colour correction

what to do that

I can either use control or command and b

so command or control and b

will switch on

memory caching for this specific node

so if I come in and select it again

and this time come to nodes

you'll find that checkbox for cashed is here

so control or command and B

is the same as switching on

this button here

now what's happening is when it's on

the data upstream from the node is cashed

or kept in memory

so that it can be obviously red quicker

and the yellow line that we see at the bottom

indicates that the cash is on

okay finally

if we come up to the render menu

you can see here that we have the ability to clear

the disc cash

clear the buffers

and also get

a buffer report

that may be

useful to you okay

so that is using the discach node again

remembering from the beginning of the class

places where I said

you could put it before

photo and paint

nodes is very useful

after a reading

where you're reading in data from a network drive

after a very

computational note

such as the bilateral

or just at the end of a branch

of a section of your composite

like we did an example earlier

memory caching

just remember

that's a memory cache

that specific tool

and then the ability

to clear that information and view

the buffer report as well okay

okay from here

let's have a quick look at versioning

so normally

I would come up to file save

and I would say save as

and I would just

take the file name

and I would usually go underscore 0

1 and that would then be

the first version

and as I made more changes

I would come in

and I would

come in save as

and just up it again

to save version 0

2 but we can do this in nuke automatically

which is much quicker

and the way we can do it is to come up to save as

and instead of doing underscore 0

2 0 1 we just do

underscore v

and then we just choose the number

the version such as 1

and you can see

at the moment

the class is called class

and version one

if I now come down to

the file menu

and choose Save

New Version

you can see it now

updates to v 2

if I was to come in

and save new version again

it becomes v 3

so it's a very quick way of being able to

version up the composite you're working on

without having to go in and

manually do it okay

so that's versioning from here

let's go in and have a look

at the contact

and contact

layer sheets

so let's just make a new composite

just loaded in

a piece of footage here

this is a multipass again

I'm sure you've got this from

one of the other classes

now in here

we have multiple

render passes

motion vector data

mats for an hour pass

diffuse pass

etcetera now

we can use the

layer contact sheet

under merge

and what this does is it basically

split all the layers

out so we can see them

so you can see all

the passes here

and what's really great is that we can

also add the

layer names

so you can see we

we have UVs

ambient occlusion

we have motion vectors

reflections

etcetera so

this note basically

takes all your layers

and outputs them in this kind of format

similar to when we looked at

the contact sheet

you can adjust

the resolution

of the overall limit

so we could have say

4,000 by 3,000

if we wanted to do that

or even 3,000 not 300

we can say what we want the gap to be

so we could say we want a gap of 10

we could say

we want it centred or not centred

the order in which the rose and columns are going

and then as I said

you can show the layer names

and this is very similar to the

contact sheet that we've looked at in the past here

which basically

again enables you to set rows and columns

and instead of showing you the individual layers

the contact sheet will just show you

the actual animation frame by frame

so it's like taking a single frame and just pasting it

one after the other into kind of like a film strip

so that is the layer contact sheet

and the contact sheet

they're both very straightforward

but also really useful if you just get given a bunch of

Exor files or the person who training gets Exor files

and they just don't know really what's in them

and needs to have a quick look

these are the good notes to use

layer contact sheet for individual layers

or render passes

and the contact sheet just to be able to layout

any motion that may be in those files

if you obviously got moving footage

and need to look at it all in one place okay

so that pretty much takes us to the end of this class

if you have any questions

put them in the forums

otherwise I will see you in the next class