LONDON — Creative software developer Foundry (www.foundry.com) is now shipping Nuke 11.3, an improved version of its compositing and review tool. Nuke 11.3 is the fourth update to the Nuke 11 Series and brings attributes that will improve the user experience and speed up heavy processing tasks for pipelines and individual users.
Nuke 11.3 ships with major enhancements to its Live Groups feature. It introduces new functionality along with corresponding Python callbacks and UI notifications that will foster greater collaboration and offer more control. These updates make Live Groups easier for larger pipelines to integrate and give artists more visibility over the state of the Live Group and flexibility when using user knobs to override values within a Live Group.
The particle system in NukeX has been optimized to produce particle simulations up to six times faster than previous versions of the software, and up to four times faster for playback. This allows faster iteration when setting up particle systems.
New Timeline Multiview support provides an extension to stereo and VR workflows. Artists can now utilize the same multi-file stereo workflows that exist in Nuke on the Nuke Studio, Hiero and HieroPlayer timeline. The updated export structure can also be used to create multi-view Nuke scripts from the timeline in Nuke Studio and Hiero.
There’s also support for full resolution stereo on monitor out to help make review sessions easier, and a new export preset to help with rendering of stereo projects.
New UI indications for changes in bounding box size and channel count help artists troubleshoot their scripts. A visual indication identifies nodes that increase bounding box size to be greater than the image, helping artists to identify the state of the bounding box at a glance. Channel count is now displayed in the status bar and a warning will be triggered when the 1,024 channel limit is exceeded. The appearance and threshold for triggering the bounding box and channel warnings can be set in the preferences.
The selection tool has also been improved in both 2D and 3D views, as well as an updated marquee and new lasso tool making selecting shapes and points even easier.
“The Nuke team has delivered two substantial releases this year, with a renewed focus on deep customer collaboration and understanding real production challenges,” says Christy Anzelmo, group product manager at Foundry. “We have ambitious plans for the future - especially around performance and the timeline-based tools.”