NUKE STUDIO – Exclusive interview + First Screen shots

Today at NAB in Las Vegas, The Foundry make one of the most significant product extensions to their core NUKE product with NUKE STUDIO. We spoke to Jon Wadelton, NUKE Product Manager and Philippa Carroll, NUKE Product Marketing Manager about the new product and when users might see it.

UPDATE – The Foundry has posted the video from the live stream:
www.thefoundry.co.uk/about-us/news-awards/nuke-studio

Jon W
Philippa Carroll, NUKE Product Marketing Mng. & Jon Wadelton, NUKE Product Mng.

“This is one of the most significant advances to the NUKE product line we have made. It has taken a lot of hard work and creative thinking to get here, we are really proud of the team and keen to see how our users respond”,

– Philippa Carroll, NUKE Product Marketing Manager

Below our interview is the official press release, and at NAB The Foundry broadcast this announcement live.

Timeline effects
Timeline effects

The product is a combining of online and VFX tools into one new integrated NUKE STUDIO toolset with GPU processing and render farm technology. Built on the back of both NUKE and HIERO, the new tool extends the Foundry’s product line into more of a client and supervisor session system that will no doubt prove hugely popular.

Version of Clips and Nuke Files
Version of Clips and Nuke Files

NUKE Product Manager Jon Wadelton commented upon the release: “With NUKE STUDIO we’ve created a solution that enables supervisors and leads the power to run a project with complete individual control but without any restrictions on the collaborative workflow that is so important today.”

“The brilliance of NUKE STUDIO is that you can think of a project from beginning to end as one step. You can back up and go forward as you want to. It allows you to work with clients immediately on the whole process and get as detailed as you want. There’s no need to go out to another system. Visual effects, editing, it’s all there.”

– Chris Smith, Commercials Director comments

The wonderful Becks leads the live event
The wonderful Becks leads the live event

Jeff Heusser, a co-founder of fxguide and a major user of The Foundry’s HIERO product, said: “I think this is a great move forward for The Foundry. As someone who uses HIERO a lot, I find this is a great next step and one I am really keen to explore, the potential could be huge.”

In announcing the new product at the NAB, The Foundry stated “NUKE STUDIO will give users the ability to do VFX, editorial and finishing in one single application and will be available later this year.”

Per clip notes and on frame notes
Per clip notes and on frame notes

fxg: The press release says that the NUKE STUDIO will ship ‘later this year’, can you be more specific?

Philippa: A public beta will be available for all NUKE, NUKEX and HIERO customers with valid maintenance in the next few months. We have no solid release date but it will be later this year.

fxg: How long has this project been in the works?

Philippa: So a year ago Jon Wadelton, NUKE Product Manager, showed an interesting idea he’d cooked up – running NUKE inside HIERO. The response was fantastic – but it’s a long way from there to making a product. So after a lot of development work and a lot of client input we’ve come up with a new product at the top of the NUKE range, which is NUKE STUDIO.

Editing
Editing

fxg: We know that NUKE STUDIO has already been shown already to clients in LA and London – how much input did they get during development?

Philippa: A huge amount of input was taken from both current customers and also new people that are not current NUKE users or customers of ours. That was the most important thing for us. We knew we could make a product like this, but finding out what it was, what was in it and if people actually wanted it was really key.

Conforming
Conforming

fxg: How much is this going to have the same performance when doing similar tasks as normal NUKE? In other words, is it the same code re-packaged or is there new processing/performance code? Again in the announcement you mention GPU effects – are these different from NUKE?

Jon W: There is new processing and performance code.  The timeline effects are the same NUKE nodes that users are familiar with but implemented with a new real-time GPU path.  This allows multiple stackable real-time effects in the timeline. Those same real-time effects can then be flipped into a normal NUKE composite at any time. 

Text in the timeline
Text in the timeline

fxg: Is there an upgrade path for NUKE and NUKE X, or HIERO users?

Philippa: There will be lots of upgrade options available, we’re working on them all now, but won’t announce them until on or around the release of NUKE STUDIO.

Animation keyframes in the timeline
Animation keyframes in the timeline

fxg: What is the renderer built into render farm renderer? Surely not the standard NUKE scanline renderer? 

Jon W: When rendering full NUKE composites in the timeline there is a new background rendering system. The takes full advantage of all system resources on the artist’s the machine when transcoding or rendering NUKE composites. The system renders multiple frames simultaneously improving the throughput of composites that may not thread very well. This system also has a built in renderfarm capability to further enhance performance.

We wanted to package a render farm out of the box to help get the fastest possible composite and transcode rendering. Of course if you have your own render farm already NUKE STUDIO is fully scriptable and has all the hooks to hook that up as well.

The booth during the announcement
The booth during the announcement

fxg: Who lead the R&D team?

Jon W: Sean Brice, NUKE Product Designer has been doing a lot of work on the actual user experience that people will have with NUKE STUDIO. Jack Binks, HIERO Product Manager has been invaluable to bringing the editorial capabilities in NUKE STUDIO and continuing the work on HIERO, which of course all feeds into this.

Compositing as you would expect from the Foundry
Compositing as you would expect from the Foundry

fxg. What of the audio editing controls. Has this extended the audio editing and mixing controls of NUKE/HIERO?

Jon W: The audio controls have been enhanced.  It will have per track and overall volume controls.

Compare_Modesfxg
Compare modes.

PRESS RELEASE:

The Foundry announces NUKE STUDIO

VFX, editorial and finishing in one application

London, 7th April 2014 – Leading computer graphics software developer, The Foundry has announced an exciting new product at NAB 2014. NUKE STUDIO was announced at a special live announcement event on The Foundry’s booth on Monday evening.

 

NUKE STUDIO will give users the ability to do VFX, editorial and finishing in one single application and will be available later this year.

 

This brand new tool extends the existing NUKE product line and draws on The Foundry’s existing powerful compositing, conforming and shot management technology, as well as adding a host of new features and functionality.

 

The resulting combination is a powerful node-based VFX, editorial and finishing studio that’s been designed to empower creative individuals working independently as well as collaborative teams working on quick-turnaround projects in a way that’s previously never been possible.

 

“We’ve spent a long time working with a wide range of artists from around the world to properly understand the challenges and requirements of todays industry,” comments NUKE Product Marketing Manager, Philippa Carroll. “We wanted to make a product that can offer artists a new way of working, that meets the needs of fast turnaround production. NUKE STUDIO lets you do more with NUKE than ever before. We know that artists are under greater and greater pressure to turn around projects faster and that calls for a solution that gives them more power, control, and flexibility than ever before.”

 

fxguide is live at the event in Vegas
fxguide is live at the event in Vegas

Individual control and collaboration

What’s really unique about NUKE STUDIO is that an individual can work on a project from end to end, with complete creative control within one application. It also has a collaborative framework that allows that individual to work seamlessly with a team.

NUKE Product Manager, Jon Wadelton comments: “With NUKE STUDIO we’ve created a solution that enables supervisors and leads the power to run a project with complete individual control but without any restrictions on the collaborative workflow that is so important today.”

Chris Smith, Commercials Director comments: “The brilliance of NUKE STUDIO is that you can think of a project from beginning to end as one step. You can back up and go forward as you want to. It allows you to work with clients immediately on the whole process and get as detailed as you want. There’s no need to go out to another system. Visual effects, editing, it’s all there.”

 

Key features and highlights

Fluid end-to-end workflow – Combined timeline and node-graph workflow lets artists work the way they want with all the power to create a project in one app from start to finish.

 

Powerful collaborative control  – A hub for total project control lets artists share scripts, work collaboratively with annotations and version up and down with ease.

 

Real-time timeline effects – Powerful GPU accelerated effects can be added right in the timeline, letting artists quickly experiment, polish and achieve the high-end look they need.

 

Real-time 4K playback – Plays in-application and through SDI-Out hardware, giving confidence to client attended sessions.

 

Intelligent built-in rendering – Built-in render farm functionality automatically uses all available resources to enhance speed and performance, either on a single machine or when connected to multiple.

 

Complete power of NUKEX – Jump right into the node-based NUKE environment to build complex comps and shots with ease.

 

Pipeline friendly out-of-the-box – Designed to integrate with off the shelf or internal asset management systems and pipelines.

 

 

14 thoughts on “NUKE STUDIO – Exclusive interview + First Screen shots”

  1. Pingback: NUKE STUDIO – Exclusive interview + First Screen shots | Occupy VFX!

    1. Couldn’t agree more!! So excited!

      As far as price goes – pretty sure they said NukeX licences will get Nuke Studio. So if you have like production collective you will get Nuke Studio for free when it comes out.

      1. Henrik Cednert

        We can only guess about price and it’s not an easy guess. =) Regarding licenses and cross grades, side grades, reverse grades *.grades this is what they have said:

        * If you own BOTH Hiero and NukeX that will bump your NukeX to a Nuke Studio and you will get to keep your Hiero license.
        * NukeX and Hiero in Production Collective will be replaced with Nuke Studio when available and for those who already own production collective, look at point A.

        Pricing… Like swimming in murky shark infested waters trying to guess this one. =)

        NukeX is 5849 EUR
        Production Collective is 7200 EUR
        Hiero is 3902 EUR.

        For sure Nuke Studio can’t be the price of NukeX + Hiero, then it would be more than prod.col. So, straight out the gate it feels like the only way to price it would be between NukeX and Production Collective. But no matter where in that range you put it, it wouldn’t make sense NOT purchase Production Collective instead, because the step up would be so small. So, I can only guess… Maybe they’ll lower NukeX, or frightening thought raise Production Collective, so that it’ll “make more sense”. I wont even toss out a guess here because I’m sure those who work with it have headache over it so imagine what it might do to my ugly head, might even explode! =)

  2. Great stuff all around! Thank you for the great interview and coverage!

    This is exactly what i’ve been asking for since Hiero was released. Im glad the foundry listens and rapidly shows us that.

    Cheers!

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  5. The Foundry is fast on the heels of Autodesk, when it comes to screwing their customers, I bought my Hiero licenses based on a Hiero demo showcasing this exact functionality, all be it in a more crude implementation, but the money-grabbing is overriding the importance of having a trust-based longterm relationship with the vfx community.

    The only thing i can trust in the longterm now is the blender foundation, they got some ways to go but they will get there and then overtake I am sure.

  6. I agree with the notion of what Hiero should/Could have been, but hey i love you foundry! I’ll look the other way 🙂 I love this and cant wait to use it. Its def needed now!! I hope it will Please support CinemaDNG files and meta info as well..lol..for when BMCC and DSLR Raw amoung other new smaller camera workflows are in play! 🙂

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