Nuke vs. Shake & Fusion

[Gregory]

This is my personal summary of advantages (+) and disadvantages (-) of Nuke compared to Fusion:

Nuke Advantages
+The tracker recognizes not only translation, but also rotation and scaling of the pattern (for a single tracking point, don’t confuse with the possibility to track 2 points and matchmove)
+Keyframes for the tracking pattern
+Easier way to check the tracking quality at any time in a magnified stabilized window
+Tracking data is easily applied to multiple masks via layers
+Easy creation of multiple flat-colored shapes
+Easy parameter setting for multiple roto shapes
+Adjustable ranges for the Ripple Edit mode in Roto
+Gamma and Exporure controls for quick comp check directly on the Viewport toolbar
+Extensive possibilities to embed multiple channels to the image and pass them through any tools
+Virtual sliders make it easy to adjust parameters with any increment
+Indicators on the nodes, which show what channels are passed and modified, indicators of animation and expressions on the node parameters
+Extra text note on nodes, describing what operation exactly is performed by the node
+Expression links are visualized in the Node Graph
+A warning when you delete nodes, which referred in expressions
+Easy way to unsynchronize the timeline on different views
+Each node has its own undo
+Centers of multiple transforms can be selected and adjusted simultaneously in the Viewer
+Arbitrary bokeh shape in 3D and 2D defocusing tools
+A possibility to locate coordinates of the brightest pixel
+Vertex-level geometry editing

Nuke Disadvantages
-Shapes of bezier in Roto can’t be connected between different nodes or modified with various algorithms as vectors.
-Roto and RotoPaint nodes can’t be cloned.
-Roto shapes can’t be expanded or contracted as vectors
-Rotating and scaling selected parts of roto shapes is only possible with transform box, which requires extra mouse clicks and often causes confusion with selection (bounding box controls vs. individual vertices and handles)
-The transform box includes not only the shape itself, but also handles, which shifts the pivot point in case you want to transform the box around the opposite edge
-Bezier handles don’t scale proportionally to maintain the shape of a segment when you move separate vertices relative to each other
-Feather extends only to one side, which makes it difficult to tune mask softness after it has been drawn (the workaround is to use an extra Blur node, but it eliminates the advantage of multiple shapes in one node and grows the Node Graph). This is especially inconvenient in combination with motion blur or when the focusing of the object changes during the shot.
-Can’t display shapes from different Roto nodes in the viewport simultaneously for effective roto work or for finding masks in a complex compositing.
-No selective labeling for vertices of roto shapes
-No easy way to duplicate multiple shape keyframes (only one keyframe at a time, via copy/paste in a Viewer)
-No general interpolation curve is shown for GridWarp and Roto shapes in the Curve Editor. Only for separate vertices, which is not so practical
-Extrapolation for the animation curves can’t be set to relative loop (when the first frame of a new cycle matches the last frame of previous cycle to produce seamless animation cycle)
-The result image doesn’t update while user is dragging on-screen controls of transforms, roto etc., which makes the process of tuning positions, masks and other elements less interactive.
-All the coordinates are set in pixels, which leads to a disaster when the input resolution changes.
-No option to automatically normalize the image’s color range to display the out-of-range values and check for possible errors. This is especially important while working World Position, Velocity and Depth passes, which contain negative values.
-No option to preview the image on a transparency checker to quickly check the alpha together with RGB. This can only be made with overlaying nodes. The Matte Overlay mode doesn’t solve it, as it changes the color of RGB
-No way to directly adjust motion path points in the Viewport, animation is corrected only in the Curve Editor
-Limited possibilities to create gradients
-Vector-based motion blur produces much more artifacts
-Limited text formatting and animation possibilities
-Particle system isn’t so usable due to some design flaws
-Alien File Open dialog with non-standard behavior and no possibility of performing any file operations (copy, rename)
-No possiblity to save a picture directly from the viewport without a Write (important when working with styleframes or other static pictures)
-Inconsistent user interface with different arrangement of buttons and hotkeys for similar operations in different nodes, different way of interaction with splines in different tools, different viewport control visualization
-Confusing terminology, which is often deviated from physical and math terms, yet not clearly describing the subject for a user
-Ugly Node Graph visualization with overlapping elements and texts and general lack of a design touch
-Terribly unstable
-Substantially slower rendering
-Very slow 3D system

[margaret mag]

New Nuke Studio coming late 2014. Maybe will not have to compare them…
below link:
http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/about-us/news-awards/nuke-studio/

[Alkesh Nanavaty]

Thanks!

Regards,

Alkesh.

[Anonymous]

overall i think NUKE is better, but i dont like its less stability… closing without with errors sometimes.. u wont know what was the main cause.

[Gregory]

Here are some highlights of Fusion 7, which is about to be released:
[URL=”http://www.eyeonline.com/fusion7/preludetofusion7.pdf”]http://www.eyeonline.com/fusion7/preludetofusion7.pdf[/URL]
And the release notes:
[URL=”https://sites.google.com/a/eyeonline.com/fusion/home/release-notes”]https://sites.google.com/a/eyeonline.com/fusion/home/release-notes[/URL]

Apart from a number of cool new features, they have significantly reworked the core of the software, which made it even faster, yet rock-solid stable.

[margaret mag]

Nuke requires good hardware and render farm, it’s problematic if you don’t have, if you work alone at home:). I look forward to the software does not reguire the best hardware and will be work like Nuke. Maybe software in the cloud is the solution.

[Gregory]

Another problem with Nuke, apart from hardware requirements, is the license cost. Which is about 4 times more than Fusion’s with comparable feature set.

Meanwhile, Fusion 7 has got a possibility to display and edit trajectories of animated 3D-objects directly in the 3D-views, just like in 3D-Max. This seems to be an indispensable feature for anyone, who works with 3D-space, be it complex animation or mere camera moves.

[margaret mag]

I think about solution like this: I upload everything to the cloud and I work on files that has just dropped. Is something like this? 🙂

[Author]

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