Nuke Starter Pack

Nuke is one of the most powerful compositing software and is also the piece of software that manages to crash more often than Maya on my MacBook pro. Similar compositing software includes After Effects, Fusion studio, and some aspects of Blender, with Nuke being the industry standard. Nuke is a node-based software and can sometimes be a little tricky to get the hang of. But like most other software. once you put in the time with YouTube tutorials or getting help from your professors, you should be able to get the hang of it. So if you’ve never used Nuke and are about to take your first compositing class, I have compiled a list of resources you can use to get you started.

1.       Foundry.com

https://learn.foundry.com/nuke

The creators of Nuke have put together a great amount of resources for beginners to use to learn their software. This includes documentation detailing what each node does and tutorial videos for beginners.

2.      Documentation

https://learn.foundry.com/nuke/content/learn_nuke.html

The documentation includes information on how to install Nuke, keyboard shortcuts, and tutorials. This is definitely a great place to start, and I advise saving the keyboard shortcuts for reference while you are working.

3.      YouTube

The channel cgcircuitLLC has created a two-hour-long video about mastering Nuke, which should be worth a watch for all levels of Nuke users.

4.      Rebelway Tutorial

Rebelway is a channel that has created an almost 5-hour long video detailing advanced compositing for Nuke. Some of the subjects covered in the video include Tracking, Grain, Edge Detail, Lighting, Keying, and background adjustment. I highly recommend giving this video a watch if you have the time; it also has timestamps in the description, so you can skip ahead or revisit older sections if you’d like to.

Conclusion

Nuke can be a little strange for those who are used to compositing in After Effects. But speaking with some of my friends who are a little more experienced than I am at compositing, they say that the Nuke workflow works far better for them than After Effects. For many, compositing is the most fun part of visual effects and mastering this skill can help create seamless effects that will wow the audience.