The first ever Nuke master class in London was held in Soho this week and over 200 artists from all around Europe attended the event. The session was definitely geared towards artist-types and started with the Foundry’s Jon Waddleton covering python scripting for artists. But perhaps the most interesting part was at the close of the event when Foundry spoke out about upcoming features in Nuke 5.2 and Nuke 6.
Beta testing begins on the upcoming version 5.2 in February and will include:
* Video Output Support. Broadcast monitor support for the Blackmagic DeckLink card to be followed with supporting AJA IO/HD and Kona cards
* Pre-comp External Scripts. Artists will be able to save sub portions of a comp as an external script, which the main script then references. This will effectively enables the first steps of collaboration in Nuke, since another artist could be modifying this external script. Functionality will also include a read-write cache. When a new render is created from this pre-comp script, the main script is notified of changes and can be updated if desired.
* Python UI Panels and Callbacks. Extends the capability of creating custom dockable UI panels from within Nuke using Python. Callbacks can allow the UI to change based upon the buttons pressed or values in the fields.
* Viewer/Flipbook Performance and Caching Improvements. Cache nodes can be inserted at any point in a graph so that intermediate renders can be done, saving reprocessing time when changes are made later in the graph.
* New Metadata Support. Artists can have metadata flowing throughout the graph. For instance, read data could get data from dpx files and provide for use later in the graph. Burn-in would be a simple example of this. It could also read a script included in an image as n EXR channel and build a preliminary comp from it.
* RED R3D Reader. Will be using the RED SDK to bring RED footage into Nuke. The standard SDK adjustments will be available for import
