Some time ago I made the switch from Fusion to Nuke. At the time I said that I would give an update on how the transition went. We’ll, you’re in luck – after about a year of using the program, I feel ready to give my honest review and a bit of advice.
I’ve found that using Nuke has significantly sped up my workflow and made difficult effects easier to execute. I’ve genuinely enjoyed learning the tools and find the interface clean and easy to use. After being introduced to the Node Based method of compositing through tools like Fusion and Natron (and even Blender) – the transition didn’t take too long.
If you want to level up your Visual Effects compositing – Nuke is the tool to use. Tasks that take a while to figure out for a single shot in programs like After Effects or Fusion are quicker to set up in Nuke and easier to implement across sequences or entire projects. The nature of node based systems makes it easy to template and work more efficiently.
Once you have mastered individual nodes like Grade and Transform – you can learn ways to use them together in exciting ways. Once you have these combinations you can package them as gizmos and toolsets for later use.
Speaking of gizmos and toolsets (basically plugins/addons), there are always people who are better than you at figuring out how to do cool stuff in Nuke and packaging and sharing their discoveries for the rest of us to use. This makes it easy to create effects that otherwise would be extremely difficult.
The team at Foundry (the company that provides Nuke) are continually adding modern and innovative features and integrations. The latest versions of Nuke (at the time of writing) include tools to work with Gaussian Splats. The Cattery is a way to run the latest Machine Learning models locally on your machine and without even leaving Nuke. This allows you to do inpainting, upscaling, segmentation, and depth estimation – all inside of Nuke. This isn’t to say that programs like Fusion don’t have some of these types of tools – but Nuke is just doing a better job overall in terms of scope and quality of tools.
In closing, if you are trying to get into the industry – Nuke is the industry standard, and for good reason. Once you understand the different tools of Nuke – don’t be content to stop there – learn how to use them together in exciting and helpful ways. Most of all – stay flexible because we live in a time when the industry is changing quickly as new tools become available. I hope you will give new programs like Nuke a shot – and enjoy learning how to use them skillfully!
Stay Imaginative,
S.