

A promo for Nuke Studio, The Foundry’s upcoming VFX, editorial and finishing system. The developer has just announced version 9 of its Nuke product range, of which Studio will form a part on release later this year.

The Foundry has announced version 9 of its Nuke product range, adding a native Flipbook tool and improving performance of processor-intensive tools, including GPU acceleration for the OFlow advanced retiming toolset.

Users of NukeX, the software’s extended edition, also get a revamped planar tracker and a new motion estimation algorithm “to improve the quality and temporal consistency of retimed image sequences”.

The same features will be present in Nuke Studio, The Foundry’s upcoming combined VFX, editorial and finishing system. All three new products were announced at Siggraph 2014.

Pricing and availability

There isn’t a lot more detail yet: so far, The Foundry has posted a summary feature list for the update (reproduced at the foot of this story), but no demo videos.

All three editions will be available to existing Nuke users as open betas “in the coming weeks”, with the products due to ship before the end of the year.

NEW FEATURES IN THE NUKE 9 PRODUCT RANGE (Excerpted from press release)

Core compositing updates in the whole NUKE 9 range include:

Native Flipbook tool – uses NUKE STUDIO technology to bring integrated and streamlined player capabilities to NUKE and NUKEX

– uses NUKE STUDIO technology to bring integrated and streamlined player capabilities to NUKE and NUKEX Huge performance updates – Covering NUKE’s EXR reader, Deep EXR reader, Particle system and Scanline Renderer to name a few

– Covering NUKE’s EXR reader, Deep EXR reader, Particle system and Scanline Renderer to name a few Enhanced 2D format support – Adds support for MXF files, including read from MXF for DNxHD, MPEG2, Sony RAW (F55 and F65), AVCI and DV image files

– Adds support for MXF files, including read from MXF for DNxHD, MPEG2, Sony RAW (F55 and F65), AVCI and DV image files OFlow improvements – adds GPU acceleration

Updates exclusive to NUKEX and NUKE STUDIO include:

Planar tracker overhaul – provides a single, integrated Planar Tracker node with new pattern matching algorithm to make tracking featureless planar surfaces possible

– provides a single, integrated Planar Tracker node with new pattern matching algorithm to make tracking featureless planar surfaces possible Kronos, Vector Generator and Motion Blur 2 – adds a new motion estimation algorithm to improve the quality and temporal consistency of retimed image sequences based on OCULA technology. This engine vastly reduces the artefacts conventionally associated with optical flow, meaning you get the results you want faster and with less tweaking

Read the official Nuke 9 announcement on The Foundry’s website

Tags: flipbook, GPU acceleration, Kronos, motino blur, motion estimation, new features, nuke, Nuke 9, Nuke Studio, Nuke Studio 9, NukeX, NukeX 9, OFlow, performance, planar tracker, price, release date, retiming, speed, The Foundry, vector generator