Nuke Essential Training (2014)

- [Voiceover] Hi, this is Steve Wright welcoming you to my Nuke 8 Essential Training course. This course is designed for visual effects artists that are not yet familiar with Nuke. First, it carefully walks you through Nuke's user interface, then onto all the essential features of Nuke that you'll need for creating feature film quality visual effects with nearly seven hours of videos. Starting with a brief explanation of node-based compositing, Chapter 2 takes a detailed look at Nuke's powerful user interface, how to build node trees, create key frame animation, use the timeline, the many features of Nuke's powerful image viewer and much much more.

In Chapter 3 we'll learn about Nuke's channels, the one aspect of Nuke that is most confusing to new artists. Suffice it to say, the subject is treated carefully and thoroughly. Compositing visual effects is all about merging images together in a single shot, so Chapter 4 shows you how to not only merge blue screens and green screen elements but also reveals the procedures for multi-pass CGI compositing using multiple lighting passes. Chapter 5 first covers the use of the new videoscopes introduced in Nuke 8, then on to several of Nuke's powerful color correcting nodes.

Learn the different between color grading a plate and color-correcting a composite. Chapter 6 is all about transforming images which means to change their size or shape. We'll see the all-important transform node, learn how to do corner pinning plus when to use the mirror and position nodes. Another of Nuke's unique features is how it handles reformatting images. Nuke employs a formal discipline to help protect you from distorting your images but you need to understand how it all works.

Chapter 8 covers the all important topics of tracking, stabilizing and match move. First, Nuke's world-class tracker node is demonstrated in detail then how to use the tracking data to stabilize a clip or do a match move of one element to another. Nuke's Roto and RotoPaint nodes are immensely powerful and flexible and you'll use them dozens of times in each of your composites. It's therefore essential that you master these nodes and their multiple options. The heart of visual effects compositing is keying, so there's detailed training for Nuke's keyer node plus both the key light and primatte keyers, the favorites of the visual effects industry for blue screen and green screen keying.

Chapter 11 covers the essential filter operations in Nuke, such as the blur node, adding motion blur to your animated 2D elements and techniques for creating photo-realistic depth of field effects. If you need to warp images, Nuke has got you covered with the very robust GridWarp and SplineWarp nodes. In Chapter 12, you'll learn how to use them to both warp images as well as how to do morphs. The chapter on temporal operations is all about speeding up or slowing down clips including the use of optical flow.

You will also learn how to slip the timing of a clip in the timeline as well as how to do a freeze-frame. Chapter 14 begins the introduction to Nuke's unique 3D compositing capabilities. One of Nuke's key distinctions is it's many very powerful 3D tools for rephotographing live action elements in a true 3D environment. Nuke can actually render 3D objects with cameras, lights, shaders and material properties. Chapter 15 will show you how to add shaders as well as how to do camera projection.

Chapter 16 is all about editing and modifying your 3D geometry using transformations or image displacement. Other immensely useful 3D features are covered like snapping geometry to a target and the ability to edit the vertices or faces of polygonal objects. I hope you'll join me in my Nuke 8 Essentials course and I'm sure you'll find it extremely informative. Also, be sure to check out my other Nuke courses here on lynda.com as they contain a wealth of additional information that you are sure to find useful.