London, U.K. – Leading visual effects software developer, The Foundry, is delighted to announce a new major release of its powerful compositing applications NUKE and NUKEX 6.2.
Now shipping, this release encompasses artist feedback to deliver continued refinements to core operations whilst also incorporating the latest technology to emerge from The Foundry's highly regarded in-house research team. New image-based modeling and projection tools advance artists’ ability to create and use scene geometry in their visual effects.
NUKE 6.2
NUKE 6.2 gets the eagerly anticipated timeline Dope Sheet, making light work of manipulating animation key frames and interactively positioning and trimming read clips. It also brings significant improvement to rendering performance, flip book playback and 2D tracker interaction, along with enhancements to the expression editor and file browser - all core improvements contributing to improved productivity and workflow.
NUKEX 6.2
NUKEX 6.2 adds new image-based modeling tools allowing any artist to easily combine a tracked 3D camera with a selection of 2D image features, automatically creating simple scene geometry. When added to new dense point cloud generation and automatic calibration of projection cameras from 2D images and geometry, NUKEX 6.2 provides new ways to reference and re-apply composited elements more efficiently and realistically into live action scenes.
For those working with CGI rendered elements, NUKEX 6.2 brings Pixar RenderMan Pro Server support to the 3D compositing environment. As an alternative to the in-built scanline renderer, integration with RenderMan aligns NUKE-rendered scenes with the rest of the 3D pipeline, seamlessly matching motion blur and depth of field, whilst providing the compositor with more flexible control of new rendering capabilities such as ray-traced shadows and reflections.
Chris Ford, business director RenderMan Pixar, comments ”Nuke and RenderMan exist in the same production ecosystem and complement each other very well," Said Chris Ford, RenderMan business director, at Pixar Animation Studios. "We are delighted that Nuke 6.2 is now able to leverage RenderMan-compatible 3D data facilitating closer integration with pipelines using our software."
The Foundry’s head of product development, Richard Shackleton, says, “This product release arms artists with an improved experience and expanding toolset as they face new visual effects challenges. Core operational improvements compliment the growth of the 3D toolset, allowing compositors to work more efficiently and to create and use scene geometry and external rendering, opening up a whole new level of 3D compositing capability.”