Weta and ILM Got It… Wanna Learn Nuke?

There are a lot of compositing applications out there, but one that seems to be taking the lead lately is The Foundry’s Nuke.  If you are an After Effects user, you have probably heard The Foundry’s name from the keying plug-in Keylight or their other Tinderbox plug-in packages, but that isn’t the only thing they are famous for.  Industrial Light & Magic a couple weeks ago purchased a site license for the popular compositing platform, along with Weta Digital just the other day.  Two of the big dogs in to post world have converted, and many small shops are already on the bandwagon, and this could possibly be the next big app to know since Shake.  With the news of Nuke gaining so much steam I thought it would be worth a post to let you guys in on where you can learn you some Nuke skills and possibly prep yourself for a career aboard this killer compositing application.

The Foundry’s Official Site

Being the official site, a lot of people wouldn’t look here for free training, but you would be surprised at how much they have.  After you pick up the Personal Learning Edition (PLE), you can go and check out the Training Section of their site, where you will find the Nuke Master Class, which gives you a crash course in Python, Maya to Nuke transfer, 2.5D re-lighting, UV Texturing, Bicubics, and random tips and tricks.  They also have a bunch of images, gizmos and scripts to go along with the video tutorials that they provide.  For a more compositing based set of video tutorials, check out the FXPHD’s Compositor’s Guide to Nuke at the bottom of the page as well as Steve Wright’s IBK Keyer tutorial as well.  If it is good enough for The Foundry to feature on their site, you know its got to be good.

FXPHD

Even though they have a free Compositor’s Guide to Nuke on The Foundry’s official site, if you sign up for FXPHD as a student, you get access to VPN licenses for Nuke as well as a bunch of other applications so that you can render without watermarks on your finished video.  FXPHD also gives you access to very high quality source material developed specifically for their classes, and this term, announced July 2009 they are offering Into to Nuke, Intermediate Nuke, Nuke in Production, and Advanced Nuke in the course listing, so that whatever skillset you already have, you can find the course suited to your abilities.  You will be learning from some of the top Nuke compositors in the world, so you will be getting a high end education for a much cheaper price than going to a university.

Gnomon Workshop

Robert Nederhorst hosts the two Nuke training DVDs that the Gnomon Workshop has in their library, and these are chock full of information for beginner to advanced Nuke users alike.  Robert is a VFX Supervisor at Sway Studio, and spent over seven years at Digital Domain where Nuke was actually developed as an in house tool.  His work is featured in The Day After Tomorrow, Vanilla Sky, and X-Men.  These DVDs are relatively cheap in price and are available as hard copy DVD or as a digital download, and definitely a good choice for those that are on a budget but really want to learn the software at their own pace from an industry expert.

SphereVFX

SphereVFX has a DVD on Nuke 5 In-depth 3D, which delves into the workings of Nuke’s 3D system, and walks you through the basics, understanding geometry, transforms, displacements, material, lights, cameras and rendering.  As with all training DVDs you get the training material as well to work along with, and some extras such as textures and models.

Of course you are going to find random products and free tutorials littered across the internet such as Creative Cow’s Nuke for After Effects Users, or cmiVFX’s few tutorials on Keying and Compositing or 3D Matte Painting Extractions.  You could also prowl around VFXtalk.com and find some random user tutorials, or just do a nice google search and see what comes up.  Either way, you can go the cheap way and teach yourself with free tutorials you find on Youtube or Vimeo, or spend some cash and get the real training from the real pros.