Ganbar R. - NUKE 101. Professional Compositing and Visual Effects - 2011

GETTING STARTED WITH NUKE 3
(Directed Acyclic Graph), and the Curve Editor panel. The large empty pane on the
right is populated by the Properties Bin.
At the top left of every pane there’s a tab with the name of that panel (except for the
Nodes Toolbar). The pane containing the Node Graph panel also contains the Curve
Editor panel. You can click the respective tabs to switch between the Node Graph
and the Curve Editor.
The content menu
The Nuke interface is completely customizable. You can split the interface into as
many panes as you want and have as many tabs in each of them as you want, populated
by whichever panels. Use the Content menus to do all this, which are the gray
boxes in the top-left corner of each pane (FigUrE 1.2).
You should become familiar with the Content menu, which is located to the left of the
tab name. This menu enables you to split the current pane either vertically or horizontally,
creating another pane in the process. It also lets you detach the pane or tab
from the rest of the interface, allowing it to float above the interface (there are several
uses for this that I cover later on). You can also use the Content menu to populate the
associated pane with any panel, be it a Curve Editor, Node Graph, Script Editor, and
so on.
Hover your mouse pointer between the Node Graph and the Viewer, and the cursor
will change to show that you can move the divide between the two panes to make
the Viewer bigger or the Node Graph bigger. You can drag any separating line to
change the size of the panes.
FIGURE 1.2 The
Content menu is used
to control the Nuke
window layout.
Hover your mouse pointer in the Node Graph and press the spacebar on your keyboard
to turn the whole window into the Node Graph. Click again to get the rest of
the interface back. You can do this with any pane; simply hover your mouse pointer in
that pane. This procedure is very useful if you want to look at only the Viewer.
A rundown of the various panels
The different Nuke panels are as follows:
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Curve Editor enables you to edit animation curves.
Dope Sheet is a timeline representation of your clips and keyframes.
Nodes Toolbar contains all the different nodes one can use to drive Nuke. These
are split into several sections or toolboxes represented by little icons.
Node Graph or DAG. The process of building the process tree happens here.
Properties Bin contains sliders and knobs to control your various nodes.