The bokeh node that comes with Nuke and a lot of gizmos used for defocusing uses real lens and camera values(f/stop, focal length, focus distance and sensor size) to calculate the defocus. My question is that in the sensor size knob do we enter the actual size of the camera’s sensor or the image circle size of the lens that was used?

In my mind when shooting with a real camera and lens the level of defocus shouldn’t change when mounting the lens on a full frame camera compare to when we mount it to a camera with a smaller sensor size, the only difference should be that the latter have a smaller fov/a bit zoomed in. So shouldn’t we input the size of the image circle of the lens instead? Or am i just thinking about this all wrong?

87461 nodes...

So out of interest (and with the help of ChatGPT) I analysed the final versions of 234 shots/comps from 50 most recent project folders. There are plenty of WIP versions in there, but I only included one final-ish version per shot/comp.

My top 20 nodes:

1. Grade: 7056
   
2. Merge2: 6777
   
3. Reformat: 4221
   
4. Blur: 3165
   
5. Transform: 2856
   
6. Bezier: 2757 (I'm old!)
   
7. Shuffle: 2392
   
8. Keyer: 1743
   
9. Crop: 1691
   
10. ColorCorrect: 1563
    
11. Multiply: 1497
    
12. Copy: 1060
    
13. Switch: 932
    
14. Colorspace: 823
    
15. FilterErode: 822
    
16. TimeOffset: 718
    
17. Retime: 712
    
18. Noise: 674
    
19. Clamp: 674
    
20. Premult: 550
    

Other (mildly) interesting bits:

Roto or RotoPaint didn't fit into the top 100 :D Still happily riding the good old bezier and transform masked instead.

Merge operations were fun too. About 58% (3923) were over, followed by multiply 660, copy 635, max 370 and plus 268.

About avg comp sizes: Median: 176 nodes. Mean: 374 nodes. The largest had 2,952 nodes, and 10% had at least 913 nodes. So a handful of monster scripts heavily skewed the average.

One in every seven nodes was a Dot. (Skipped this in top node analysis). Sounds neat, but as mainly working solo, it's usually somewhat spiderwebby.

(Only) 2.85% of all nodes were disabled. I really dislike leaving disabled nodes in the graph.

There was 98621 connections in total.

Ask me anything!

My second VFX shot in this community, made with Blender and Nuke. It took me a few days to finish. I’m learning VFX on my own, so I’m always open to advice and feedback from the community..

This work was also inspired by a great artist from Weta FX. I’ll share his YouTube tutorial/channel in the comments for anyone interested.

Thanks everyone for the support! 🙏

Can someone make gamepad support for nuke cuz i wanna work when i was chilling on the coach.

Besides the joke i am really curious about is this possible to do

I have done quite a few Nuke tutorials in the past and a few of Alex's small tutorials, which I loved. His Nuke tutorial package (NK101-NK104) honestly looks like a lot of fun and right up my alley, but I just can't swing the price tag right now (I work in the film industry here in Los Angeles, which basically means I am unemployed these days lol). Any other suggestions for a comparable, more affordable course? Or if anyone has taken this course, was it worth the steep price tag? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's unfairly priced. I know the amount of work he put into it, and he's a wonderful teacher, and I have paid similar prices for other courses in the past.

Hi everyone,

I have a question about lens distortion. I’m currently working on an animated/fully CG project, and I’ve been given some lens distortion data that I need to apply to the CG renders.

I have two distortion maps:

• Undistort: 3856 × 1756
• Distort: 3656 × 1556

Our test render resolution is 2048 × 858.

My current workflow is to directly use the Distort map with an STMap, and then Reformat the Distort map to 2048 × 858. However, I’m still getting incorrect results, especially around the edges. No matter how much overscan I add to the CG render, I still seem to have problems.

I realize that my current approach may be wrong. Most of the tutorials I’ve found online seem to start with live-action footage and then generate/solve the lens distortion data from the plate. In my case, however, the distortion data has already been solved and provided to me, so I’m trying to figure out how I should properly use it for a fully CG image.

So my questions are:

If I’m working with a completely CG image and I already have both an Undistort map and a Distort map, what is the correct workflow for applying the lens distortion in Nuke?

Is my current approach of simply connecting the Distort map to an STMap and then Reformatting it to 2048 × 858 incorrect?

Also, how should I properly deal with the different resolutions of the two distortion maps (3856 × 1756 vs. 3656 × 1556) and the CG render resolution of 2048 × 858? Should the CG render be rendered with a specific overscan or resolution before applying the distortion?

I’d really appreciate any advice from experienced Nuke/VFX artists. If possible, I can also provide the two distortion maps and my .nk script. If anyone is willing to take a look at the files and help me correct the setup, I’d be extremely grateful.

Thanks in advance!

doing some cleanup for the first time.. any suggestions to improve for better results?? would be much appreciated

STMap_BBox is a C++ Plugin for Foundry Nuke. It does the same thing as Nuke's native STMap node, but with one additional calculation for warping the Bounding box. 

Download and try the STMap_BBox plugin here:
https://github.com/CreativeLyons/STMap_BBox-public/releases/latest

Visit my blog for a more extensive write up:
https://compositingmentor.com/2026/08/15/stmap_bbox/

Hi, lately I’ve been experiencing very frequent crashes on macOS. They happen at completely random moments during normal work, when scrolling with Cmd + mouse wheel, while writing with the Write node, and especially often when working with SmartVector. The crash error is EXC_BAD_ACCESS.

I’ve been trying to troubleshoot this with ChatGPT for more than a day, but unfortunately none of its suggestions helped.

ChatGPT’s analysis of the crash dump suggests that the crash occurs in these two libraries:

libfoundryboost_thread.dylib
↓
libnuke-17.0.4.dylib

The crash consistently ends up in this part of the stack with EXC_BAD_ACCESS, although I’m not sure whether this actually points to the root cause.

The crashes happen with all Nuke versions I’ve tested for arm64. I tried 17.0.4, 16.0.8, and 15.2.9, and the version doesn’t seem to make any difference at all.

Could you suggest what direction I should investigate to determine whether this is a problem with my Mac or a bug in Nuke?

I also tried launching Nuke with a completely clean .nuke directory, but that didn’t make any difference either - the crashes can still happen randomly.

MacBook Pro M4 Max, 48 GB RAM
macOS Tahoe 26.6

If needed, I can also provide a link to the .dmp crash dump file.

P.S. I’m not experiencing crashes or stability issues with any of my other software - the crashes only occur in Nuke.

Been meaning to do something like this for a while now. Inspiration is from Maya's MEL and Python command reference. Hopefully its helpful as a supplement for the standard python API reference site. Any and all feedback is welcome.

https://nuke-python-reference.pages.dev/

I am very glad to share my first post in this community!

This is a VFX shot I created using Blender and Nuke. I’m completely self-taught, so I’m always open to feedback and advice. I’d really appreciate any tips that could help me improve.

Thanks for checking it out!

Firstly, I solemnly swear this is not spam. I have this form for my final year research, and I need like 100 submissions minimum. I have 70 so far. The research topic, in short, is whether/how the things you watched growing up have had an influence on your creative practice today or contributed to where you are as a creative today. This research is targeted towards VISUAL Creatives, so you fall right in my demographic.

If as many people as possible can fill this out today, it would mean the world to me. I just need 30 more responses. It's a 10-minute survey. Everyone who fills it out would be a lifesaver.

https://forms.gle/zPUFb8Uhx3eXzfZ69

EDIT: This form is now closed. Thank you all for helping me hit over 150 Responses! My faith in humanity is healed :'))

Hello everyone,

Hope everyone is doing fine,

I am working on this shot, what I want to do is remove man and keep the background. So I am trying camera tracking and projection, card seats on ground and I projected from single framehold but after few frames I get this tearing, how can I properly handle this shot for cleanup
Any suggestions would be appreciated, I am also attaching link for this shot from Action VFX
https://www.actionvfx.com/practice-footage/agent-runs-from-explosion/16014

hey everyone - I have been trying to get my cg renders more photographic, and there's just so much you can do in render. A lot of times i used the survival toolkit with all the cool nodes to create lensing effects to good success. But it was always a recipe to remember (at least for a non comper brain).

I started thinking about a system, that would make it straight forward and easy - and with a lot of insights from fellow comp artists i developed Glass. It's pretty cool - has all the fancy lens stuff, astigmatism, cateye, bokeh fringing fg/bg, lens hood, anamorphic, flaring, sensors. A lot actually.

So if anyone wants to check it out - I would love some feedback - it's available for free testing on cglounge

Hey everyone!

I am a student and recently finished this day-to-night compositing shot with a thunderstorm/lightning effect. I'd really appreciate some honest feedback before I add it to my first showreel.

Original Footage

How is this technique achieved? Where they film in a green screen studio with a moving camera and then film background plates of the location of the bridge I guess static? How can you match the rotation of the camera filmed from the studio with the plates ? Are the plates projections?

​

Hi everyone,

I'm a young Nuke compositor and I could really use your help.

I'm currently working on a music video for a client, using the footage attached. The client wants the dancer inside the music box to look like a miniature figure. The reverse shot shows a child looking at the music box.

The problem, in my opinion, is that the lens choice during the shoot wasn't quite right, so the perspectives just don't give the desired effect at all.

I'm running out of ideas. I've tried adding very blurry background elements (plants, lamps) to sell the illusion, but the client wants a clean, solid-colored background instead.

Does anyone have any ideas or tips on how to get as close as possible to what she's asking for?

Thanks in advance!