Here’s how to sign-up, plus a look at the history of the number one source of Nuke stuff.
Nukepedia was launched in 2010. It quickly became a central destination for all things related to Nuke, including forums, interviews, tools, gizmos, scripts and nodes. Frank Rueter, the founder of Nukepedia, and the co-founder of OHUfx, has now announced Nukepedia is relaunching soon.
To tie in with SIGGRAPH, they are running an 80% discount on a subscription to Nukepedia (info here).
In the meantime, we’re sharing this interview with Rueter about Nukepedia’s beginnings and where he wants the new Nukepedia, and his nuBridge tool, to go.
What made you want to create Nukepedia?
Frank Rueter: Back when I started in a small company we had no resources for customization and none of us knew any coding. In bigger companies many used PERL scripting to parse their Shake scripts. The Shake user group at the time offered technical solutions but you would get a reply saying “just write a bit of PERL script” so not knowing code, solutions were always just out of reach.
I started in the industry as a 3DsMax artist and became involved in this amazing community. Twenty five years ago their forum was the gold standard of how people shared their knowledge. The respectful generosity of users was evident, as moderators discouraged any rude behaviour. While discussions happened on the forum, people were uploading and sharing their tools from multiple sites so everything seemed to be scattered across the internet.
To avoid something similar happening with Nuke, I wanted to plant the seed of a global repository as soon as it became apparent that Nuke was going to become the next industry standard. Shake had just been sold to Apple, and I wanted to get in early before the community got to big.
How did Nukepedia come to be?
Frank Rueter: Ultimately, I was at the right place at the right time. I was ping ponging between Weta and DD, and I was at DD when Foundry, then known as The Foundry, took over development from D2 Software, so I became part of meetings as to how to bring Nuke in as a replacement to Shake and without compromising how the original DD crew were using the software. At one meeting Matt Plec who was the Product Designer at the time and one of the key members of Nothing Real when Shake was the industry leader, said, “I think we need something like Nukepedia but I don’t know what I mean by that.” And I said “I do!” as the name summarized what I envisaged this hub could be.
Ben Minall was the creative specialist at Foundry at the time. I helped out with their first Masterclass in London and he took me on tour around Europe to all the big studios. Once back in New Zealand I was empowered by Matt’s suggestion, so with Ben in London and Diogo Girondi in Argentina we started exploring how to build a website. Remembering this was nearly 20 years ago and Joomla and WordPress were pretty much the only options to us back then, so we landed with Joomla.
How did Foundry respond to your idea?
Frank Rueter: I talked to Bill Collis about starting this as a joint project. As Foundry’s cofounder and CEO his reply was 100% supportive but saw too many complications around a joint project and so gave me his full blessing and promised supporting where they could.
We then needed to define exactly what we wanted Nukepedia to be. Having worked in both small & big companies, and seen the wealth of tools available for their internal use, I saw the potential of having something similar available to all users. If everyone shared, we would all gain access to each others genius tools – a global repository.
How did you do it?
Frank Rueter: A great example at the time was a website called HighEnd2D set up by Will McCullough. It provided forums and a basic tool sharing template for anything in the VFX and animation industry. There was also a HighEnd3D and both these forums later rebranded as Creative Crash. I asked him to set up a Nuke Group, and in between contracts, I got excited about software again and started writing and sharing some gizmos and TCL scripts to kick start the community. Remembering this was back in 2005 before Foundry took over D2 Software. There was instant growth, and people came together very quickly considering the community was only a few people at the time, and this gave me confidence and validation that this idea of creating a community for Nuke was worthwhile.
Nukepedia picked up on all these ideas but 15 years later the Joomla site was grinding under the weight of an old content management system which has lead us to the need to rebuild the site we are relaunching.
When did Nukepedia first become public?
Frank Rueter: In 2010 Foundry helped me launch Nukepedia at the Geekfest at the Mayan Theater in LA (at SIGGRAPH). I thought we would gain some traction but you never know, and hoped we would get 500 registrations over the coming months, but we hit 500 by the end of the first day. This overwhelming attraction has continued to steadily grow over the 15 years to nearly a million activated registrations. No wonder Joomla has been recently struggling. Being open source, Joomla unfortunately got hacked twice over the time – which caused me great stress. Thanks goes to Martin Rose and Foundry who assisted to get the site back up and running. The rebuild comes with a great support team at CactusLab here in Auckland which will minimize risks going forward, and my stress!
Of course, I’m really glad Nukepedia has been such a success, but it was always my end goal of the concept to have this database accessible from within Nuke itself – like an app store inside of Nuke. The website was a necessity to build the database and remains the only way of uploading tools. Even back then when we launched Nukepedia at SIGGRAPH, I demo’d a prototype of nuBridge, using the basic Nuke API and the basic elements available at the time (before PySide was bundled with Nuke). It showed how we could connect to the database directly from within Nuke and download tools without the need to return to the website.
Both at Weta and DD I was involved in building internal tools to make their repository more accessible and user friendly. At Weta I wrote an intranet front end for our Shake macros giving artists a visual into the tools, which was my first PERL project. And then at DD they had a wealth of tools but they were all in their user menus, requiring you to know who wrote the tool you’re looking for, which made it impossible for newbies. So I wrote a TCL script to allow users to customise how they wanted to access their tools, provide better accessibility to all the tools.
What’s nuBridge?
Frank Rueter: As soon as Pyside was bundled with Nuke around 2012, I decided it was time to take a six month hiatus to learn PySide and wrote nuBridge from start with a user friendlyUX in mind. I remember nervously demonstrating nuBridge live at a Foundry event in Sydney with Wayne Morphew back then, using my phone as a hot spot. The demo technically went well and while some were impressed by having an animated interface inside of Nuke, I don’t think users really understood the full potential of nuBridge. Many still think it is for those less technical who don’t know how to install tools…true, but it is far more than that also.
nuBridge is the true Nukepedia. It removes all the website interactions and restraints, such as traffic amongst other factors. The only feature that can’t be done via nuBridge is uploading of tools, which can only be done via the website itself.
Once you launch nuBridge inside of Nuke, it loads the entire database of Nukepedia into your local session. All 2000 tools are loaded, taking between 5-10 seconds and from then on, all your searching is now real-time! You can search, filter, install and test tools without the need to go back to the website. You can download and install gizmos automatically, with them instantly working within your current session allowing for rapid testing. nuBridge is a huge time saver. It is probably 10 times faster to search and filter by minimising the time required to download, install, relaunch, test…
You can save tools to your favorite lists which if you are a freelancer, knowing your tools will be always be there ready for you no matter where you are is a great assurance. The favorite lists can be exported so they can be shared with your fellow proUser colleagues. Now that Nukepedia is finally back and reliable again, we have some ideas around competitions and incentives to keep the community motivated and the favorites list has much potential.
And thanks to Martin Rose and Paul McInnes for helping make nuBridge possible – Paul wrote the server side php code and Martin customized the tool repository to make it more useful and set up the stripe subscription payment – of which all funds have gone towards the new rebuild.
Why should you pay when all 2000 tools are for free anyway?
Frank Rueter: Sure, that’s true. And the intention was always and will always be to keep all 2000 shared tools free for everyone. Using the website to access them will be greatly improved with the new site being more reliable compared to recent years.
But we needed to generate some funds to cover operational costs and to future support the growth of the community so we came up with a proUser subscription model. So your support will enable us to maintain and continue that service, and going forward, grow the community into which ways it indicates need for.
What benefits does a proUser subscription provide?
Frank Rueter: Up until now, nuBridge was our only product for our proUser accounts, so we are very excited to finally be able to build on that and now have our partners on board: Compositing Academy, FX Elements, Das Element and The VFX Shop! Several of them have been a fantastic support over the years and as we have embarked upon the website rebuild they have kindly offered our subscribers our first bundle of discounts and freebies to their products. We hope they are just the first as we wish to continue to build relationships with likeminded 2d service providers and have Nukepedia as a portal to all things Nuke.
nuBridge is only available via a proUser Subscription, so who would best benefit?
Frank Rueter: If you are professional freelancer then the time saved using nuBridge is of huge value. And if you are a student learning, the ability to explore in real-time will also motivate you to try new tools.
nuBridge immediately loads the entire 2000 tool database within the first few seconds of opening, and from there on in, all activity – browse, search, filter, etc – is in real-time.
Searching, filtering, installing, testing, is live right inside of Nuke without the need to relaunch Nuke after each install. Each part of the process is faster as you are directly accessing the database at all times. While I don’t have any exact time comparisons between Nukepedia and nuBridge, it is probably about 10 times faster as using the website requires recalling the database for every search.
The time saved alone is a great incentive towards encouraging users to explore and try gizmos, as testing a gizmo is just one click away – to review, download, install and access the tool. The ease of access and time saved is important especially when you’re facing a production issue, and need to find solutions immediately to hit deadlines.
I did also want it to be artist friendly for those less technical who don’t know how to install, which the auto install makes it possible for those who don’t know where you need to put files. Supporting and nuturing the less tecnical amongst us I see as important. The compositing industry consists of technical and creative people with extremes in both camps and we need to support each other to maximize our potentials.
So is there anything nuBridge can’t do better than Nukepedia?
Frank Rueter: nuBridge is read only – the one thing you can’t do is upload your tools. To upload you need to go back to Nukepedia. This allows users to fully document the tool as per the guidelines but with the new site, you will have the option to link to an existing GitHub repo instead. Having the upload in one place will allow easier version iteration/development, enabling the potential for others to collaborate and develop further.
Do you have any new plans for Nukepedia?
Frank Rueter: One thing we know we don’t want to do, and that is offer a support that already exists elsewhere, but rather provide a link to that resource – acting like a portal to all things Nuke. One example of this is a forum, something many ask if we will be considering for Nukepedia.
Back in 2005 after D2 Software gained a few more customers, a MailMan mailing list was set up which transitioned into a Google Group and then eventually transitioned into Foundry forums that we have today. The forums should stay with Foundry and be our primary hub for user comms. We are considering exploring other more code specific options , such as maybe a Discord forum for developers to discuss tool creation for Nukepedia.
Also, we’re looking at finding ways to streamline ways to access and archive all the knowledge that often ‘gets lost’, such as a chat bot. There are a few other ideas that may gain traction, but we will see.
At SIGGRAPH in Vancouver, Rueter is part of a Foundry Nuke’s Timeline Tools Masterclass: From Ingest to Delivery session. Details here:
Learn how to unleash the power of Nuke’s timeline tools (Nuke Studio, Hiero, and HieroPlayer), in this advanced session led by Frank Rueter, the creator of Nukepedia and founder of Ohu FX, and Foundry Pipeline Specialist Josh Bretag. Learn to master production workflows, from custom panel installation and intelligent ingest to advanced shot management and seamless review.
Wednesday, August 13 · 2 – 3:30pm PDT
RSVP at this link.
