Getting Started With Nuke's Timeline Tools
Level
Version Required
Conform, Distribute and Review in Context
Nuke Studio, Hiero and HieroPlayer are the core timeline-based tools within the Nuke family. Hiero and HieroPlayer have been built with the vision of improving the review, distribution and collaboration processes of visual effects (VFX) teams. Nuke Studio, Hiero and HieroPlayer contain a full editorial timeline and Python API, which allows teams to review and collaborate in the context of the creative or VFX edit, and through the creation of dynamic or on-demand timelines from shot and asset databases.
With over 6 years of production tested development and use of industry standards like OpenEXR and OCIO, Hiero and HieroPlayer have been designed specifically to support the different stakeholders on the VFX review pipeline, including supervisors, producers, pipeline TDs and VFX artists, all while maintaining simple UI and intuitive workflows.
Nuke Studio, Hiero and HieroPlayer share core technologies and update schedules with Nuke—the industry leading compositing suite for high-end VFX. This ensures that Hiero and HieroPlayer will continually be updated in line with industry standards and maintain compatibility with modern VFX pipelines.
Introducing the Nuke Ecosystem of Timeline Tools
HieroPlayer: Timeline for the Artist Workstation
Multi-shot editorial and review, HieroPlayer is the place for all your artists to review and playback and manage media in context of their work.
FEATURES
- Multi track editorial
- OCIO color management
- Versioning
- Dynamic Timelines (Python API)
- Viewer comparison modes
- Annotations (coming soon)
- Sync Review
NukeStudio: Timeline for the Supervisor Workstation
Multishot editorial, compositing and review. Nuke Studio adds an editorial environment to NukeX, giving Supervisors and lead artists working on multiple shots more context and control.
FEATURES
- Multi track editorial
- OCIO color management
- Conform (EDL, XML, AAF)
- Soft Effect creation
- Versioning
- Tagging
- Spreadsheet
- Dynamic Timelines (Python API)
- Viewer comparison modes
- Annotations
- Sync Review
- SDI Monitor-out
- Exporting
- Full NukeX Compositing
Let’s Start at the Beginning
Multi-track editorial timeline
Hiero player, Nuke Studio and Hiero come complete with a multi-track editorial timeline that lets you playback, review and edit multi-layered sequences of video, CG and audio tracks. Hiero player, Nuke Studio and Hiero's editorial tools provide easy-to-use, familiar functionality for artists accustomed to standard editorial packages—all accessible on the timeline. They also use standard three-point editing techniques to insert and overwrite clips from the source view and retime both linearly and nonlinearly right in the timeline.
Full online editing toolkit
Nuke Studio and Hiero conforms AAFs, EDLs and XMLs into a multi-resolution, multi-track timeline complete with audio. Soft effects including retimes, transforms and crops, in imported XML and AAF files are retained and automatically recreated in Nuke Studio, helping to take the pain out of the conform process.
Real-time in-timeline soft effects
Add powerful GPU-accelerated effects in Nuke Studio and Hiero including grading, keying, and transforms, right on the timeline in real time. In-timeline, Soft Effects lets you quickly and easily set up shots, experiment with ideas and interactively refine your work.
Tutorials and Documentation
Here you can find all the documentation about every single part of the timeline tools:
https://learn.foundry.com/hiero/content/user_guide.html
In this series of video tutorials, you can go over all the basic functionality of the timeline products:
https://learn.foundry.com/course/4146/view/nuke-studio-tour
https://learn.foundry.com/course/4863/view/nuke-studio-hiero-timeline-workflows
If you want more advance knowledge about Conforming and Online editing then check these ones out:
https://learn.foundry.com/course/4446/view/skill-up-with-nuke-tips-for-pipeline-integration
https://learn.foundry.com/course/4447/view/nuke-studio-and-hiero-review-and-vfx-editorial-basics
https://learn.foundry.com/course/4448/view/nuke-studio-and-hiero-review-retimes-and-soft-effects
Connecting to Your Pipeline
It doesn’t matter how complex your pipeline is—from a simple Google Sheet to the most complex asset and shot managers, the timeline products’ Python API is one of the strongest assets you will find.
If you want to understand the basics you can start with this simple example:
Example 1: Nuke 12.2 - Python 2
https://learn.foundry.com/nuke/developers/122/HieroPythonDevGuide/shot_manager_example.html
Example 2: Nuke 13.0 - Python 3
https://learn.foundry.com/nuke/developers/130/hieropythondevguide/shot_manager_example.html
If you use Shotgun, here you can find the implementation with toolkit
https://support.shotgunsoftware.com/hc/en-us/articles/219039968-Nuke-Studio-Shotgun-aware-exporting
Or if you don’t want to use toolkit, here is an example to connect to Shotgun through the API: https://learn.foundry.com/nuke/developers/12.2/HieroPythonDevGuide/shotgun_example.html
If you use Ftrack, here is a link to their implementation: https://www.ftrack.com/en/portfolio/the-foundry-nuke-studio
https://help.ftrack.com/en/articles/2436123-nuke-studio
And here is an example connecting NS and Hiero to Deadline:
Reviewing on a Sync Session
Syncing
Remote work is more important than ever, that’s why we’ve introduced the first implementation of SyncReview in Nuke 12.2. Giving teams the ability to sync multiple sessions of Nuke Studio, Hiero and HieroPlayer together and allowing two or more users in multiple locations to review and annotate footage collaboratively. Whether connecting to a network storage, cloud storage like DropBox, or working with localized files, all participants have access to live playback and viewer controls, soft effect parameters and toggling between versions. Plus, push updates allow users to stay in sync with the session. The number of users and resolution is only limited by your hardware and bandwidth.
Documentation:
Sync in action:
Real Time Playback and Caching Strategies
Real time playback is at the core of the timeline tools. With higher resolution plates and complexity of projects, understanding Nuke Studio, Hiero and HieroPlayer caching, will let you set it up to have the best user experience possible.
The timeline tools are a ram-based playback systems. To achieve the best performance you need a combination of disk speed, ram capacity and GPU. When it comes to heavy decompression, the amount of threads on your machine will let you playback at even higher resolutions and framerates.
Depending on your hardware and complexity of your project, you have alternative features to improve your playback. The first part is to understand the different type of caching: Ram Cache, Disc Cache and localization.
Decoding your files:
You have the ability to multi-thread the decoding of your files by increasing the decoding threads per read. This can be done for all file types as a general parameter or define individually per file types to have more threads for heavier compressed file.
Troubleshooting:
If for any reason you can’t achieve real time playback at your desired resolution and fps, contact our support team https://support.foundry.com with your machine setup including disk speed, ram and processors, as well as the Nuke Studio or Hiero settings.
Ram Caching:
Disk Caching:
Localization:
Read decoding Threading options:
Exporting and Distribution
Exporting and distributing data to your teams is at the heart of Nuke Studio and Hiero. Nuke’s image processing engine, in conjunction with the powerful export structure system in Nuke Studio and Hiero, provides an easy and efficient way to programmatically export shot dailies for your clients, shot elements or scripts for any task in your pipeline. Plus, the Frameserver is a basic “render farm” that lets you use as many resources as possible from your machine during export. Alternatively, you can connect Nuke Studio and Hiero to your own render farm alongside Nuke render nodes.
Even though the export structures feel a bit daunting at the beginning, it will become one of your most time-saving tools in your pipeline. You can find more information here:
And, if you want to expand Nuke Studio and Hiero exporting options or create your own exporters and keywords, here is all you need to know:
Example 1: Nuke 12.2 Python 2
https://learn.foundry.com/nuke/developers/12.2/HieroPythonDevGuide/export.html
Example 2: Nuke 13.0 Python 3
https://learn.foundry.com/nuke/developers/130/HieroPythonDevGuide/export.html
Export Settings
When exporting, there are a couple setting that are important to understand:
- Export renders limits options.
This option, by default, is set to “limit renderer for more responsive UI” but, in most cases it’s fine to change it to “no render limits”. As you become more comfortable with Nuke Studio and Hiero, you can get the best performance of your machine with “customize render limits”. - Frame server process to run.
This option controls the number of background instances you want to run when rendering. By default, it’ll use a quarter of the available cores on your machine, but please feel free to increase based on your hardware. - Background renders
This is how you set your render behaviours when compositing in Nuke Studio. Sometimes you want a fast render iteration and will have it set to “render on save and version up”. Whilst, sometimes all you need is the “do nothing unless I tell you so” mode, and can have it set to “don’t auto start background renders”.
