Introduction to Nuke Stage

Nuke Stage is a virtual production tool which harmonizes virtual production and visual effects to enable creation, capture, and finaling of photographic quality content shot on LED stages.

Nuke Stage allows for real-time editing and compositing on set, allowing for more flexible workflows, whilst using existing virtual production hardware.

The playback in Nuke Stage utilizes B44 encoded EXRs.

We will support other file formats in the future but B44s are real-time suitable, compatible with Nuke, and VFX friendly. You can convert or export images to B44 EXR from Nuke.

Key Concepts

NukeStage Editor

This is Nuke Stage’s editor application where you create your networking and hardware setup, as well as set up any USD scene, compositing, or sequencing. The NukeStage Editor is the Control application and the only one you should need to actively use on set.

Note:  See more at Using NukeStage Editor.

Relay

The headless process running in the background. The Relay will do all the communication between the RenderNodes and the NukeStage Editor and will also receive and distribute the tracking data. In most cases the Relay will just run on the Control machine with the NukeStage Editor, but it could run on a different machine if needed.

This diagram displays how the Relay communicates between machines using a basic example set up.

Note:  See more at Network Setup.

Note:  The Relay is currently the only process that has a licensing check. To learn how to license the Relay machine, see Licensing.

RenderNodes

RenderNodes do the rendering on each RenderNode machine. Using the NukeStage Editor, you’ll connect each RenderNode to an output and map this onto an LED screen.

Note:  See more at Hardware Setup.

Getting Started with Nuke Stage

Interested in putting Nuke Stage to work? Go to www.foundry.com/products/nuke-stage to register your interest.

To get an overview of what you need to do to launch Nuke Stage, how to set up your network for Relay and RenderNodes, and how to set up hardware to get your stage working, see Setting Up Your Stage.