Defining Common Preferences

The Nuke Preferences dialog (Edit > Preferences) allows any user to make myriad behavior and display adjustments to the interface. However, you may wish to assign certain default preferences for artists.

Defining Default Preferences

To define default preferences:

Select Edit > Preferences to display the Preferences dialog.

Modify the controls within the dialog as necessary. For descriptions of what the controls do, see Preferences.

Click OK. Nuke writes the modified preferences to a file called preferences14.1.nk, which is stored inside your [home directory]/.nuke directory.

Tip: If you’re not sure of the location of your home directory, on Linux and Mac you can go to a terminal window and type echo $HOME. The terminal will return the path name to your home directory.

On Windows, you can find the .nuke directory under the directory pointed to by the HOME environment variable. If this variable is not set (which is common), the .nuke directory will be under the folder specified by the USERPROFILE environment variable. To find out if the HOME and USERPROFILE environment variables are set and where they are pointing at, enter %HOME% or %USERPROFILE% into the address bar in Windows Explorer. If the environment variable is set, the folder it’s pointing at is opened. If it’s not set, you get an error.

Here are examples of what the path name may be on different platforms:
Linux: /home/login name
Mac: /Users/login name
Windows: drive letter:\Documents and Settings\login name or drive letter:\Users\login name

Move the resulting preferences14.1.nk file into your Nuke plug-in path directory.

For more information on plug-in path directories, see Loading Gizmos, NDK Plug-ins, and Python and Tcl Scripts.

Your preferences now act as the defaults for your artists. However, should they make changes using the Preferences dialog, these changes will override your defaults.

Deleting (and Resetting) the Preferences

To delete (and reset) the preferences:

Open a terminal (or shell) as described for your operating system at the beginning of this chapter.

Using the prompt, go to the .nuke directory, under your home directory.

Enter pwd to display and verify the path.

You should see something similar to

• /users/login name/.nuke (on Linux),

• /Users/login name/.nuke (on Mac) or

• drive letter:\Documents and Settings\login name\.nuke or drive letter:\Users\login name\.nuke

This is not always the case, however, because on Windows the .nuke folder can be found under the directory pointed to by the HOME environment variable or (if HOME is not set) the USERPROFILE environment variable.

To find out if the HOME and USERPROFILE environment variables are set and where they are pointing at, enter %HOME% or %USERPROFILE% into the address bar in Windows Explorer. If the environment variable is set, the folder it’s pointing at is opened. If it’s not set, you get an error.

Enter rm preferences14.1.nk to delete the preference file.

Close the terminal or shell.

The next time you launch Nuke, it rebuilds the file with the default preferences.