Nuke Environment Variables

Allows you to specify where Issue Reporter dumps are saved by default.

By default, if you have installed a temporary license, Nuke displays a dialog at start-up alerting you to the number of days remaining. If you want to disable this behavior, you can set either of these environment variables to 1 to suppress the warning message about imminent license expiration.

Note:  You still get a warning if no license is found, for example if you only have a Nuke license but you try to run NukeX.

By default, if you have installed a temporary license, Nuke displays a dialog at start-up alerting you to the number of days remaining. If you want to disable this behavior until a set number of days before expiry, you can set this environment variables to the required number of days.

Note:  You still get a warning if no license is found, for example if you only have a Nuke license but you try to run NukeX.

This variable disables Nuke's CUDA and OpenCL capabilities. When enabled, any GPUs installed locally are disabled and cannot be selected from Preferences > Performance > Hardware > default blink device dropdown. Any GPU accelerated nodes, such as Kronos and Denoise, default to processing on the CPU.

On Windows, user names containing non-ASCII characters can cause subscription licensing to fail. If a licensing error similar to the following displays:

Unable to create subscription license directory: C:\Users\Zoë Hernández\FoundryLicensing\

Try changing the license directory to an alternate location using this environment variable.

The location of the Nuke RLM license file, if the following recommended location is not used:

On Mac and Linux:

/usr/local/foundry/RLM

On Windows:

drive letter:\Program Files\The Foundry\RLM

Note:  If you still use FLEXlm licenses and you're interested in making a move to RLM licensing, please contact sales@foundry.com to obtain a replacement license.

This variable prints additional licensing information to the command line or Terminal.

The location of the Nuke FLEXlm license file, if the following recommended location is not used:

On Mac and Linux:

/usr/local/foundry/FLEXlm

On Windows:

drive letter:\Program Files\The Foundry\FLEXlm

Note:  If you still use FLEXlm licenses and you're interested in making a move to RLM licensing, please contact sales@foundry.com to obtain a replacement license.

This variable specifies the location of Nuke Studio’s logfile. If you don’t specify a logfile, all output is to screen.

This variable sets the level of logging Nuke Studio produces during operation. There are four levels of detail, on a sliding scale from minimal to verbose:

• error

• warning

• message

• verbose

Note:  Setting the logging level to verbose can produce large log files when FOUNDRY_LOG_FILE is specified.

This variable is used to specify a different location for the Frame Server to write log files to, if you'd like to keep them separate from the default NUKE_TEMP_DIR.

See Using the Frame Server on Render Machines for more information.

Set this variable to stop Nuke Studio loading thumbnails.

Set this variable to stop Nuke Studio caching thumbnails for improved access once loaded.

Note:  This variable does not clear the cache, you must remove cached files manually.

AJA cards take a 3G level signal (mostly for 12-bit 444 RGB) and combine it into a single 3G-B (B denotes B level, hence the 3G-B) stream through SDI3 by default. Set this environment variable to 1, 2, or 4 to output a single stream through SDI1, SDI2, or SDI4.

Nuke does not allow you to Overwrite and Save as gizmos by default, without copying the gizmo to a Group. Setting this environment variable to 1 enables this behavior, so artists don't need to copy a gizmo before editing it.

Breakpad crash reporting allows you to submit crash dumps to Foundry in the unlikely event of a crash. By default, crash reporting is enabled in GUI mode and disabled in terminal mode.

When NUKE_CRASH_HANDLING is set to 1, crash reporting is enabled in both GUI and terminal mode.

When NUKE_CRASH_HANDLING is set to 0, crash reporting is disabled in both GUI and terminal mode.

When enabled, Comp Viewer image cache data is printed to the command line or Terminal. Information on disk space used, the number of files cached, and the cache location is displayed.

When working on large images, Nuke may need to free up memory during rendering. When this happens and NUKE_DEBUG_MEMORY is set to 1, Nuke prints the following information to the console:

Memory: over maximum usage, trying to reduce usage from 1 GB to 924 MB.

If this variable is not set, you cannot see the debug memory messages.

Note that here, KB, MB, GB, and TB mean units of 1000. For example, 1MB means 1,000,000 bytes.

The location where Nuke saves all recent images displayed in the Viewer. Ideally, this should be a local disk with the fastest access time available.

The maximum size the disk cache can reach (in gigabytes).

On Linux, this is the location Nuke uses for temporary files while reading PIZ-compressed .exr files. This environment variable is only relevant on Linux.

If this variable is not set, the location is determined by NUKE_TEMP_DIR.

Changes the naming convention of .exr temporary files during rendering.

Setting the variable to 1 writes temporary .exr files as <filename>.exr.tmp, rather than <filehash>.tmp as in previous releases.

The location that Nuke checks for available font files when the Text node properties panel is opened.

This variable disables the warning dialog displayed when you open scripts containing pre-Nuke 8 RotoPaint nodes.

The import nuke function checks-out a nuke_r render license by default. If you want to use Nuke interactively, and you have an interactive license, set this environment variable to 1.

See Nuke as a Python Module for more information.

This variable disables the new channel sorting behavior, where the RGBA layer is sorted first. Enabling this variable causes Nuke to sort channels alphabetically.

Controls the number of threads used for querying the file system, such as checking if localized files are out of date, if they exist, and so on. The actual copying of files is done in a separate thread pool with only 1 thread, which is fixed.

When crash handling is enabled in GUI mode, this allows you to control whether reports are automatically submitted or not:

When NUKE_NO_CRASH_PROMPT is set to 1, crash reports are submitted automatically without displaying a crash reporter dialog.

When NUKE_NO_CRASH_PROMPT is set to 0, Nuke always displays a crash reporter dialog before submitting a crash report.

Disables Nuke's Comp Viewer OpenGL hardware acceleration.

Controls the state of the Prioritize OCIO Roles preference. This variable allows you to set the desired behavior at an environment level for all artists, rather than allowing individual artists to change the preference.

• NUKE_OCIO_ROLES=0 Roles are hidden.

• NUKE_OCIO_ROLES=1 Roles are prioritized, which is the same behavior as Nuke 12.2 releases.

• NUKE_OCIO_ROLES=2 Roles are de-prioritized.

Note:  If the variable is set, the Prioritize OCIO Roles preference is disabled.

The location where files related to Nuke customizations are stored. For more information, see Loading Gizmos, NDK Plug-ins, and Python and Tcl Scripts.

The location where Nuke saves any temporary files that do not have a particular place defined for them.

You can find the current location of Nuke's temporary directory from within Nuke by pressing X on your keyboard, when the focus is on the Node Graph, and then running the following TCL command:

getenv NUKE_TEMP_DIR

When enabled, use the new top-down rendering project setting to render the full frame at the cost of more memory. Although top-down rendering produces the full frame faster, it disables progressive rendering and uses more memory. You may want to use the legacy method if you're only interested in the first few scan lines in the Viewer.

Note:  The render mode is only saved as part of the script if you set render mode to top-down in the Project Settings. This ensures that the chosen render method is used the next time the script is opened. Using the NUKE_TOPDOWN environment variable does not save the render mode in the script.

When enabled, data from Nuke's window manager is printed to the command line or Terminal.

Set this variable to the location of your OCIO configuration file for color conversion.

Note:  If you plan to use the OCIO config file specified in the Preferences, ensure that the Preferences > Project Defaults > Color Management > Export > use OCIO nodes when exportingto a Comp checkbox is enabled.

The location where Nuke looks for OFX plug-ins. For more information, see Loading OFX Plug-ins.

Controls whether or not automatic interface scaling for high resolution screens is enabled. On Windows, this variable is enabled (1) by default. On Linux distributions, scaling is currently disabled (0) by default.

Note:  macOS handles scaling automatically, so this variable is not required.

Due to recent updates to Qt, running Nuke on CentOS 7 Linux distributions with a tablet can cause lag when moving Roto shapes around the Viewer. Setting this environment variable compresses tablet events, eliminating the lag.

Sets the automatic interface scaling factor when QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR is enabled. You can set scaling to 1, 1.5, or 2. The recommended scaling factor is 1.5.

Note:  Other scaling factors may work but have not been tested.

In multi-monitor setups, sets the interface scale independently by screen using the QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS variable. Scaling uses the same recommended factors, separated by ; (semicolon). For example, QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS="1.5;1" where the first monitor is higher resolution than the second.

The location where Nuke looks for custom Qt libraries if you don't want to use those shipped with Nuke. Setting this environment variable adds the custom path to Nuke's Qt library paths.