Getting Help

Nuke features several forms of help, in a variety of locations.

Viewing Tooltips

Most controls offer concise instructions in the form of tooltips. To display the tooltips, move your mouse pointer over an interface control or a node parameter.

To view a tooltip for a node, move your mouse pointer over the ? icon in the node's Properties panel.

Viewing the Context-Sensitive Online Help

The context-sensitive online help includes a comprehensive description of each node and its parameters. To display these descriptions in your default web browser, click the ? icon in the node's properties panel.

Selecting the Help Source

In Nuke, the context-sensitive help content may differ depending on what you've selected as the help source in the Preferences.

To select the help source:

Press Shift+S on the Node Graph to open the Preferences dialog.

Go to the Behaviors > Documentation tab.

Set documentation source to:

• local - Use Nuke's built-in help system. This is included in the Nuke installation and does not require an Internet connection.

When you click ? in a node's Properties panel, Nuke searches the following locations for HTML files with the same name as the requested node (for example, blur.html):

• Directories contained in the NUKE_PATH environment variable.

• The /$HOME/.nuke and /$HOME/.nuke/Documentation directories.

• Your local plugins directory:

• On Windows, this is C:\Program Files\Common Files\Nuke\<version>\plugins\

• On Mac, this is /Library/Application Support/Nuke/<version>/plugins/

• On Linux, this is /usr/local/Nuke/<version>/plugins/

• The Nuke installation directory.

• foundry - Use the help system available on our website. This contains the most up-to-date information, but requires an Internet connection.

Note: On Windows, you may have to add a firewall program or port exception to view the most up-to-date help from our website. If the connection is blocked, Nuke falls back to the local copy.

• custom - Use your own custom help system.

If you set documentation source to local, you can either:

• enable auto port to automatically assign a free documentation server port, or

• use local port to specify a local documentation server port manually and port range to define a range of ports to attempt. Typically, the local port value should be 1024 or higher. Setting the value to 0 causes a port to be automatically assigned.

Note: To be able to use the online help from multiple sessions of Nuke running at the same time, you must enable auto port.

If you set documentation source to foundry:

• the foundry host field displays the documentation server host address.

• use foundry port to specify the documentation server port.

If you set documentation source to custom:

• set custom host to your documentation server host address. This must be an Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) address.

• use local port to specify a local documentation server port. Typically, the local port value should be 1024 or higher. Setting the value to 0 causes a port to be automatically assigned.

• use custom port to specify a custom documentation server port.

Using the Help Menu

You can click the main Help menu to access the following:

• Key Assignments - a list of hot keys.

• Documentation - the Nuke Online Help, the Nuke Developer Kit (NDK), and documentation for using Python, TCL, and expressions in Nuke.

• Release Notes - important updates to features and bug fixes.

• Training and Tutorials - Nuke tutorial videos, and a list of other training resources.

• Nukepedia - an online resource containing useful information about all things Nuke.

• Mailing Lists - information on Nuke-related e-mail lists.

• Plug-in Installer - open the Nuke plug-ins page on our website, which gives you easy access to a large selection of plug-ins for Nuke.

Contacting Customer Support

Should questions arise that the documentation fails to address, you can visit the Support Portal at support.foundry.com.