After 15 years of organic growth and over 2 million downloads, Nukepedia is getting the infrastructure it deserves. Originally launched at Geekfest during Siggraph 2010 by Frank Rueter, Nukepedia quickly became the backbone of the Nuke compositing community—hosting over 2,000 shared tools, gizmos, scripts, and nodes. What started as a modest forum now sustains an active membership base of more than 900,000 users, making it a key stop in any Nuke artist’s workflow.
Why Rebuild Now?
The platform’s current architecture—built on an amateur setup cobbled together during off-hours—is beginning to strain under its own popularity. And unlike compositing, duct tape doesn’t scale well. That’s why Frank and Kara from the Nukepedia team are preparing for a full Nukepedia 2.0 rebuild, targeting a relaunch at Siggraph 2025. The goal: a stable, fast, and scalable site that doesn’t crash when someone hits “Download.” A new backend is in the works, and the development is already progressing well following a productive meeting with the dev team. However, to cross the finish line, they need both input and funds from the community.
A Community-Supported Rebuild
Enter the user survey and the all-important donation button. Frank and Kara are calling on the community to help shape the future of Nukepedia—without duplicating efforts of existing resources like The Foundry Forum. Instead, they envision Nukepedia becoming a portal that connects users to all relevant compositing resources, without cannibalising what’s already working.
The site will remain free and community-driven, but would ask users to consider a support donation offering a SHORT TIME special offering users FIVE years subscription for the cost of a ONE-year subscription. Their pitch? “Ten beers a year”—a $50 donation will help bridge the financial gap.
The nuBridge plugin, developed by Frank back in 2017 using PySide, has been doing some of the financial heavy lifting. nuBridge integrates directly into Nuke, offering database access and ease-of-use for only $5/month. So far, subscriptions have funded about half the rebuild budget.
Let Nukepedia Know What You Want
Nukepedia is running its survey until the relaunch. While the survey will likely stay open, the team has put 10 May as a cut off for this round of considerations for the rebuild – get your ideas and feedback in now! Community feedback will guide not just technical decisions, but also whether future updates should include visuals, tool previews, and evolving feature screenshots. It’s also a way to ensure they don’t split the community by reinventing wheels already well-oiled elsewhere.
They are also planning to roll out updates incrementally—each reminder accompanied by news on site development, feature previews, or editorial retrospectives. Speaking of which: a walkthrough of Nukepedia’s history and the origin stories of Nuke itself is planned for launch. To warm up, check out these classic interviews with early Nuke devs, which are Bill Spitzak, Paul van Camp and Jonathan Egstad (Who is giving a talk at this years FMX)
What Happens Next?
Once Nukepedia 2.0 is live, the platform could evolve into anything the community wants: curated plugin galleries, integrated learning hubs, or just a faster place to grab that gizmo that “totally fixed the green spill in shot 327.” But until then, Frank and Kara are focused on fundraising and keeping the vision clear: no duplication, no fragmentation, just better access to compositing tools.
You can support the project by subscribing to nuBridge for $5/month, or making a one-off donation (suggested: $50/year – currently gets you FIVE years subscription for one ) via the donation button on their site.
Want to help? Fill out the survey, support via donation, or subscribe to nuBridge. Your future gizmos will thank you.
