For those who don’t know the tool: Beeble is a AI based VFX toolset built around video to video processing, including SwitchX for background replacement, object inpainting, and relighting, plus Switch Light for generating compositing passes such as normals, albedo, roughness, specular, metalness, depth, and alpha.
The short version: yes, you can use it in Nuke
The Nuke Plugin enables a workflow that stays inside Nuke: load a pass set, connect it to a controller, then drive lighting with dedicated nodes. It targets relighting work where you want quick iterations without building a full CG relight setup from scratch, but still want predictable inputs and knobs you can animate. You need Nuke 14.1v2 or newer. The plugin is working on Windows and macOS. If your show sits on Linux, that missing test line matters.
Install: one folder, one line, one restart
Installation is classic Nuke: unzip the plugin folder, move the Beeble folder into your .nuke directory, then add a single plugin path line to init.py. On macOS, the target path is ~/.nuke/Beeble/. On Windows, it is C:\Users
If you want the lowest-drama rollout on a facility machine, treat it like any other Nuke plguin deployment: version the folder, keep init.py changes minimal, and test on a clean user profile before you touch shared configs.
What the plugin actually wants: a very specific PBR stream
The plugin’s key constraint is the PBR multi layer format. It expects a single image stream containing multiple Nuke layers named Source, Normal, Basecolor, Roughness, Specular, and Metallic. The node reference calls this “PBR multi layer stream” the core input, and the controller and light nodes all build on it.
There are three supported ways to feed it: EXR sequences, PNG sequences, or MP4 videos. EXR needs each frame to carry multiple passes packed into layers in a single EXR file per frame, such as Frame_000001.exr. PNG and MP4 need one pass per sequence or video, arranged so the loader can map names to the expected pass inputs.
This is also where the tool draws a hard line between convenience and correctness: if your pass naming or folder layout drifts, import stops being one click.
Load PBR Passes: the most important button is the first one
The Quick Start flow begins in the Nuke toolbar: Beeble, then Load PBR Passes. You point it at an unzipped folder of VFX passes. For PNG, the folder must contain subfolders for each pass, and each subfolder holds a PNG sequence like Normal/Normal_000001.png. For MP4, the folder must include one video per pass named .mp4 such as Normal.mp4.
When you load PNG or MP4, the plugin automatically creates a PBRPacker node to pack the six inputs into a single multi layer stream. For EXR sequences, the PBRPacker is not needed because the passes are already packed into layers. If you ever need to build the stream by hand, the helper menu exposes PBR Packer, and it takes exactly six inputs in this order: Source, Normal, Basecolor, Roughness, Specular, Metallic.
PBR Controller: fix the material before you blame the light
After import, the plugin creates a PBRController node. It exists for one reason: adjust pass intensities and blending before lighting.
Source Blend ranges from 0 to 1 and blends between BaseColor at 0 and Source at 1. Roughness Exposure, Specular Exposure, and Metallic Exposure each run from minus 2 to 2 and adjust intensity in stops. This is the difference between a light that looks wrong and a material that was weighted wrong.
If you plan to publish a facility preset, this is the node to standardize. It is also the node to keyframe if you need a shot that shifts from dry to wet, but still stays within the same pass set.
Lights: three nodes, clear ranges, and a Merge plus
Lighting lives under Beeble, then Lights. The basic rule stays consistent: connect the PBRController output to the light input, tweak properties, then stack more lights with a Merge set to plus. That Merge plus step is explicitly called out for multi light setups.
Directional Light exposes a horizontal rotation from 0 to 360 degrees and a vertical rotation from minus 90 to 90 degrees, plus light color and an intensity multiplier that starts at 0 and defaults to 1.0.
Point Light exposes XY position in pixels, Z depth from minus 5 to 5, light color, intensity starting at 0 with default 1.0, decay starting at 0 with default 2.0 described as inverse square, and maxDistance starting at 0 where 0 means infinite reach.
Environment Light applies image based lighting using an HDRI and takes two inputs: the PBR multi layer stream plus the HDRI. The Quick Start notes you load the HDRI file and connect it to the light input. The node reference describes HDRI as the second input, and the environment light output is RGBA like the other light nodes.
Limits and gotchas you should not ignore
The documentation states the prerequisites clearly: Nuke 14.1v2 or newer, tested on Windows and macOS. It also defines the pass set rigidly as six layers in one packed stream. If your pipeline produces additional passes like depth or alpha, the Nuke Plugin page does not list them as inputs for the PBR stream.
Use it where you can afford to iterate and where the pass set stays stable across the shot. Lock your ingest, standardize your pass naming, then let artists work with Directional, Point, and HDRI lights like they would in any comp, with the added bonus that they can animate light behavior using regular Nuke tools. And yes, test it before you commit. New tools are great at demos and even better at breaking when a client sends a new plate at 2am.
https://docs.beeble.ai/integration/nuke-plugin
https://docs.beeble.ai/tutorial/nuke-tutorial
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