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For those who don’t know the tool: Nukepedia is a long-running community resource for Foundry Nuke, hosting free tools, gizmos and scripts. nuBridge brings that library directly into Nuke, so artists can browse, install and manage tools without playing download-folder archaeology.
Frank Rueter is the founder of Nukepedia and one of the long-standing figures of the Nuke community, part of the old guard of artists and developers who helped shape the practical tool culture around Foundry’s compositor. In this interview, he discusses the Nukepedia rebuild, the refreshed nuBridge, the current state of the Nuke ecosystem and what comes next for community-driven 2D tools.
DP: What’s happening at Nukepedia?
Frank Rueter: Last year, my wife and I made a mammoth decision to invest in Nukepedia’s future. The old site was reaching the end of its lifespan, and it had become clear that patching and maintaining the old Joomla-based platform was no longer a sustainable option. It was very much a sink-or-swim moment, so we took the leap and chose to rebuild the entire platform from the ground up, which was the only viable solution.
Nukepedia is now an entirely new website. The backend sits on a brand-new platform architecture and a sanitised database, replacing the CMS-driven foundation that kept the site ticking for 15 years. Rather than building on bloated legacy systems, the site has been rebuilt from scratch by a team of highly capable engineers, with a focus on performance, security, and long-term reliability.
All existing content has been successfully migrated to the new platform, preserving what is the world’s largest free collection of tools for Nuke. The result is a slick, fast, and secure home for the community’s work, while retaining the data and history that have made Nukepedia such a valuable resource for users.
The previous site served the community for years, remarkably well all things considered, but the new platform provides a foundation that is far better equipped for future growth, new features, and an improved user experience across the board. This isn’t just an upgrade; it’s the foundation for the next decade of Nukepedia, and hopefully we can extend resources to all 2D Compositing users at large.
What’s new?
Frank Rueter: I have taken the opportunity to make a bunch of smaller changes to improve the user experience, but the biggest change in this release is that nuBridge now has access to the brand-new database and is fully connected to the reengineered backend of the new Nukepedia.
And the latest version of nuBridge has been reworked under the hood to leverage this new infrastructure. Thanks to a bespoke API built for the platform, initial loading times have been dramatically reduced. Loading more than 2,500 tools directly in Nuke now takes only a few seconds, providing a much more enjoyable browsing experience for Nuke users.
nuBridge has also caught up with the latest Nuke releases and is fully compatible with the latest versions, including backwards compatibility, all the way back to Nuke 13. While updating the backend, we also took the opportunity to improve the UX. Clicking on a tool now opens a dedicated floating window displaying the full tool description. Previously, descriptions were squeezed into the panel, making it difficult to read. Now, tool authors have the space they deserve to showcase their work, including images, examples, and, of course, documentation.
We also introduced automatic login. Once authenticated, users no longer need to enter their password every time Nuke starts, making day-to-day use smoother. A number of smaller interface improvements have been added, too. Tools with available updates now provide more informative tooltips, offering greater transparency about what’s changed and helping users make informed decisions before updating. The built-in version manager continues to support multiple installed versions of the same tool, allowing users to choose exactly which version loads when Nuke starts.
Users who use the custom lists to organise their favourite tools will appreciate the new list management features. Lists can now be renamed and deleted directly from within nuBridge, eliminating the need to visit the website for these tasks, as was required with the old site.
The interface itself is way cooler and far more responsive to different panel sizes. As the nuBridge panel is resized, the button layout automatically adjusts to make the best possible use of available screen space. Previous versions had a fixed layout that often left large areas unused. This makes nuBridge a much more powerful fit for custom Nuke workspaces, opening up the possibility for dedicated “nuBridge” layouts to enable rapid tool discovery.
Finally, we’re also now taking advantage of the Qt improvements introduced with Nuke 16, resulting in a noticeably smoother and more responsive experience throughout the application.
Overall, this release is less about flash and more about making nuBridge faster, smarter, and more enjoyable to use every day, while giving the current tools minor updates to provide greater efficiency for the user. I had a lot of fun writing it, but I think people have yet to fully comprehend the many benefits it brings to a Nukepedia user, so I hope they enjoy exploring how they wish to use it! Best summarised as “the App Store inside of Nuke”.
nuBridge is really just one perk for people who sign up for Nukepedia’s proUser subscription. Other benefits include discounts with our partners, which you can check out here: https://www.nukepedia.com/nubridge/prouser/
DP: Before we get into the relaunch, how are things concerning compositing in Wellington?
Frank Rueter: Down at the bottom of the world, NZ, like the rest of the industry globally, has been hurting a lot for the past few years, especially since our rebate is the least appealing to offshore productions. Work is starting to look up now; jobs are coming in again, and luckily, most of the smaller shops have survived the drought.
Like many, our industry has ups and downs, so Kara and I will continue to support our local industry where we can, as we sometimes struggle in the shadows of the one big player down here. Our most recent efforts have been supporting our local VFX Guild – we have a great Exec who is magnifying our efforts to a bigger reach than we could ever achieve individually.
It is awesome to see that both local and international shops all seem to be utilising Nukepedia as a daily resource. I regularly get really encouraging emails about how valuable Nukepedia has been to them and how it has been formative in building their career. Sometimes Nukepedia stories come up at our local networking pub nights, and occasionally during Client calls, which is amusing yet very gratifying.
In nearly 30 years of working in VFX, I have been really fortunate to have found good mentors wherever I went, and so it feels great to know that we have managed to build a lasting resource that will continue to help artists worldwide for some time to come, from beginners to pros.
And it’s not all serious squirrels – I also love seeing some of the slightly goofier contributions, like Ponk (use Nuke’s node graph to play pong) or the Kawai Mode script. It shows that people are having fun and are keen to share that fun – after all, playfulness provides freedom to explore and therefore should be nurtured also.
We’ve done a stocktake of the past 15 years of Nukepedia, and looking at the data over that period, we clearly see membership has been steadily increasing since day one – even Covid didn’t put a blip in the trajectory! We now host nearly 2,500 free tools for Nuke, which have been downloaded over two million times. All stats show a consistent upward trend across all three areas: new registrations, tools shared, and tools downloaded. Ever since the launch at the Mayan Theatre in LA many aeons ago, it has steadily grown, reassuring us that we made the right decision to rebuild.
DP: Why did you decide to rebuild Nukepedia now?
Frank Rueter: When I started Nukepedia, I had no idea about web development. 15 years later, I still don’t… but the short answer is, we had little choice. The site had come to its knees, and we had to act or let it fade into just another entry in the Wayback Machine, and we couldn’t let such a unique user community die.
The recent lull in the industry was a bit of a glass-half-empty opportunity; the absence of client work afforded us the time to concentrate on a site rebuild – as they say, when fishermen can’t fish, they mend their nets. But at the same time, it was concerning to embark on a professional build knowing we were facing a large price tag without finance. We decided to take the leap, declared the glass half full and started to mend.
As the project proceeded, it became apparent that it was way more complicated than the initial specs indicated. In the end, while we got the perfect rebuild we always envisioned, we also faced a budget blowout, which we are now trying to figure out. Thankfully, the uptick in tool contributions and feedback from the community confirms that it was the right decision.
Options and Ideas
DP: With the relaunch being done, which Features landed on the cutting room floor?
Frank Rueter: Oh, there are so many new things we wanted to implement for the relaunch but we had to focus on a solid core first – replacing all the existing services the users rely upon.
GitHub Integration
The top feature I am itching to see on Nukepedia is GitHub integration. I would love to see developers who already maintain their code in git repos be able to simply register those repos on Nukepedia, without duplicating effort or files. Nukepedia should be able to render the git remote’s markdown file to provide a nice tool page for the user, and the download should be routed transparently, so nothing changes for the downloader. This would retain a single source of truth for the developer, and therefore everybody wins.
3rd Party Integration
In the same vein, I’d love something similar for 3rd party plugins: a simple way to register their products on Nukepedia, so that the site becomes more of a search tool for Nuke tools anywhere, rather than just its own internal file repo.
We could combine our traffic with the awesome tools so many companies and individuals are providing for free and those commercially too. A great example would be KeenTools, who housed the early beta versions of their GeoTracker on Nukepedia, which has since grown into one of the best commercial Nuke plugins ever IMHO. I’d love to come full circle and link them back in.
New Categories
We are hoping to introduce some new categories before too long, to support peripheral products that may be relevant for compositors, such as Das Element and GripTape. We’d love to hear from anyone interested in creating their own top-level category on Nukepedia to build a user-driven tool exchange. Now that we are finally back on solid ground, all we need is a conversation and some content to kick-start it. So call me, wink, wink…
Benchmark System
I would love to have a benchmark system much like the Blender Benchmark site, where a Nuke/Hiero user can run a simple tool on their workstation to automatically assess and upload the resulting benchmark stats to the site. Xavier Bourque has already prototyped this brilliantly with his PxF_NukeBench gizmo, and it would be great to solidify the concept on Nukepedia.
This would assist artists and companies to make more informed decisions about new hardware while also providing a point of reference for the manufacturers – another win-win. We have already talked with Hernan at Cavalry HQ, Xavier and others about this, so hopefully we can make this happen soon.
Notification System
A modern notification system would be nice, so users can opt in to get notifications about new and updated tools. We used to have an RSS feed and automatic LinkedIn posts for new tools. I’d like to get back to that as well as something like a webhook that users could use to get notified in whatever way they prefer. Maybe a simple Discord bot as well. I need to canvass the field a bit more on that level to see what would actually be beneficial to users these days. Please let me know if you have any ideas … we practice the “never not take a meeting” here at OHUfx.
Market Place
Another product we are also interested in exploring is a marketplace, like Superhive. I know what it is like to spend hundreds of hours on tools that you share for free. At some point, it is nice to see a little kickback for your efforts, even if it’s minimal. If we could manage to offer that, it would also create a small revenue stream to cover the rebuild and running costs.
Snapshots
I am also wondering about companies that are required to airgap their workstations. As much as I detest how our industry has become a slave to paranoid security requirements, it is the reality we have to deal with. Maybe we could offer a service that provides offline snapshots of the tool database at regular intervals, with a simple API and/or UI to update internal Nuke repos. If any companies are interested in this, please reach out.
Site License
Currently, the nuBridge subscription is user-based, and I’ve had requests from Universities and facilities for “site licensing”. Unfortunately, we haven’t had the resources to get that done so far, but now it is something we can explore.
Forum
Something that keeps coming up with users is the integration of a forum. I always wanted to stay away from this to make sure the official Foundry forum was not being compromised, but it seems that the Nuke user community has been scattered to all corners of social media these days, from LinkedIn to Reddit, Discord, etc.., so maybe it is worth rethinking if Nukepedia could provide a gravitational pull to bring everybody back together. And not just Nuke, to bring all 2D users back to share their knowledge and guidance for all tips and tricks for tools in our corner of the VFX sandbox.
As much as the concept of a user forum seems old-school these days, in my experience, it is still the best way to foster ongoing conversations while curating past knowledge in a way that is easily recalled. If this were to happen, I could see a fun use for an AI bot that recommends tools based on discussions. This would need to be on-demand, not automatic, though. There is nothing worse these days than AI constantly trying to take over for you with whatever it is that you are doing (he says while declining the AI bot’s offer to rephrase this sentence…)
Job Boards
Other thoughts include compositing-specific job boards and/or collaborations with talent agencies to bring more value to the site. I could envision some sort of portal to existing sites and setups, so we don’t reinvent the wheel but instead connect solutions that have already proven successful.
Tool Requests, Code Sprints … unlimited possibilities!
Other ideas include the ability for users to request tools and for others to accept the challenge. This could feed a badge system, so helpful Nukepedia contributors can be promoted, which in turn could connect well with the above-mentioned job board and marketplace.
Code sprints to tackle requests or address a specific topic would be great events, as would workshops. All of these would feed back into Nukepedia’s ecosystem, providing new tools to bolster the site and keep it relevant.
DP: What are you working on next, insofar as you can talk about it?
Frank Rueter: With all the above ideas and more, we are currently working on mapping out how to best accommodate all these potentials and to introduce sponsors and supporters alike, and how we can navigate doing this with limited resources – it’s both very exciting but also somewhat overwhelming. But then we remember “community” – as they say, a problem shared is a problem halved. Besides, we don’t want to recreate anything that is already succeeding – rather, connect to and collaborate with.
proUser: Getting our finances in order is our first need, so promoting our proUser subscription is a big priority. We haven’t as yet done any marketing and believe many are yet to hear about nuBridge, and also understand just how much fun it is – it’s like using Nukepedia on steroids.
An ideal scenario would be for our proUser subscription (with nuBridge as the primary product) to increase, providing funds to back pay. And now that we have Nukepedia up and healthy again, we are in a perfect position to find great partnerships with fellow industry professionals to bring more support.
This will likely require advertising, something I was dead against when I started Nukepedia because it was all red, flashing banners back then. Thankfully, 15 years on, advertising has evolved to be a little less offensive, so I’m quietly optimistic that, with the right partners, their product placement on our site will only bring more kudos to the “self-growing giving tree”. If you have an idea for a great sponsor match for Nukepedia, please drop me a line.
We are considering broadening the site’s scope to include other software packages in the 2D Compositing space, not just Nuke and Hiero. After all, the framework is holistic, so why not share the love and provide an opportunity to bring people together? We are all sitting in the same boat regardless of what software we fire up to earn a living …
DP: So, besides that, you are still working as a Compositor – what is in your Nuke’s shelf and do you use nuBridge yourself?
Frank Rueter: To be honest, I am not spending much time in Nuke myself these days as I am looking after a team of compositors, supervising shows or working on some of my own projects (e.g. Nukepedia, nuBridge and currently the CutDetector app).
I am realising that nuBridge should actually be quite interesting for VFX supervisors, Compositing Supervisors, as well as Comp TDs, as it allows for rapid testing and building of tool lists to share with a team, e.g. for project-specific needs in a small team or to send through for pipeline approval in a larger company. After all, there is also a mini API that people can hook into to create approval workflows.
We have a nice little routine with our team now, where artists use nuBridge to quickly find and test a tool, request pipeline installation if it passes muster, and then demo it in our weekly comp meeting to ensure everyone on the team is aware. However, when I do find myself comping again, the tools I wouldn’t want to do without anymore are
Frank’s Favourites
DasGrain by Fabian Holtz: A semi-automatic regraining tool for when matching grain by hand starts to feel less like compositing and more like punishment.
APmatte by Adrian Pueyo: A BlinkScript-based matte generator using Position passes, because sometimes pulling a matte from actual 3D data is preferable to pleading with luma keys.
CardBuddy by Hiram Gifford: A helper for placing 3D cards in world space and generating holdouts without constantly diving into Nuke’s 3D viewer, which is nice, since the node graph already provides enough places to get lost.
ExpoGlow by Julian Lojek: A more organic glow than Nuke’s built-in filter, for those moments when “default glow slapped on at 2 a.m.” is not the creative direction.
MorphDissolve by Erwan Leroy for those ridiculous fluid morphs editorial likes doing because they have a button for it.
WrapItUp by Max Van Leeuwen: A script-packaging lifesaver that collects media, gizmos and other dependencies so a Nuke script can survive being moved to another machine without immediately becoming modern art.
ITransform, something I wrote way back when at Weta but somehow it keeps on giving. A mask-based warper with transform controls, old enough to have stories, useful enough to still be invited back onto the show.
ToDoList, something I wrote for Nuke and Hiero as a training project for QT a long time ago and which I should really update at some point. A simple task panel for Nuke scripts that stores shot-specific notes, priorities and statuses, because “I’ll remember that ” remains the industry’s most optimistic lie.
And I’d like to say TrueExponentialBlur by Chris Fryer, but he hasn’t put it up on Nukepedia yet, so Chris, if you are reading this, you know what to do…
Here comes Cut Detector
DP: That seems very easy to put together – what do you do in your spare time?
Frank Rueter: My current project is the CutDetector app. It started as a proof of concept for my Timeline Master Class and was meant to add automatic cut detection to the Hiero workflow like in Resolve (when I say “Hiero”, I mean NukeStudio without Nuke, this still confuses people unfortunately).
I have been working on it for a few months now and it has grown into much more than just cut detection. It is targeting vfx editors who need to cut up Quicktimes into single shots, be it a string-out for bidding or a reference clip for an entire sequence or even an entire film. With the upcoming release, it is also positioned to serve producers and production assistants to go through such steps without the need for a VFX editorial department – this will be a huge time and cost saver for the smaller studios.
Not too long ago, a big studio handed us a single QuickTime of a feature film without *.edl or any supporting documents, and we had to sink a ton of time into cutting it up to find and prepare all VFX shots for pipeline ingest. This was the moment that motivated me to create the CutDetector.
The current tool that most people use does a great job at cut detection. But it kinda just leaves the user with the results, and it still takes a lot of time and knowledge of the host software to do anything useful with it. CutDetector is a standalone app that gives the user way more control over detection results in a fun, user-friendly way, and then takes it all the way to whatever your pipeline ingest needs. I’ve had lots of fun making this, so hopefully others will enjoy the user experience.
Users can interact with the detection data to wrangle false positives and use a contact sheet view to quickly find missing cuts (by using non-AI human eyes and brains). It includes OCR tools to extract text from burn-ins, which means shot names, vfx notes, source timecodes, etc., can be lifted from a QuickTime and mapped to the respective shot for subsequent export to OTIO, EDL, AAF, or XML. Where possible, the OCR data is stored in tags and included in PDF or XLS reports.
Sub clips and thumbnails can be exported as well to quickly prepare a turnover with reference clips and I included a clipboard link to ShotGrid (Sorry Autodesk, I just cannot bring myself to call it Flow Production Tracking).
I just finished a big update that includes a multithreaded caching system with a simple playback option along with thumbnails in the shots table, which is now making CutDetector more intuitive and a great tool for producers to quickly cut up and assess clips for bidding purposes, without the need to go through the vfx editorial department first.
It’s a standalone tool and pretty easy to learn, so no expensive license is needed to go through this process in a host application and anybody can operate it without little prior knowledge. CutDetector is currently in beta and anybody who is keen can join me on Discord to have a play. I am still working out the pricing but let’s just say it will pay for itself very quickly with time saved.
Until I get this and a few other things sorted, the beta will be free and I will make sure to send coupons to all those who have helped me test it once officially released into the wild. Hopefully very soon… Find out more here: https://cutdetector.com
And join us on Discord with any thoughts, ideas or feedback to help shape this app: https://discord.gg/puzJUaQdxD
