For those who don’t know the tool: Keentools is a 3D tracking node for Nuke and an add-on for Blender and After Effects, sitting between matchmove and comp where your patience goes to die.

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KeenTools shipped 2026.1.0 with a clear theme: newer host versions, fewer annoying edge cases, and one new refinement switch that trades absolute accuracy for steadier motion.

The Nuke package now supports Nuke 16.1 and Nuke 17.0 across the nodes in the package. The Blender pack now supports Blender 5.1. GeoTracker for After Effects fixes a bug that caused inverted mesh UVs when exporting to Alembic. TextureBuilder received a fix aimed at full compatibility with Nuke’s new USD-based 3D system.

Nuke: new Refine modes, same tracker

In Nuke, GeoTracker adds two Refine modes in the Smoothing tab: Precise and Smooth. Precise mode behaves like the prior default. It targets maximum tracking accuracy. The notes also call out a known downside: inconsistent keyframes can lead to tiny jumps. That matches the kind of micro jitter that can make a trcak feel wrong even when the overall solve looks solid.

Smooth mode aims to remove those tiny jumps when keyframes do not align perfectly. The release notes also state that Smooth can slightly affect absolute tracking accuracy. That makes the intent explicit: Smooth exists for shots where visual steadiness beats the last bit of numeric precision.

The update does not change the basic concept of GeoTracker. It gives artists a more direct choice at the end of the refinement step, instead of forcing endless keyframe nudging and re-running refine until the twitch goes away.

Host support matters here too. The same update adds Nuke 16.1 and Nuke 17.0 support across the nodes in the Nuke package. That helps facilities that keep multiple Nuke versions installed and need the same toolset available in both.

Nuke: TextureBuilder and USD

TextureBuilder received a fix intended to make it fully compatible with Nuke’s new USD-based 3D system. The release notes keep it at that level, with no extra detail about which USD features, scene layouts, or node setups the fix touches.

USD has a way of turning minor incompatibilities into big time sinks, because the problems tend to surface late, when a scene graph comes in from somewhere else and the viewer looks fine until it does not. This update targets that failure mode by addressing USD support inside TextureBuilder in the context of Nuke’s new 3D system.

Blender: 5.1 support and texturing repair

The Blender pack now supports Blender 5.1. including a fix for a texturing issue in GeoTracker and FaceTracker in Blender. After the fix, the texture grab works as it should.

After Effects: Alembic export UVs

GeoTracker for After Effects fixes a bug that caused inverted mesh UVs when exporting to Alembic. The release notes describe the fix as helpful for sending tracking data to third-party tools. The bug description stays specific to UV orientation during Alembic export.

UV flips can hide in plain sight, especially when a downstream tool or shader setup masks the problem until someone changes a render path. Fixing the export at the source reduces that risk when geometry leaves After Effects for another stage.

If you rely on Alembic in your handoff chain, test an export after updating and inspect UV orientation in the next tool in the chain using a known reference asset.

https://keentools.io/

The post KeenTools 2026.1: Nuke 17 and Blender 5.1 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Neat Video runs as a denoise plug-in inside apps like Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve, and Foundry Nuke. It cleans up shots without making you leave your host, which is the nicest kind of cleaning.

What 6.1.2 actually changes

Neat Video 6.1.2 shipped on 9 April 2026. The update targets three very practical areas: support for new Apple Silicon graphics hardware, compatibility with newly released host versions, and small workflow and stability improvements across plug-ins and platforms.

Boris FX welcomes Vegas Pro

The headline compatibility additions are support for Apple M5 Pro and M5 Max GPUs on macOS, support for Nuke 17 on Windows, macOS, and Linux, support for Nuke Studio 17 and Nuke Indie 17 on Windows, macOS, and Linux, plus support for Vegas Pro 2026 on Windows.

If your pipeline depends on host upgrades staying unblocked, that list matters more than any marketing adjective. A denoiser that falls behind host compatibility turns into the most expensive bypass node you never wanted.

Vegas Pro 2026 support on Windows

6.1.2 adds support for Vegas Pro 2026 on Windows. What is clear is the intent: the update aligns the plug-in with the newest Vegas Pro release line, so editors on that host can update without losing access to the denoise plug-in. If your finishing workflow includes cuts or conform work in Vegas Pro, this update keeps that lane open. And, if you think that EWgas is getting a second wind, you don’t have to miss your favourite denoiser.

Nuke 17, Nuke Studio 17, Nuke Indie 17 compatibility

6.1.2 adds support for Nuke 17 across Windows, macOS, and Linux, and adds support for Nuke Studio 17 and Nuke Indie 17 across the same trio of platforms. In a mixed facility where artists jump between OS builds or where show work crosses between Linux workstations and macOS laptops, that cross-platform statement carries scheduling weight.

Some teams will care about this update purely because it removes friction around moving to Nuke 17. Others will care because they have already moved and need the denoise step to catch up. Either way, the result is the same: one less reason to keep an older host version installed just to keep a plug-in alive.

Apple Silicon M5 Pro and M5 Max support

Version 6.1.2 adds support for Apple M5 Pro and M5 Max GPUs on macOS. The practical promise is simple: GPU-accelerated processing for faster renders on Apple Silicon M5 Pro and M5 Max machines.

Updating, licensing, and what costs money

6.1.2 is described as the latest update improving compatibility and support for new software and hardware, and it is free for licensed users of version 6 of the product.

To update, the release directs users to the My Products page. The My Products page requires login access through the vendor site, so you should expect the usual account-based download flow rather than a public direct installer link for licensed builds, or a line of smooth WinGet.

Upgrading from older major versions gets described in two ways across the official materials provided. Owners of versions 1 through 5 can upgrade to the new major version 6 with a discount. Another official upgrade page adds extra detail: version 6 can coexist with version 5 or older and does not replace it in current projects, a v6 demo is available to try before upgrading, and users who purchased version 5 within the last 12 months receive an additional discount.

Pricing of a single-copy license price is €72.90 for the Home edition and €136.90 for the Pro edition on several host categories. The same page also shows discounted bundle pricing for certain host combinations, but the exact bundles and discount figures vary by host section on that page. If you buy based on a specific host, verify the exact host row you plan to license, because the page layout presents pricing per host family.

https://www.neatvideo.com/news/nv612

The post Neat Video 6.1.2 adds Vegas 2026 and Nuke 17 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

ONYX builds ONYX Ai Matte as a GPU-accelerated matte extraction tool for segmentation, tracking, and mask refinement inside OFX-compatible hosts. It targets hair and fur edge work and shots with more than one subject, and it frames the speed and quality claims as marketing claims. Under the hood, it uses Meta SAM3 and VitMatte models, packaged via ONNX in FP16 and accelerated with NVIDIA CUDA 12.6 and TensorRT 10.x.

Prompts, trimaps, and tracking

The UI exposes five pipeline modes: box or point prompts with auto track, box or point prompts with manual track, text prompts with auto track, mask prompts with auto track, and a trimap workflow using VitMatte with manual track. Point and box workflows let you set foreground and background points and a bounding box. The interface supports up to 32 points.

Text prompt mode detects objects that match your text. If it finds multiple matches, one foreground point picks the instance. Mask prompt mode takes a rough input mask and uses it as the prompt for a refined segmentation. The trimap path expects white foreground, black background, and a grey uncertainty band for edge refinement. Tracking integrates directly into the prompt workflows. In Nuke, the box center can be driven by expressions so a tracker can push it through the shot while size stays consistent. You still need to test any new tool before it goes into production, especially when the alhpa becomes the single point of failure.

Hosts and compatibility

The published host list includes DaVinci Resolve 18 and later, Fusion Studio 18 and later, and Nuke 13 and later. It also positions the plug-in as working in any OFX compatible app, like Autodesk Flame specifically.

System requirements and what is not supported

Minimum requirements list Windows 10 64 bit, an NVIDIA RTX GPU, 6GB of VRAM, 16GB of RAM, and 8GB free space. Windows 11 64 bit is also supported. Text prompts require 8GB of VRAM or more. The baseline GPU callout is an NVIDIA RTX 2060 or better with SM 7.0 or higher. Not supported: GTX 1000 series, AMD Radeon, and Intel Arc.

Trial, licensing, and pricing

A full featured 7-day trial is offered with no credit card required. Licenses are sold as lifetime, one time payments with no subscription, plus free minor updates. Pricing is published in euros as lifetime tiers on the official pricing page. Indie costs €80 for one machine node locked. Studio 3 costs €180 for three machines node locked. Studio 10 costs €450 for ten machines node locked. Studio 10 also includes priority support.

https://onyxofx.com/

The post ONYX Ai Matte for OFX hosts first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Cold Storage is a 2026 horror comedy feature directed by Jonny Campbell from a screenplay by David Koepp, adapted from his 2019 novel. The film is a France–United States co-production principally financed and produced by STUDIOCANAL with Pariah, and distributed by STUDIOCANAL in Europe.

It stars Georgina Campbell as Naomi Williams and Joe Keery as Travis “Teacake” Meacham, two night-shift employees at a self-storage facility built atop an abandoned U.S. military base, whose world becomes a nightmare when a parasitic fungus sealed deep underground is released. The story combines elements of body horror, dark comedy, creature effects and outbreak survival as the protagonists race to contain the rapidly mutating organism before it causes widespread devastation.

Nikolas D’Andrade (Linkedin | Site | IMDB) is VFX Supervisor at MPC Paris, the studio responsible for delivering all 575 VFX shots on Cold Storage. Prior to Cold Storage, his screen credits include Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet), Guns Akimbo, and Borderlands. He is also credited as VFX supervisor on Mortal and won the Danish Robert Award for Best Visual Effects for The Shadow in My Eye.

Béatrice Bauwens (LinkedIn | IMDB) is Head of VFX and Post Production at MPC Paris and is credited on projects including Rust and Bone, Tell No One, and Emilia Pérez. In addition to studio leadership, MPC Paris’ recent filmography includes work on The Last Duel, Under Paris, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, and The Nun 2.

DP: “Cold Storage” is not exactly a casual weekend gig. How did you end up on this one?

Nikolas D’Andrade : I had joined MPC Paris a few months after returning from Montreal, right after finishing Anatomy of a Fall, directed by Justine Triet. This was three years ago. Béatrice Bauwens, our Head of VFX & Post Production, needed someone with experience on mid- to large-scale features with U.S. clients, and I was fortunate to be assigned to the project. The production moved very quickly – I even did an urgent 24-hour round trip to Ouarzazate, Morocco, for a technical scout. 

Béatrice Bauwens: France is especially attractive for VFX production, thanks to a highly advantageous tax credit system. Productions can benefit from a 30% tax rebate on expenses incurred in France, starting at €250,000 in local spending. For projects with over €2 million in VFX spend within France, the tax credit increases to 40%. This financial incentive, combined with the presence of highly skilled and creative artists, makes France a leading destination for VFX work. This was decisive for Cold Storage in deciding on France for the VFX work. 

Combined with MPC Paris’s extensive experience on major international features and series, our production capacity, and the strength and diversity of our reel, MPC became a natural and strategic choice for the project. 

DP: MPC Paris, back in action. What did it feel like to have the logo on the door again after the Technicolor era imploded?

Béatrice Bauwens: Technically speaking MPC Paris never ceased its activity. MPC Paris was lucky to keep full activity in France while many other MPC offices around the world were facing disruptions. At the end of March, TransPerfect Group acquired MPC Paris as well as The Mill Paris. This period has been truly unique for all of us. We received tremendous support from the entire industry, and the team was fully committed to giving it the best possible chance of success. We were extremely fortunate to have been acquired, enabling us to retain the majority of our team in France. 

MPC Paris has always been deeply rooted in French cinema, with over 40 years of experience on local productions going back to the Mikros Image days. What hasn’t changed is the drive of our teams and the quality of the work we deliver; the two remain at the core of MPC Paris. 

DP: For people who only know the film as “that slime movie”: what was MPC Paris actually responsible for?

Nikolas D’Andrade : Everything was produced by MPC Paris, from on-set data capture all the way through to the DCP. We handled the assets, environments, prep, compositing, and more. Creatively, Cold Storage was a true challenge, covering the entire VFX spectrum: from basic rig cleanup to full environment destruction, creatures, digital set extensions, and the enhancement of practical SFX makeup. 

The distribution of work over time and across MPC teams was particularly complex. With the edit constantly evolving, the VFX departments were tightly interconnected: creatures, environments, destruction, compositing. Every narrative change had cross-cutting impacts, so the teams needed careful coordination and a high level of flexibility throughout production. 

DP: How many humans did it take to manufacture this much biological unpleasantness?

Nikolas D’Andrade : We split work mainly between Paris and Bangalore, and all in all, around 500 people contributed to the project – not all at once, but across the different phases. From a production standpoint, Cold Storage was set up to be highly collaborative and flexible. A core production and supervision team kept things on track, supported by leads across assets, animation, FX, environments, lighting, and compositing. This structure let us respond quickly to post-production needs, test screenings, and ongoing creative tweaks.  

Big international projects always involve a lot of creative voices, and Cold Storage was no exception – producers, supervisors, the director, STUDIOCANAL, and the U.S. producers were all closely involved, sparking frequent artistic discussions and iterations. The whole process ran on strong collaboration, shared creative drive, and a single goal: pushing the film’s quality as far as we could. 

DP: Give us the boring-but-essential part: what did the pipeline look like on this show?

Nikolas D’Andrade : We had an excellent production team – three VFX producers, a truly outstanding PM, and coordinators who were proactive, efficient, and a joy to work with. They kept work distribution, tracking, and cross-department communication running smoothly. It may sound obvious, but it’s worth saying: the production team plays a more-than-essential role – without them, the machine doesn’t run. And of course, the artists made it all happen, giving it everything they had. Huge thanks to the whole team. 

On the technical side, our process kicked off with modeling, building creatures, CG doubles, environments, and all fully CG assets. We then moved into texturing with Adobe Substance Painter, Substance Designer, and Mari, which let us handle assets smoothly and non-destructively. Lookdev came next, shaping materials, shading, and lighting in Maya and Arnold, while FX lookdev in Houdini with Arnold set the tone for dynamic elements. Fully CG sequences – the explosion, the opening timewarp, macro shots inside veins and the brain, and the late-arriving cockroach sequence – each brought their own challenges, tackled as they entered the pipeline.  

At the heart of it, MPC Paris relies on a pipeline honed over the years and shared with The Mill Paris, built around Arnold, Maya, Houdini and Nuke. This blend of trusted workflows and smart custom solutions let the teams stay nimble while delivering complex sequences to the highest standard. 

It was also on this project that we were able to launch the development of a workflow manager prototype, which allowed us to automate entire sections of our production chain. This prototype has since been merged with our flagship open-source software, Meshroom.

DP: You were on set. What is your mental checklist before you sign off on plates and walk to the VFX suite?

Nikolas D’Andrade: I don’t handle data capture myself, I have a dedicated person or team for that. There are a few reasons: First, I need to stay constantly next to the director, the DP, or the 1st AD to control what’s happening. Even on shots that, at first glance, aren’t supposed to be VFX. It’s often exactly in those cases that you need to be there, because things can quickly impact the budget, like shots that weren’t planned in the bid.

Second, it’s simply logistical: when we change setups, that’s when a lot of creative and technical discussion happens between the director and the DP (and sometimes other departments). I can’t afford not to be there because I’m busy taking measurements or photos.

I’m also there as an authority figure during certain captures (HDRIs for example), to make sure nobody moves on set while the wrangler team is shooting the HDR. I ask my team to note certain things in the VFX report that might help us later, or that will require discussion during the edit (continuity, extra work, or creative input).

On my side, I write a daily VFX LOG, a shot-by-shot journal of what we shot the day before, which I then send to the producer and the VFX producer, so I can flag any complications that will require additional work, or, on the contrary, confirm that everything went as planned.

DP: What’s in your on-set bag of tricks these days, besides gaffer tape and quiet despair?

Nikolas D’Andrade : Personally, I have my iPad with me so I can draft/paint over things to show or discuss specific points with the director, along with the screenplay, the VFX breakdown, and the day’s call sheet/work plan provided by the 1st AD the day before. I also carry my walkie-talkie so I’m in constant contact with my wrangler team.

For the wranglers on set: the usual kit. ColorChecker, chrome/grey balls, a laser distance meter, tape measures, a stills camera with different focal lengths – I usually ask for a CPL filter to cut reflections on polarized materials such as water and other shiny surfaces, except metal, so we can provide references and textures with as less lighting interference as possible, plus LiDAR.

DP: Tooling question, but make it spicy: what’s new in the MPC toolbox now that you’re inside the TransPerfect umbrella?

Béatrice Bauwens: Tooling-wise, moving into the TransPerfect Group didn’t mean starting from scratch. Under Technicolor, we had a massive global toolbox across MPC Paris, The Mill, Mikros Animation and Technicolor Games, and that legacy came with us when we joined TransPerfect. A good example is Meshroom, which still powers a lot of our workflows.  On top of that, TransPerfect DNA is about technology. This is a perfect place for us to land with great opportunity to innovate and find the smartest technical and human solutions for filmmakers… Cold Storage gave us the perfect playground to test new techniques, strengthen the studio, and keep raising the bar. 

DP: Roughly how many shots were “normal”, and how many were “this needs a hazmat suit”?

Nikolas D’Andrade : We delivered 575 shots in total. Roughly 300 were “invisible” VFX such set extension, makeup enhancement, while the more “hazmat suit” work broke down to about 175 slime/fungus shots, 60 creature shots, and 23 explosion shots.

DP: Slime is a liar. How did you keep viscosity, weight, and stickiness from drifting into videogame goo?

Nikolas D’Andrade : The process was long, but honestly very cool to develop. My very first step, right after our early pre-production discussions with director Jonny Campbell, was to read David Koepp’s novel to find details that can be useful but are sometimes hard to convey in a screenplay because of format limitations. David writes hard sci-fi, grounded in scientific and physical principles (which I personally love, authors like Carl Sagan with Contact, or Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy).

In the novel, we learn how this cordyceps “evolves” depending on the chemical elements it encounters and absorbs. It mutates and evolves into an increasingly intelligent entity, constantly trying to spread further. That became our starting point for giving personality to what is essentially the film’s antagonist. For example, its favourite molecule, its holy grail, is water, and its worst nightmare is fire. There’s a shot, a top shot, where we designed the fungus shape on the tarmac after a vehicle explosion: a dead zone in a circular shape, because it’s too hot for it to get close.

From there, we worked closely with the FX team and entered an R&D phase. We needed an asset, something we could almost “release” into a 3D scene and let it live its life, the way a cordyceps would, but at the same time, because we know the constraints and reality of working with production constraints, such as framing, we still needed control over its propagation so we could design it shot by shot.

We also asked ourselves very practical questions: how does it get through a gap? And we established rules like: it spreads faster or slower depending on the surface, if it’s water, it spreads extremely fast. That’s why in the parking-lot scene after Dr. Friedman’s implosion, the parking is almost completely covered within just a few shots, whereas in the storage facility it progresses much more slowly.

For lookdev, we went through a lot of back-and-forth to find what felt best. The original brief was a fluorescent green, but we ended up moving toward a more vegetal green, testing options like verdigris tones or even black. I personally liked the black because it added a more threatening feel, but it leaned too much into a Venom-style symbiote vibe and also created readability issues in darker moments.

DP: Who paid the price for the slime? How did you split the work across departments, and how many iterations did it take before everyone stopped wincing?

Nikolas D’Andrade : All departments were involved constantly, because whenever we did a new iteration, say we or the client felt the fungus was moving too much in a shot for instance. We had to adjust the asset parameters inside the shot, re-sim, re-export the Alembics, re-render, and then update the comps. The FX team was by far the most relied-upon, because they “owned the recipe” and knew how to cook it. They did a fantastic job, by the end we genuinely had a real digital cordyceps asset.

DP: Before this film, did you know what a rat king was, or were you blissfully untraumatised?

Nikolas D’Andrade : Yes. I’d heard about it a long time ago, but to me it was basically an urban legend. During my pre-production research, especially after reading a 2006 white paper from the Natural History Museum / University of Tartu in Estonia. I realised it’s probably not just a legend, but a real (and very rare) phenomenon.

The director had initially sent me a photo he found online, and from there I tracked down more images. Even so, we ended up doing the concepts largely from scratch. If you’re curious, here’s the paper I’m referring to:

Miljutin, Andrei. (2007). Rat kings in Estonia. Proc Estonian Acad Sci Biol Ecol. 56.

DP: Cats have infinite internet references. Deer have nature documentaries. Rat kings are rare and appear mostly in nightmares. How did you even start designing and animating that thing? 

Nikolas D’Andrade : Based on the concepts and the photos we found, the brief we received was that the tail knot was the epicentre, almost like a python pinned into the concrete floor. As a result, each rat is trying to pull in a different direction, but they’re all restrained by that fixed point, like a dog trying to attack you while tied to a pole.

To make it properly disgusting, we used two types of rats assets: “hero” rats and “extra” rats. The main pile of rats, positioned in the lower part, was the “mass”, inert and animated in a soft-body / simulation approach, has been made with “extra” rats, while the hero rats were placed on top and animated in keyframes. Once everything was assembled, we poured slime over it. The complexity of that shot was collisions: between the volume of the rat geometry, the thickness of the fur, and the slime on top. It was pretty intense to manage all the collision interactions.

DP: Finale time. There’s a big bang at the end. What was the brief, and what did you need to sell to make it feel real?

Nikolas D’Andrade : The creative intent was very simple: an underground nuclear explosion that collapses the entire environment over a radius of a few kilometres. To achieve that, I asked production for a drone so we could mount the camera (ARRI Alexa) and shoot plates and “tile” the environment, both to camera-map certain areas and to get wide establishing coverage. We also used maps to rebuild the terrain topology beyond a certain distance, especially elevation data, and LiDAR for everything close to camera.

We had a very long previs/postvis phase because the sequence was originally intended to be only a few shots, but production decided to extend it to increase the intensity. It’s the film’s climax, so you want it to hit hard, so there was a lot of back-and-forth with editorial to find the right action narrative and timing.

It was a challenge because the volume was enormous. We had to cluster the work by zones, manage all the collisions with trees, and stack layers of volumetric fluid, etc. The key for me was contrast ratio: using the light emanating from the ground cracks created by the explosion to naturally build a chiaroscuro lighting that’s immediately flattering and readable. And then adding debris and atmospheric particles to create depth and fill the volume.

DP: Was that mostly simulation FX, mostly comp, or the usual unholy marriage of both?

Nikolas D’Andrade : FX, elements, and plates, all cleverly blended together by our great comp team.

DP: Your favourite shot, and be honest: was it because it looked great, or because it finally stopped breaking?

Nikolas D’Andrade : There are several shots I’m really fond of. Early in the film, when they find the first body: the ribcage is open and the skull collapses in CG. the CG/asset work is genuinely strong, and I find the shots aesthetically beautiful from a photographic point of view.

The “Garbage” shot (Lujza Richter) when she turns around on Level -2, and you can see the wall behind her through her eye sockets, crafted with love by one of our best CG artists, André Monteiro.

The “Ironhead” shot (Andrew Brooke) lying on the ground after being shot as well, for the same reasons, with the blood spreading across the floor, I really like that one.

Another shot I think is very successful is a totally invisible one you can spot in the breakdown: it’s a full-CG shot of the camera moving forward in a travelling move toward a storage unit with the door closed, while the bikers are pounding on it. It was seamless, and I love that.

DP: What’s next for MPC Paris?

Béatrice Bauwens: We’re incredibly proud to share that Lise Fischer and the MPC Paris teams won the César for Best Visual Effects for L’Inconnu de la Grande Arche. It’s a wonderful recognition of the talent, creativity and collaboration that drive our studio every day, and we’re still celebrating this beautiful moment together. 

In the coming months, a bunch of exciting projects are set to hit screens: we delivered 150 VFX for the new AppleTV+ series The Hunt by Cédric Anger, 138 shots for The Gallerist by Cathy Yan, and 165 shots for Les rayons et les ombres by Xavier Gianolli. 

Beyond that, our supervisors are deep in development on several other projects and on set, though for now we can’t spill the details but stay tuned  

We stay passionate and inventive, always exploring new techniques and large-scale approaches. Cold Storage gave us the perfect playground to keep building the studio, test new methods, and strengthen our capabilities. We’ll be at Cannes Film Festival this year with some projects already in consideration, continuing to experiment, learn, and push our craft forward. 

The post MPC’s Cold Storage first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Nuke from Foundry is a node based compositing application used in feature film and episodic VFX. It ingests multi pass renders, deep data and USD scenes, and sits downstream of layout, animation and lighting while feeding DI and delivery.

Gaussian Splats go native

Foundry has released Nuke 17.0 with native support for Gaussian Splats. Artists can now import, view, manipulate, render and export splat data directly inside Nuke without third party conversion tools. Gaussian Splats are point based scene representations in which radiance is encoded as collections of anisotropic Gaussians rather than polygonal meshes. In Nuke 17.0, splats can be imported via GeoImport or GeoReference nodes and visualised in the Hydra based 3D viewer.

Rendering is handled through the SplatRender node, which supports depth output, deep output and motion blur. GeoDeletePoints enables non-destructive point removal, while GeoGrade allows colour grading operations on splat data. Field Nodes integrate with splats, enabling combination and transformation of point data. According to Foundry’s documentation, these nodes allow non-destructive masking and manipulation of 3D data, including Gaussian Splats.

USD 3D system leaves beta

The new USD-based 3D system is now fully released. It is built on Pixar’s Universal Scene Description and is intended to bring structured scene management into Nuke’s compositing context. A new import dialogue enables selective loading of data from complex USD scenes, including payload control and item-activation toggles. GeoImport supports USD with scene graph metadata as well as Alembic cameras and geometry. Axis nodes now include new constraint input pipes such as LookAt, Translation and Rotation constraints, alongside a Snapshot function to freeze transforms.

Camera workflows have been extended. Viewer locator visibility is improved, GeoCamera nodes can be created directly, and GeoEditCamera allows direct editing of USD camera data. Projection tools have moved into ScanlineRender. Cylindrical projection and UV Unwrap are supported, including UDIM tile outputs.

Material workflows have been aligned with USD and MaterialX. MtlXStandardSurface supports MaterialX Standard Surface preview and render in the Hydra viewer. New shader nodes include ReflectiveSurface for reflections and refractions, BasicSurface and WireframeShader. Legacy equivalents such as ConstantShader, FillShader and MergeLayerShader are retained.

Material binding is handled through GeoBindMaterial, which includes Binding Strength and Purpose controls to balance performance and render fidelity. Lighting nodes have been expanded. USD light attributes can be pulled directly into Nuke without baking. Updated DirectLight, SpotLight, PointLight and EnvironmentLight nodes include shadow toggles and output channel controls.

New USD aligned light nodes include GeoEditLight, GeoDistantLight, GeoDiskLight, GeoSphereLight and GeoDomeLight. Controls extend to intensity, exposure, falloff type, focus and colour temperature, with terminology aligned to physically based workflows. ScanlineRender now exposes explicit ray tracing controls, including Max Ray Depth and separate depth limits for reflection, refraction and diffuse rays. Motion blur controls include Shutter, Shutter Offset, Shutter Segments and Shutter Bias.

AOV output control has been expanded with Z depth, motion vector variants and independent surface AOV toggles. GeoMask and GeoClearMask nodes enable 3D masks to cascade down the node graph with visible indicators, improving readability in complex setups. GeoPython provides direct Python access to USD prims and schemas inside the scene graph, allowing scripted edits to USD data within the comp context. Graph Scope Variables can now operate inside USD scenes to swap geometry, cameras and textures based on variable logic.

BigCat scales machine learning

Nuke 17.0 introduces BigCat, extending the existing CopyCat machine learning toolset. While CopyCat focuses on shot level training, BigCat is designed for large scale dataset training across tens or hundreds of shots. BigCat supports data augmentation to generate variation for lighting and motion conditions. Validation tools include validation loss graphs and a validation contact sheet. Custom loss functions such as LPIPS are supported to encourage structural and semantic alignment beyond simple pixel difference metrics.

Graph Scope Variables mature

Graph Scope Variables receive a production ready framework update. Python callbacks and API integration allow custom code to be triggered on variable events. Root node knob expressions such as frame range and fps can drive dynamic variable values. Variable names can now be displayed in node labels for improved script readability. Foundry reports performance improvements for large scripts using Graph Scope Variables, though no numerical metrics are published.

Annotation and UI refinements

The annotation system has been overhauled. Drawing tools are more responsive, brushes are redesigned and a dedicated comment panel is introduced. Visual indicators aim to clarify review notes within the node graph.

In the 3D workspace, node colour coding, mask icons, scene graph filtering and live read indicators have been updated to improve clarity. Error and warning visibility in the viewer and node properties has also been enhanced. By the way, if that person looks familiar: You’ve read a whole story about that project in Digital Production:

We Hunt Giants

Core performance and colour

Core image processing updates include significant acceleration in TVIScale. Foundry states that GPU upscaling can be up to 98 times faster and CPU upscaling up to 26 times faster than previous behaviour. Deep composite rendering is reported to be up to 1.88 times faster to viewer and disk. Test conditions are not detailed in the documentation.

OFX plugins are no longer artificially resolution-limited. Plugins, including Furnace OFX, can now run at full hardware resolution. HDR MOV reading and writing now preserves YCbCr matrix, colour primaries and transfer functions. Native ACES 2.0 configurations are included. NotchLC codec support for MOV ingest and export is available on Windows and Linux.

Platform alignment and SDK updates

Nuke 17.0 supports USD 25.08 and aligns with VFX Reference Platform 2025. Third party libraries updated under this platform include Boost, OpenColorIO, OpenEXR, TBB and OpenVDB. OpenAssetIO and OpenAssetIO MediaCreation libraries are upgraded to version 1.0.0, with MediaCreation at 1.0.0 alpha.12.

Camera format support is updated via the latest Sony SDK and SMDK, including support for Burano firmware version 2 and 3.8K and 4K formats. Monitor out updates include AJA NTV2 17.5x, DeckLink 14.4 and NDI 6.x SDKs, with 10-bit support.

Parallel release for conservative pipelines

Alongside Nuke 17.0, Foundry has released Nuke 16.1. It includes most of the same feature updates but is built on the VFX Reference Platform 2024, allowing studios additional time to migrate their infrastructure.

Nuke 17.0 is available to customers with an active subscription. Pricing details are available from Foundry’s official product pages.

As with any major release that modifies 3D scene handling, machine learning workflows and core processing behaviour, facilities should validate performance, memory usage and pipeline compatibility before deploying to live productions. New tools and innovations should always be tested in controlled environments before use in production.

// Foundry Nuke 17.0 release notes
// https://learn.foundry.com/nuke/17.0v1/content/release_notes/nuke_17.0.html

And, if you want, you can compare it to the release of the Beta version in November:

Foundry Opens Nuke 17 Beta: New 3D System, New Variables

The post Nuke 17.0 rewires 3D and adds Gaussian Splats first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.