Nuke Studio (Non Commercial Use)

[Rodney]

For those of you working on personal projects of the non-commercial variety this might be of interest.

 

Nuke is a high end compositor used in the production of many feature films.

And of course Nuke does offer more than just compositing.

Some of the features: http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/nuke/features/?product=nukestudio

 

The PLE release is designed for learning the software with the obvious hope that you'll want to eventually purchase the commericial release because it is that useful to you. There is a long considerably long list of things you cannot do with the noncommericial release:

 

Want to learn and experiment with NUKE? We’ll be releasing a free for non-commercial use version of NUKE, NUKEX and NUKE STUDIO early in 2015. This is a free, non-watermarked but functionally restricted version of all of the products within our NUKE family.

Non-commercial NUKE STUDIO is available to anyone working non-commercially who wants to learn and experiment with NUKE at home, with the following restrictions:

• Not available to education institutions teaching NUKE
• Not available for instructional use or installation or use in a classroom or lab
• Not available for use in the same pipeline as commercial versions of NUKE
• Not available for use on the premises of a for-profit company during its normal working hours
• Not available for use in the provision of a service to 3rd parties, whether paid or not
• Not available for use during the user’s normal working hours
• Not available for use in a cluster of non-commercial NUKE STUDIO licenses

 

 

These constraints may limit usage but they do allow access to some expensive compositing tools.

The one question I have would be whether the license allows for a level of collaboration while learning Nuke. The line item "Not available for use in the provision of a service to 3rd parties, whether paid or not' could preclude this.

Other restrictions (of the hobble-ware variety) are said to be minimal:

The non-commercial NUKE STUDIO will be functionally restricted in the following ways:

• Output resolution limited to HD.
• 2D format support disabled for DNxHD, MPEG
• Encrypted data storage : All external data storage is encrypted, including NUKE scripts (these are saved with the extension .nkple), gizmos (saved with the extension .gzple), Nuke studio timeline projects (saved with extension .hrox ple) and copying to the clipboard. Among other things, this means the Non-Commercial NUKE saves files in an encrypted format, unlike the commercial version, which saves scripts unencrypted as plain text. The commercial version of NUKE cannot load files created with the Non-commercial version. Non-commercial NUKE, however, can load scripts and gizmos created with the commercial version.
• Limited Python scripting. Non-commercial NUKE restricts the amount of nodes that can be retrieved at a time by scripting. Functions such as "nuke.allNodes()" in Python will return only the first 10 nodes available rather than all of them at once, and scripts written to iterate through the Node Graph will not be able to retrieve any more nodes beyond a set point. The commercial version of NUKE can retrieve any and all nodes at any time as the command names would suggest.
• Disabled nodes including: The WriteGeo node and the Primatte node are disabled in Non-commercial NUKE.
• No Monitor output support: There is no video monitor output support in Non-commercial NUKE.
• No 3rd party plugin support: Only plug-ins that are shipped with NUKE can be used in the PLE. OFX plug-ins and custom plug-ins compiled with the NDK can only be used in the commercial version of NUKE.
• Command line rendering disabled: It is not possible to render a Non-commercial NUKE script with -x from the command line.

 

 

The release isn't planned until 2015 so that gives plenty of time to consider the compositing requirements you'll be needing in the future and better determine if the non-commercial usage is appropriate for your personal project.

 

With Nuke Studio The Foundry is trying to get a piece out of the rapidly growing independent film world; an increasingly competitive arena especially in the light of VFX studios seeking to diversify their sources of revenue.

 

Note that there are three different versions of Nuke (Nuke, NukeX and NukeStudio). As near as can be assertained only NukeStudio will be available for the free extended non-commercial usage. The price for commercial use of Nuke Studio is expected to be £5,600.

[nemyax]

Houdini Indie has a node-based compositor, is $200 per year and encourages commercial use with some non-draconian restrictions. Unless Nuke is miles ahead (I don't have any idea), The Foundry's offer is pretty pale by comparison.

[fae_alba]

"Not available for use during the user’s normal working hours"

 

What the devil does that mean? Who determines "normal". Hell, I put in 101 hours of normal hours last week! If I get a hot minute at 1pm does that mean the guys in top hats and badges are gonna come knockin?

[robcat2075]

They sure do make "free" complicated.

[johnl3d]

only for 64 bit windows

[Rodney]

They sure do make "free" complicated.

 

 

only for 64 bit windows

 

 

Nuke itself is complicated to use so it's probably a good thing that there is some resistance to be faced getting into it.

Otherwise a lot of folks would download only to find they couldn't use it anyway.

As for 64bit only... that's a given considering the amount of memory the program needs to use.

 

"Not available for use during the user’s normal working hours"

What the devil does that mean? Who determines "normal". Hell, I put in 101 hours of normal hours last week! If I get a hot minute at 1pm does that mean the guys in top hats and badges are gonna come knockin?

 

I'm certainly not trying to defend their license but they know folks will be abusing their license so they want to make sure the rules are known from the get-go that the program is not for usage by those that would otherwise be required to purchase. It's not unlike speeding... we know we aren't suppose to drive faster than the speed limit... we know we are in violation if we do it. And yet we still tend to drive above the speed limit because it's too inconvenient for us not to.

[robcat2075]

If one of these programs had an After Effects project importer, they'd have my attention.