Nuke 101: Professional Compositing and Visual Effects [Paperback]

Nuke 101 is a very good book to the greenhorn Nuke student, including yours truly. I only wished the author had a better proofreader, or re-read the book before publishing. It contains many typos which led to wrong words being used, which led to confusion. Just so I'm not seemingly blowing hot air, on page 54 after Step 7, it reads: "Let's SET the Animation Curve...", the word I believe was meant to be "SEE" as in "Let's "SEE" the Animation Curve...", because it (the Animation Curve) never gets "SET", there is no instruction to "SET" anything, then "... you can "SEE" the curve you just created..." after which it's off to step 8... No mention of "setting" anything. That's one of many typos... I do appreciate the multitude of color pictures illustrating the lessons, and the author's motivation was in the right place, but their visibility was mediocre to poor: black type and black graphic lines on medium gray backgrounds? That made the images' information unnecessarily difficult to see clearly. (On a side note - Nukes' default is a medium dark gray background. Graphically speaking, they - NUKE's designers - are starting at the worst possible place in terms of contrast and legibility. Can you imagine THIS review using a dark gray background while I type in black? It would be UNNECESSARILY difficult to read. Good, LEGIBLE contrast is black type on white. Nuke is trying too hard to be "design-y". C'mon guys, just make it legible!) That being said, the author (or his book designer) could have made the call to have all his screen captures adjusted for legibility's sake: he may have considered making the images slightly larger to compensate. Or do what I did in Nuke, I went to its preferences and made the background in the dialog boxes a light gray. Those shortcomings aside, I would still recommend this book. Thank you Ron Ganbar!

There was no Nuke specific book prior to this edition, and "Nuke 101" fills a much needed gap. Clearly written and easy to follow, although a little more foundation in the basics of compositing might be useful before tackling this book. Recommended for intermediate users, or those looking to transition from one compositor to Nuke. Highly recommended if you are looking to quickly get up to speed in Nuke.

This gave me the info I needed to get up and running with Nuke. I had experience with Shake so I knew away around a node based compositor, this was an easy transition. I also didn't use Nuke for 9 months after reading this book and when I came back to it, I had the info I needed to get my composite done.