Get ready for a game-changer in the world of visual effects! Foundry has unleashed the open beta for NUKE 17.0, and it's a big one. But here's the real shocker: it introduces native support for Gaussian Splats, a revolutionary concept that's about to rock the VFX industry.
What are Gaussian Splats? These are the secret sauce behind modern 3D magic. Instead of the usual polygons or voxels, imagine a scene composed of countless tiny 3D Gaussian blobs, each a soft, elliptical 'splat' carrying color, opacity, and shape data. It's like painting with millions of tiny, colorful blobs of jelly!
Why is this a big deal? Well, it's a seismic shift for VFX artists and compositors. NUKE 17.0 brings this cutting-edge technology right into the heart of production compositing. No more treating splats as academic concepts or standalone elements. They're now full-fledged 3D citizens in NUKE's revamped 3D system, ready to be imported, transformed, masked, and rendered with ease.
And this is the part most people miss: Gaussian Splatting has dethroned NeRFs (Neural Radiance Fields) as the go-to method for fast, flexible volumetric scene reconstruction. NeRFs were stunning but slow. Splats, however, deliver NeRF-like quality at real-time speeds, with the added bonus of direct editability. Studios are raving about splats for environment capture and virtual production because they offer the best of both worlds: fast training, instant feedback, and photorealistic results without the usual meshing hassles.
How does it work in NUKE 17.0? It's seamless. Splats can be imported like geometry using GeoImport or GeoReference nodes, supporting .ply and .splat formats. Once in NUKE, they're ready for action. A quick rotation with GeoTransform, and the splat becomes a manipulable dataset in NUKE's 3D viewer.
But the magic doesn't stop at import. NUKE's Field System exposes splat internals, empowering artists to work non-destructively with massive point clouds. Using Field Shape nodes, artists can isolate splat sections, navigate within, and perform intricate operations without ever leaving NUKE. This level of control is unprecedented!
The new GeoGrade node, still in Labs, is a key player. It enables a more artistic, data-driven workflow, hinting at a future where grading, relighting, density sculpting, and opacity shaping all occur directly within the compositor. And the results are stunning. In the demo, an intrusive bin was masked and removed, leaving a clean, believable scene.
Merging splats like a pro: NUKE 17.0 treats splats as versatile production elements. Multiple splat scenes can be merged with GeoMerge, opening doors to rapid environment design and set extension. In the provided example, a bike.splat is seamlessly integrated into a street scene, complete with a realistic shadow.
Bringing splats to 2D: Foundry's SplatRender node bridges the 2D-3D gap. Artists can render splats with depth, motion blur, and variable density, seamlessly integrating them into NUKE's 2D stack. A rendered splat can be used just like a matte painting or a CG render pass, making compositing a breeze.
NeRFs had their moment, but Gaussian Splatting is the new star. With NUKE 17.0, splats evolve from research novelties to everyday VFX tools, offering unparalleled flexibility and realism. And that's a game-changer for the industry.
Controversy alert: Is Gaussian Splatting the future of real-time graphics and virtual production? Will it replace traditional methods entirely? Share your thoughts below! The debate is on.
