Four Nuke Preferences I Always Change Immediately

In this video I show you four preferences I change as soon as I sit down at a new Nuke installation, whether that is at a new studio, a new computer, or a fresh installation.

Here are the four preferences:

Default Nuke Workspace

I will usually customize my Nuke workspace. I don’t deviate too far from the default, but if I’m on a setup with two monitors I will definitely have the viewer in a floating window on the primary monitor and move my node graph and properties pane to the other display. Once I have saved my workspace I will set my new workspace to be the default layout every time I launch Nuke with:

Preferences > Startup > startup workspace

Reduce The Number of Properties Panels to Two

By default Nuke will keep up to 10 properties panels open in the properties pane until it closes one when you open another. That is way too many panels to have open at once and is never useful.

Not only is it not useful but it can lead to a clutter of onscreen controls, which could lead to you changing properties in the wrong node. Personally I think having two panels open at once is as many as you usually need so I set that as the default number:

Preferences > Control Panels > max nodes in properties bin

Colour Coding Arrow Direction

There is an option to add colours to the pipes in your node graph that dynamically change based on the direction your data is flowing. I always set it so that pipes that are flowing upwards start to turn red as soon as they pass horizontal. That way I can see if the script is heading in the wrong direction.

You can pick any colours you want, and can add different colours for up, down, left and right. To set the colours go to:

Preferences > Node Graph > Arrow

Changing 3D Controls

Nuke has it’s on default controls for navigating the 3D space. I couldn’t even tell you what they are, but I know they are confusing because they don’t match other 3D packages. I always set the 3D controls to match Maya with:

Preferences > Viewer Handles > 3D navigation > Maya