Siggraph Asia 2011, Hong Kong. /*jupiter jazz*/ proudly announces the release of AtomKraft/Nuke version 1.0. AtomKraft is the kick-ass, asset friendly, look development, lighting & rendering toolkit integrated with Nuke, the leading visual effects compositing application by The Foundry.

Avoid going back to 3D at the compositing stage of the production pipeline. AtomKraft allows you to import a variety of ‘assets’, straight from your 3D application. Explore tons of creative lighting, rendering & material possibilities. Boost your image quality to new levels, all from within Nuke.

AtomKraft/Nuke works with Nuke 6.2 and Nuke 6.3 on all 64 bit architectures: Linux64, OSX64 and Windows64 and it is fully multi-threaded.

Last but not least /*jupiter jazz*/ gives away the first license of AtomKraft for free. Yes, as in ‘beer’! This is a single license per person/site, limited to 2 rendering threads. This is available as a separate package which will not require a license.

Feature highlights

• Seamless support of the Nuke 3D system
• Fully multi-threaded & 64bit
• 3D motion blur and bokeh / depth of field
• Micropolygon displacement
• Multiple render channels (AOVs)
• Physically plausible shading
• Full support of RenderMan shaders
• Ray-traced global illumination
• HDRI environment lighting/shadowing
• Fast, soft (area) shadows
• Particle rendering
• On demand texture baking and automatic caching
• First 2 threaded license is for free!

Milestones

Some of the AtomKraft milestones we’re especially proud of:

• The first real integration of a 3^rd party 3D renderer into Nuke
• The first to support loading of Alembic 3D geometry into Nuke
• The first to bring the industry standard RenderMan™ shading language to Nuke
• A super flexible lighting system with 3D light blockers
• A one click global illumination solution
• Materials and lights use physically plausible shading models
• Displacement bounds are calculated automatically.

Words from the field

John Wadelton, Nuke Product Manager at The Foundry, says:

We’re delighted that Atomkraft have taken the lead in integrating the 3Delight renderer with NUKE and NUKEX.  The speed and flexibility of NUKE and NUKEX’s 3D system exposed through extensive APIs, combined with the quality and power of the 3Delight renderer is a great combination.

Jonathan Egstad, the originator of Nuke’s 3D architecture while at Digital Domain, states:

AtomKraft fulfills exactly what I hoped Nuke’s 3D system would be from the start — powerful, modular and flexible.  It fills many of the gaps in the existing toolset, especially with respect to lighting and shading, where it delivers results I could only dream of in the original design. It will quickly become the compositor and matte-painter’s best-friend. I’m very impressed.

Aghiles Keffache, CTO of DNA Research, says:

We are delighted to be an integral part of Jupiter Jazz’s most daring project. AtomKraft really closes the gap between the compositing world and high-end production rendering and introduces some never seen before paradigms. We, at DNA research, will work tirelessly to provide AtomKraft and Nuke users with the best rendering technology there is.

Takamitsu Yoneda, Chief Compositor at OLM Digital Japan, comments:

AtomKraft can use the same shaders of our 3D software pipeline and accessing 3D data is really fast using Alembic support (the model in our project got 3 times smaller than sequential OBJ). LookDev gets faster and we can work a shot as a final result in the beginning stage. AtomKraft provides us the perfect 3D environment, so we don’t need to go back to 3D software and we can finish a LookDev in the final composite stage. After finishing LookDev we can use the same parameters in the 3Dsoftware, and share the Look through the whole shots. We managed to adjust lighting cut by cut with 2D relighting, but with AtomKraft we would be able to  do more correct and faster lighting.

Shawn Walsh, Visual Effects Executive Producer & Partner at Image Engine, says:

We had a very tight deadline on this game trailer working in concert with Goldtooth Creative Agency and Electronic Arts. With so much atmospheric work going into the shots we needed a Nuke plug-in solution that would be a fast way for us to produce a convincing snowy environment. Atomkraft integrated very well with our proprietary compositing tool set.

Bernhard Kimbacher, Lead Compositor at Image Engine, adds:

The main advantages of working with AtomKraft for SSX: Deadly Descents have been its flexibility and speed. We were working with a really fast moving camera, and literally whipping through snowstorms. To create the snow we used a tool developed by our R&D programmer, John Haddon, and rendered it out in Nuke using AtomKraft. One really good feature was that we could change things on the fly in Nuke and then render really quickly. We managed to render up to 2 million sprites at once and we had render times for the snow of  15 to 20 seconds per frame.

About Nuke & The Foundry

The Foundry is a world-leading innovator in visual effects technologies. The UK-based company has established itself as a critical partner to major feature film studios and post production houses worldwide including Sony Pictures Imageworks, Walt Disney Studios, Weta Digital, The Moving Picture Company, Framestore and Digital Domain.

In 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded a Sci-Tech Award® to The Foundry’s development team for the Furnace image processing suite. The company’s widely adopted, high-end compositing system Nuke is also based on AMPAS Sci-Tech Award® winning technology.

About /*jupiter jazz*/

/*jupiter jazz*/ is a collective of visual researchers & software developers pushing the intersection of art, technology, science and beer. We synthesize innovative products that kick ass yet respect the canons of simplicity, ease-of-use and the beauty of design. Our focus is film visual effects, broadcast and motion graphics.