What does Nuke have that Flame does not?

Flame Flame Questions
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This is a genuine question with no hidden agenda for those amongst us that are familiar with Nuke. What does Nuke have that Flame is missing?

A few things I can quickly think of is
Multichannel node tree
Furnace
Gizmos (yes, you can kind of do it in Flame)
Access to excellent tools such as GeoTracker or FaceTracker that aren’t available in Flame
Massive user base
Particle system that isn’t decades old
Better handling of metadata
Access to controls for multiple nodes at once.

That’s a quick list off the top of my head. I would hve said scripting at one point but that seems to be good in Flame now (correct me if I’m wrong). What else is there?

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The most advanced feature I miss in flame, that nuke has, is the setup based updating ui view.

First node is a roto, bunch of nodes afterwards changing the positions. Going now with setup output as context while inside the mask, flame shows the mask streched and based on the gmask node, nuke will show it where it is in your context and you can just update it live.

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I can’t believe I forgot to mention this. This is actually one of my favourite things Nuke does that Flame doesn’t.

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I could be wrong in some of these:

  • Better handling and creation of metadata.
  • Pixel expressions node (Both deep and non deep)
  • Curve Tool
  • Deeps (including deep IDs)
  • Infinite canvas.
  • Resolution independent merge node.
  • OpenTimelineIO
  • OCIO
  • 3D environment is less contained and better integrated with 2d environment
  • Geometry manipulation tools (Faces, Vertex and Edge editing)
  • A bit more standard 3d environment (better to navigate)
  • Matrix based 3d transformations
  • VR toolset (CaraVR)
  • Cryptomatte rendering
  • Referenced 3d geo… or really any type of file.
  • Scene-graph for USD and Alembic
  • UV and spherical render outputs
  • Third party Render engine integration (VRay, Renderman)
  • Unreal Connection
  • Motion Vector based grid-warp
  • Better Pipeline and Render Managers integration
  • Python Callbacks including able to execute pre and post render scripts automatically.
  • AI training and importing of pretrained models
  • Internal GPU Shader programming (Blink)
  • Able to reference external Nuke scripts via Precomp or LiveGroup nodes. (BFX equivalent??)

Expecting a “What Flame has that Nuke doesn’t” thread any time now.
I recognize some of these may be subjective.

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@AdamArcher I believe particle system IS decades old… and showing gray hair. Fusion’s may be better.

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One project file.
Copy and paste in ascii is a close second for me.

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Primatte

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Some of us still have the furnace :grin:

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That primatte website!!

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L_Grain

Never found an equivalent node in Flame where you can manually rebuild an exact grain in the same easy and fast way.

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In the same vein Das_Grain

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Well, if we want to expand to gizmos and plugins…

  • HIGX Point render. Or whatever tool MADS HAGBARTH writes.
  • Good old Optical Flares
  • Camera Plane. Although I had partial success rebuilding it in Action.
  • pgBokeh (including deep Defocus)
  • VRay Tools (Lens effects)
  • NNFlowVector (more stable vector warp across long ranges and track roto splines using motion vectors)
  • Sticky Proyect
  • Eddie
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Not sure if you have seen this:

I would think this can be done in Flame as well… same way ML Timewarp does.

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Did someone say Keen tools? :smiley:

Ugh there is so much? DasGrain beign the biggest everyday thing for me this and bounding boxes and ocio.

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TBH, there’s very little tools that I find Nuke has that Flame doesn’t that make a difference in every day work (except Das Grain) From my perspective, Nuke is just better designed for teams of people working together - especially on CG heavy projects.

Just one example: If an artist has done some work that they want to share with other artists, all they have to do is Select the nodes, Copy and then Paste it into an email or even Slack and the other artists just copy that text and paste it into their comps. There’s nothing that easy (or at least instantaneous) in Flame for sharing work

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The list is certainly long and getting longer.

That said, we should group them into two buckets. Because getting Flame to do everything Nuke does and vice versa would be a wasteful exercise, and in a small market (in comparison to Adobe, etc.) there are not enough users to have two big apps that do exactly the same thing and make money for their brands.

It’s easy enough to have a copy of each. Worth thinking about what type of jobs Nuke is best suited for, and which Flame is most suited for and then run with that for that specific job.

So the two buckets I’m thinking of are:

1: Features that would make a typical Flame job much easier, faster, better - we do know that they exist in other apps (Nuke, etc.) but are not in Flame.

2: Features we have seen in other apps that would certainly be cool and fun to have, but are not critical to a typical Flame job.

I would put Das Grain and some type of InPaint into bucket 1. It would make a typical Flame job easier, faster or better than with tools that currently exist, even though you can definitely do it either way.

I would put things like Primatte in bucket 2. Yes, if you use Primatte often, it’s nice and convenient since you’re familiar with it. But Flame has plenty of good options for GS keying. No need to spend time on equality there.

The ultimate benefit of a thread like this is to identify the gaps that we would love ADSK to work on, and we can justify reasons why it would make sense for them and for us.

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Agreed. I am being a bit pragmatic with my list. Originally leaving gizmos a plug-ins out to keep it contained to native features. Adding gizmo will make the list grow infinitely.
This compilation could also help some flame artist be aware of some tools and features not in their radar. You don’t know what you don’t know kind of thing.

Spending most of my day in Nuke I will miss these when jumping on Flame.

Native tools and features:

  • multi channel stream
  • transforms and roto overlay concatenation
  • infinite canvas
  • data window (AKA: DoD, RoI, Bbox, etc)
  • pixel expression
  • groups and gizmos
  • EXRs metadata

Gizmos and plug-ins

  • camera plane
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Indeed. I’m currently on a beauty job, so far every shot was in Flame except the last, which I switched to Nuke because InPaint was going to be faster. Also was a bit of mix-and-match. Whatever does it best. But one has to know the Nuke tools (or other tools) to make such choices.

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I disagree here… The quality of key from Primatte, especially soft edges, rack focus stuff, translucent stuff… is so far superior to MasterKey,3D,whatever… it is laughable. The keying tools in Flame are so old.

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Well Primatte isn’t exactly a spring chicken. Goes back to '92 and I don’t think has changed much recently. Their website hasn’t updated the footer since 2013 :slight_smile:

And then why stop and Primatte and not also get Keylight which is very good for edge keys and de-spill?

One issue with Primatte will be the licensing, I assume. Not just code that ADSK would have to write.

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