Foundry announces Nuke Stage virtual production pipeline

Nuke Stage provides virtual productions with end-to-end creative content control, providing consistent color, flexible data format support, and interoperability with industry-standard VFX tools.

Away from conversations about tariffs and AI being Absolutely Intrusive and generally everywhere (even when it's not really got anything to do with the product in question), there seems to be a fair bit of virtual production news coming out of Vegas this year.

Foundry's Nuke Stage is one of the more interesting stories, an application purpose-built for virtual production and in-camera visual effects that links pre-production through to final pixels in one pipeline.

Essentially it enables real-time playback of photorealistic environments onto LED walls, as well as live compositing and layout. This allows teams to confidently iterate on content from end to end using industry-standard formats, including OpenUSD, OpenEXR, OpenColorIO, and established creative toolsets, such as a node-graph-based compositing environment consistent with Nuke.

Key Nuke Stage features include:

• Built for virtual production: A purpose-built standalone software solution, Nuke Stage requires no other virtual production, ICVFX tools, or game engines.
• Hardware-agnostic: No need for specialist media servers or bespoke equipment. Productions can use their preferred hardware and easily synchronise across render node clusters to support stages of varied size.
• Real-time playback of photorealistic content: Artists can use industry-standard VFX tools and asset formats to create high-resolution backgrounds, then play them back as 2D, 2.5D and 3D imagery on LED walls.
• Live compositing: Manipulate and blend virtual and physical sets with a powerful  node-based compositing toolkit optimized for real-time performance.
• Comprehensive color support: A linear workspace and full support for OpenColorIO and HDR ensure a clear color pipeline from pre- to post-production, making it easier to seamlessly blend physical elements with virtual environments.
• Familiar UI: Part of the market-leading Nuke family: A color management system, industry-standard file format support, and a node-based compositing toolkit similar to Nuke provide artists with a familiar and efficient workflow for building imagery before and during principal photography.
• End-to-end creative control: A single production pipeline enables refinement of content from principal photography through to post-production, ensuring creative continuity and reducing the risk of costly rework.

It's interesting tech and it's implications are perhaps best illustrated with a quote from Sam Kemp, Production Technical Lead at Garden Studios. "I love the idea of bringing VFX compositing tools into real time. The ability to bring in the compositing toolset and color management from 3D, then be able to tweak 2D assets in real time, is something that’s been missing from virtual production for a long time.”