The NDK documentation has a short paragraph explaining the difference between Opts and Nodes: I could have simplified this by saying that the NDK is to create new Nodes, but at the API level what you’re really writing is Ops. One or multiple Ops can be put together as a node. The NDK is principally used to write Ops (Operators) which are the image processing part of a Nuke Node. What is the NDK for, and what is it not for?

Automated compiling against multiple Nuke versions.

What is the NDK for, and what is it not for?.

There is no need to be an expert C++ user (I’m not myself), but you should look at the syntax for loops, conditions, variable declarations, making classes, and read a little bit about pointers and references. I will not be teaching the basic syntax of C++, so you may have to read up on that if not familiar to follow along some of the next articles (we won’t get into it in this intro yet). The target of these articles is Artists or TDs already familiar with Nuke, with some Python programming knowledge, but zero NDK experience. I would definitely not call myself an expert at this point, and seasoned C++ developers will likely find multiple inaccuracies or inefficiencies in what I will explain in this series of articles.

The scarce resources on this topic do make it intimidating at first.

I only restarted my NDK journey after SIGGRAPH 2022 (about 15 months ago as I write this), so I’m still pretty new to this myself, but now that I’m getting to know some of the basics, I feel like I can share some of what I learned with others who may be interested. I tried to learn many times over the years, only to give up after failing to set up the dependencies, or not being able to figure out how to compile. That’s a scary world for the uninitiated. There are also many limitations that can only be lifted by digging deeper and getting into the world of the Nuke Development Kit (a.k.a. There is a lot you can customize in the Nuke interface using Python and many new nodes you can create with gizmos, expressions, and Blinkscript.

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