Foundry

Foundry builds Nuke, the node based compositor that sits at the centre of most feature film and episodic visual effects pipelines. The Nuke family runs from Nuke itself through NukeX, which adds camera tracking, cleanup and the Cara VR toolset for 360 video, to Nuke Studio, which folds in a multi track editorial timeline and conform of AAF, XML and EDL. Foundry counts more than 200 nodes in the application, exposes a Python API alongside a C++ SDK and the BlinkScript node for custom image processing operations, and supports OpenEXR, Hydra, USD, OpenColorIO and ACES.

Gaussian splatting reached Nuke natively rather than through a plugin. Support first appeared in the Nuke 17.0 open beta in December 2025 and shipped in Nuke 17.0 in February 2026, which put splat rendering inside the same 3D environment compositors already use to place 2D and 3D elements and to set up projection work. Before that the route in was the Irrealix plugin, which continues to be updated and which also covers After Effects and DaVinci Resolve for artists on older Nuke versions.

The 17.1 open beta added dynamic Gaussian splats and basic relighting, which is the change that matters for shot work. A static capture composites like a matte painting. A splat sequence that moves and that responds to scene lights composites like an element, and relighting is what lets a captured plate sit under the same key as the live action it is cut against.

Foundry has pushed the same renderer past post production. Nuke Stage brings Gaussian splat rendering to the LED wall, so a capture drives in camera background on set rather than waiting for a comp. On the input side, Marble x Nuke loads World Labs Marble splats straight into Nuke's 3D viewport, which removes the conversion step between a generated world and the compositor.

Licensing is annual subscription or quarter rental. Nuke is $3,839 per year, NukeX $5,219 and Nuke Studio $6,379, with a headless Nuke Render license at $462 per year for farm rendering. Foundry bundles a free annual HieroPlayer subscription with a Nuke or NukeX license, sells a cheaper Nuke Indie tier for solo artists, gives students 90 percent off with a first year free programme, and publishes free non-watermarked non-commercial builds of Nuke, NukeX and Nuke Studio.