While I’ve been doing visual effects for 16years I’ve only been using Nuke for just under 2.
The new particles have me perplexed. There seem to be some Huge leaps of faith in missing documentation on how things work and don’t work.
For example. I’m currently trying to do a particle element of material flecking off. As the particles drift away, I want them to fade. I thought this was as easy as adding a "Particle Curve" node and setting the gradient on the Alpha channel. And… at first this does work. However. Using a simple image for the particle renders the Rotation parameter of the "Particle Emitter" useless (no docs on that).
Quite randomly I put a "Card" node in between my image and the ‘particle’ input of the "Particle Emitter" and suddenly the rotation setting is working…. but now the fade from the "Particle Curve" doesn’t…. ?!?!? The particles stay fully solid from birth to death as if the "Particle Curve" node doesn’t exist.
I had always thought Nuke’s workflow was as straight forward as Shake or Fusion… "add a node, get an effect" But the particle system seems to require some other things to happen for nodes to even do what they’re supposed to do.
If anyone can point me in the direction of where this sort of stuff is documented (because the normal docs and tooltips don’t cover it) that would be great. Even better if you can explain how to make an particle (image sprite) flip and and spin and actually fade out over it’s lifespan… that would be splendid.
