Nuke; Python Essentials; Installing Plug-ins in your Home Directory - PartA Video Lecture | Create Visual Effects with Nuke - Professional Skills

you'll find a whole lot of additional
resources for nuke on the web such as
gizmo files and script code this
tutorial will show you how to install
those things and also how to keep your
plugins structure somewhat organized so
you don't make a mess of your home
directory or your menu py file for
example but then again what the hell is
a menu py file well let's have a look so
let's say I've downloaded a bunch of
tools from the web and put them into a
directory over here and now I'm ready to
install the slice tool gizmo the easiest
way to do this is to simply put it into
your home nuke directories the home dot
nuke directory should be created the
first time you start nuke so you don't
have to do this manually and once you've
got that gizmo in here you can now go
into nuke go to all plugins update and
go back to that all plugins menu once
again and now you should be able to find
that new gizmo that you installed and
here it is so that's a quick way to
install a gizmo and to bring it up in
the interface now most likely you will
want to create a custom UI item for it
so you don't have to go through this
whole plugins menu and luckily the
author of the gizmo also provided that
text for us which isn't here so this
provides us with the Python code
necessary to create a new menu item in
the other menu called slice tool and
that will trigger the nuke create node
command to create the slice tool gizmo
so let's grab that and copy it into the
clipboard and let's go ahead and open
the menu py file which is again an empty
text file if you haven't got the menu py
file yet just create it through any text
editor or through nuke script editor and
then paste those two lines in here save
and once that file is saved let's quit
out of nuke or actually just close the
script which will cause it to relaunch
and reread that menu py and now we
should be able to find the slice tool in
the other menu and here it is at the
very bottom so if I pick this now that
now creates our new slice tool
so what if we want to get a bit more
organized and rather than dropping the
sliced tools straight into our home
directory we want to create a
subdirectory for gizmos because you can
imagine if you download a lot of tools
you'll find menu P wise you'll find
Python scripts you'll find gizmos TCL
scripts and everything will be floating
in your home nuke directory so let's try
to be a bit more organized and create a
subdirectory called gizmos and I'm going
to move that slice tool gizmo into that
and now that we've moved it away the
next time we close out of nuke and start
a new session it will no longer be able
to find the slice tool gizmo anymore so
we need to teach it about the existence
of the gizmos directory and add this to
the list of plugin paths
speaking of let's have a quick look at
the existing plugin path list you can do
this by type in nuke dot plug-in path
into the script editor this will print
the list of plugin paths that are
currently being sourced when you run a
command you'll see the default
installation directory which I strongly
recommend not modifying and you'll also
see your home nuke directory so we need
to add our gizmos location to this list
and we can do this by using nuke dot
plug-in add path add in there we simply
give it the new path to our gizmos
directory so that's users Frank nuke
slash gizmos close the quotes and the
parenthesis and run that command and now
let's have a look at our plugin path
again and now you can see it's at the
top of the list in order to make sure
that this new location is known to both
the interface sessions and the command
line render sessions we have to add it
to the init py rather than the menu py
this time because the menu py is only
executed for interface sessions but the
gizmos are also needed full command line
render sessions so in it be wise for
that sort of stuff paste and save once
again if you don't have an NLP Y in your
home directory simply create an empty
text file
and put this command in there save it
and now if we close the script to launch
a new session and therefore forcing you
to reread init py and menu py we are now
once again able to create the gizmo
let's go into the na py one more time
and let's have a look at this path we
created an absolute path but because
we're using this command in the NL py
that's on the same level as the gizmos
directory we can actually use in a
relative path so we're already inside of
the users Frank toward nuclear rectory
so what I can do is simply type dot
slash gizmos and save that as my
relative path to add this subdirectory