Nuke; Python Essentials; Adding Menu Items - PartA Video Lecture | Create Visual Effects with Nuke - Professional Skills

so this time I want to quickly talk
about how to assign hotkeys to notes as
well as how to create your own menu
items and toolbars even if you're a
person that isn't that much into Python
as an artist I still recommend
familiarizing yourself with a few
commands required for that as they will
help you heaps to streamline your own
workflow and once you've got them set up
you can just copy/paste this stuff and
not worry about the rest of the Python
world so let's get started by bringing
up the script editor and we'll have a
look at the new code menu command which
is the command that will give you access
to the various menus inside of nuke so
we'll type new code menu and actually
I'm gonna run the help command on it to
find out more about what it is doing so
you can do this on any command if you
get stuck so I'll execute this and this
gives me some help text that tells me
that there is a nuke menu that's the
main application menu up here so I can
customize that there's a properties menu
which is the right-click menu in any
notes property panel there is the
animation menu which you get when you
click one of the animation icons here or
if you right click into a knob field or
if you right-click in the curve editor
so that's the animation menu and then
you've got the viewer menu and the node
graph menu so these are the right-click
menus in the viewer and in the node
graph respectively and on top of that we
have the toolbar called nodes which is
what gives us access to creating nodes
inside of nuke and that one is actually
stored as a toolbar or pane in the pain
submenu and it's called nodes so this
here is actually our toolbar so I'll
drag that back where it belongs
we can create your own toolbars which
kind of act like Maya shelves but we'll
get to that in a second so all we need
to know for now is that this pane or
tool wise called nodes and let's say we
want to create a hotkey for the reformat
node because that's something I use
quite frequently so we hover the mouse
pointer over the menu that it lives in
and that's the transform menu and
obviously the item is called reformat so
that's all we need to know for now so
I'm going to target that toolbar by
going new code menu and in quotes I'll
type the name of it which is nodes and
just to be able to work with it a bit
better I'm gonna assign that to a
variable called tool bar and once we've
created that we can now act on it by
typing toolbar dot add command and that
is because assigning a hotkey
essentially overrides the command that
is executed when you hit this particular
item so we'll basically recreate what
the reformat item does in the menu but
as we go we'll just add a hotkey so
first we need to type in the location of
what item we want to create or overwrite
so we know it lives in the transform
menu so we type transform slash followed
by the name of the actual menu item and
that is simply a reformat in this case
comma and the second argument again in
quotes because it's a string will be the
actual command that is supposed to be
executed once you choose this particular
menu item from the list so we need to
create a reformat node so we'll type the
command for that and that is simply nuke
Dodge create node so that's pretty
simple to remember and once again in
parentheses and quotes we need to type
the class of the node that we want to
create in this case of the reformat node
and because I've already started a pair
of single quotes here I need to now use
double quotes that sort of a Python
thing to not make those to quote types
collide
so I type in the class of the note I
want to create once you close the double
quotes you see the syntax highlighting
kick in and you close the parentheses
and you close the single quote to close
this whole second argument now this is
pretty much doing what the default menu
item is doing out of the box so the one
addition we want to make is assigning a
hot key so we just go another comma and
again in quotes we'll assign the hot key
that we like I'm just going to use
controller so I'll type ctrl + I close
those quotes and close the parentheses
and execute this command and once it's
executed we can now go into the menu and
you'll see that control our or command
our cuz I'm on a Mac has been assigned
to the reformat menu item let's make
sure it does the right thing so I'm just
gonna hit ctrl R on the node graph and
that gives me my reformat node now to
make sure that this actually persists
after you close out of nuke and start a
new session let's go back to that
command and make sure that lives in your
menu py if you don't already have a menu
py in your home directory nuke then
simply save this content by going to the
save script button and navigate to your
home directory and go into the nuke
directories which is directory nuke
automatically creates for you when it
starts and if you don't see a menu dot
py file simply type menu and hit save
I'm not going to do it because I've
already got one so what I will do is
simply cut the content load the menu
that I already have in here and paste
that underneath and then save it back
out obviously you can do this with any
text editor you like so there so now
this should persist next time I start
nuke