SUMMARY
This article covers a workflow that can be used for storing and accessing Nuke customisations over various machines and operating systems, through the combination of an environment variable and a synchronized folder on one users machine.
MORE INFORMATION
Nuke can determine the location where it looks for customisations before opening a session. This option is provided by the Nuke plug-in path environment variable NUKE_PATH, which can be set to a directory location on a users machine.
More information on the NUKE_PATH environment variable can be found here: Defining the Nuke Plugin Path
If this directory is set to a folder synchronized to an online cloud storage platform (such as Google Drive or Dropbox), this folder will automatically update any changes made to this directory and relay this back to the online file repository.
This functionality allows the user to create, alter and update their custom tools and plugins when a new Nuke session is launched. It also allows the user to use the same custom tools irrespective of the machine they are working on.
CREATING THE SYNCHRONIZED FOLDER
As there are two popular cloud storage formats that allow synchronized folder from a machine to cloud storage, both will be used as examples throughout this article.
Based on preference, download one of the following as the basis for your synchronized folder.
Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/downloading
Google Drive: https://www.google.com/drive/download
Following the steps per the option chosen above, this will create a localised sync folder on your machine that connects directly to your cloud platform.
At this point in the process, if using a pre-existing account with either Dropbox or Google, ensure that you pause the sync in the settings to avoid a download of all your media to your local machine.
CREATING THE CUSTOMISATION FOLDER
Within this newly created synchronized folder, create a new folder that will contain your Nuke customisations. e.g. Nuke_Presets
Google Drive:
Dropbox:
NOTE: Avoid using spaces in the folder name, as Nuke like many other applications can misinterpret spaces when pointing to a directory, especially if you are intending on using this between different operating systems.
SETTING THE NUKE_PATH DIRECTORY
As mentioned earlier, the NUKE_PATH environment variable sets the location where Nuke looks for customisations to add when starting a new session. By default this is not set to a specific path and can be configured to any location on your local or server drive.
As environment variables are different for each operating system, please refer to the following article on how to correctly set these up. Q100015: How To Set Environment Variables
Based on the above information, set your NUKE_PATH to the location of the synchronized folder.
An example using the Dropbox directory with Windows 10:
NUKE DIRECTORY RELOCATION
To allow this process to work correctly over all machines and environments, the menu.py and init.py that call your customisations (and the customisation files themselves) must exist only within the synchronized folder.
If there are pre-existing customisations that are currently within your .nuke folder, these will need to be moved over to the synchronized folder on your machine to be uploaded to the online repository. If the customisations are not in the same directory as the menu.py and init.py files that are calling them, this process will not work correctly and any updates to the customisations will not be updated through synchronization.
An example of the synchronized folder for each option would look like the following:
Dropbox:
Google Drive:
NOTE: As an added advantage of this technique, this process also creates an online backup of your customisations and menu.py and init.py files.
SELECTED SYNCHRONISATION
After the relocation of the above files to the synchronized folder, the process of selecting individual folders can be started. From here you can select the ‘Nuke_Presets’ folder and other folders you would like to Sync to your machine.
Within Dropbox this can be done using the ‘Selective Sync’ option in Dropbox preferences:
View your Dropbox desktop app preferences
Within Google Drive's preferences, you can choose whether to "stream" or "mirror" files:
More information about this can been found from Google's Help Center article here.
If you choose to Stream files, you can then select specific files/folder to be available offline, like so:
RESTARTING THE SYNCHRONIZATION AND TESTING
Once the synchronization is set to only the specified folder, restart the sync options within each program respectively.
To ensure this works, add a customisation to the synchronized folder and load a new session of Nuke. Your customisation should load correctly.
Once the process of creating a local sync folder is completed for one machine, repeat the above processes of creating and syncing a local folder on the other machines you wish to share the custom tools.
FURTHER READING
For more information on the topics covered in this article, please refer to the following links:
Setting up Environment Variables
Defining the Nuke Plug-in Path
.nuke Folder Locations
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