Earlier this week, I posted a super basic beginner's tutorial intro into manipulating scripts inside of Nuke, and gave you a handy little code that played a sound when your render was finished. Well, after a little trial and error, I managed to come up with a script that attaches itself to Nuke's Write node and adds a custom tab with the 'Render with Sound' function. I tried to mimic the original Write node's interface, but unfortunately due to the dynamic nature of the Write node and the various file extensions and video codecs that are interactively added, it tends to switch back and forth between tabs. Although, once you set your file extension and codec, you can switch back to the 'WriteSound' tab without it swapping back. If anyone knows a workaround to this, please let me know.

The final result:


As with the last post, to make this work, you need a .WAV sound file. Check out AT&T Labs and make your own if needed. Make sure to take note of its physical location on your drive.

We're going to be changing the user interface ever so slightly and to do that we'll need to tell Nuke to make some changes. The menu.py file specifies any customization to Nuke's interface, and is usually found in the default user plugins folder. The default locations for this folder are:

Win - 'C:/Documents and Settings/USER/.nuke/
Mac - '$HOME/.nuke/

If you can't find a menu.py file in these folders, go ahead and create your own by saving out of your favorite text editor. To get started, you will need to add the following code to your menu.py file.

import writeSound
writeSound.attachWriteSoundNode()

This tells Nuke to import the writeSound script, and inside of writeSound go ahead and execute the attachWriteSoundNode command.

Next, you will need the following bit of code. Go ahead and copy this into a new file in your text editor.

# Developed by Christian Castaneda
# chris@castanedafx.com
# This should create a custom write node that plays a sound when finished rendering
import nuke

nukeOriginalWriteSoundNode = nuke.createNode

def attachWriteSoundNode():
nuke.createNode = customWriteSoundNode

def customWriteSoundNode(node, knobs = "", inpanel = True):
if node == "Write":
  writeNode = nukeOriginalWriteSoundNode( node, knobs, inpanel )
  ## attach our custom tab
  createWriteSoundTab( writeNode )
  return writeNode
else:
  return nukeOriginalWriteSoundNode( node, knobs, inpanel )

def createWriteSoundTab(node):
 #### create knobs
 tabKnob = nuke.Tab_Knob('WriteSound')
 channelKnob = nuke.Link_Knob('channels_name', 'channels')
 fileKnob = nuke.Link_Knob('file_name', 'file')
 proxyKnob = nuke.Link_Knob('proxy_name', 'proxy')
 divideKnob = nuke.Text_Knob('')
 colorKnob = nuke.Link_Knob('colorspace_name', 'colorspace')
 preMultKnob = nuke.Link_Knob('premultiplied_name', 'premultiplied')
 rawDataKnob = nuke.Link_Knob('raw data name', 'raw data')
 viewsKnob = nuke.Link_Knob('views_name', 'views')
 typeKnob = nuke.Link_Knob('file type name', 'file type')
 orderKnob = nuke.Link_Knob('render_order_name', 'render order')
 buttonKnob = nuke.PyScript_Knob('Render With Sound')
 
 #### make links to the Original Write
 channelKnob.setLink('channels')
 fileKnob.setLink('file')
 proxyKnob.setLink('proxy')
 colorKnob.setLink('colorspace')
 preMultKnob.setLink('premultiplied')
 rawDataKnob.setLink('raw')
 viewsKnob.setLink('views')
 typeKnob.setLink('file_type')
 orderKnob.setLink('render_order')

 script = """
############ This section by Fredrik Brannbacka #############
##
## Make sure you set the sounds file path
macSound = 'PATH/TO/SOUND/FILE'
winSound = 'PATH/TO/SOUND/FILE'
def playSound():
  if nuke.env["MACOS"]:
   sys.path.append('/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Extras/lib/python')
   sys.path.append('/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Extras/lib/python/PyObjC')
      from AppKit import NSSound
      sound = NSSound.alloc()
      sound.initWithContentsOfFile_byReference_(macSound, True)
      sound.play()
  elif nuke.env["WIN32"]:
      import winsound
      winsound.PlaySound(winSound, winsound.SND_FILENAME|winsound.SND_ASYNC)

node = nuke.selectedNode()
if node.Class()=='Write':
  start,end = nuke.getFramesAndViews('Render Range','%i,%i' % (nuke.root()['first_frame'].value(),nuke.root()['last_frame'].value()))[0].split(',',2)
  if nuke.execute(node.name(),int(start),int(end)):
   playSound()
"""

 buttonKnob.setValue(script)
 
 #### add knobs to node
 for k in [tabKnob, channelKnob, fileKnob, proxyKnob, divideKnob, colorKnob, preMultKnob, rawDataKnob, viewsKnob, typeKnob, orderKnob, buttonKnob]:
     node.addKnob(k) 

Here's an important step to make sure that this works. You need to change the path of the sound file in the code, which should be lines 50/51. Specifically, you are looking for:

## Make sure you set the sounds file path
macSound = 'PATH/TO/SOUND/FILE'
winSound = 'PATH/TO/SOUND/FILE'

Once you're done editing the code, save it out in the same folder as menu.py with the filename of 'writeSound.py'.

Restart Nuke and feel free to enjoy the wonderful bliss that is audible renders. Ahhhhh.

Often times I find myself meandering while my comps are rendering. I'm a lost stray soul trekking through the long forgotten desolate land that is my desk. I'm usually planning my next comp, stretching after hours of being desk-bound, wondering if that moldy thing in that corner there is growing and will eventually take over me, and more than likely browsing the internet. But how will I ever know when my renders are complete? Fear not, for we can make Nuke do whatever we please, that's the beauty of scripting. Thanks to Dotcommer, quite a talented classmate, who started this thread at VFXTalk, and thanks to smaragden for coming up with this excellent solution.

First, you will need a .WAV sound file. If you don't have an arsenal of beeps and chimes at your disposal, I recommend going to AT&T text-to-speech labs and create your own personal saying. Mine praises and worships me, and thinks I should run for President of the Galaxy. Once you have it, make sure you take note of its physical location on your drive.

Next, you'll need this snippet of code:

macSound = 'PATH/TO/SOUND/FILE'
winSound = 'PATH/TO/WAVE/FILE'
def playSound():
    if nuke.env["MACOS"]:
     sys.path.append('/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Extras/lib/python')
     sys.path.append('/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Extras/lib/python/PyObjC')
        from AppKit import NSSound
        sound = NSSound.alloc()
        sound.initWithContentsOfFile_byReference_(macSound, True)
        sound.play()
    elif nuke.env["WIN32"]:
        import winsound
        winsound.PlaySound(winSound, winsound.SND_FILENAME|winsound.SND_ASYNC)

node = nuke.selectedNode()
if node.Class()=='Write':
    start,end = nuke.getFramesAndViews('Render Range','%i,%i' % (nuke.root()['first_frame'].value(),nuke.root()['last_frame'].value()))[0].split(',',2)
    if nuke.execute(node.name(),int(start),int(end)):
     playSound()

Feel free to use whatever text or script editor you prefer, for this example I'll be using the script editor within Nuke. Go ahead and copy and paste the code into the Script Editor. If you don't see the Script Editor by default, right-click on any one of the content menus to select it.



In the first two lines of code, enter the entire path name of your .WAV file in the specified space. For example, since I'm using Windows, I'll change the second line of code to:

winSound = 'E:/Documents and Settings/Christian/RenderSound.wav'

Since we're going to be using this quite often, let's go ahead and save it somewhere where we can easily access it again. Click on Save Script and save it with a .PY extension:



Now if you ever wanted to use this script again, you could easily load it by pressing the Load Script icon.



Now here's the money part, with your Write Node selected, go ahead and run the script. You can run it by either pressing the icon or the hotkey which is Ctrl-Enter.



If it worked, you should get a little pop-up asking you which frames you would like to render.



As far as I can tell, this doesn't work with single frame renders and executing multiple write nodes in your Nuke script.

I hope this works for you, feel free to let me know if you have any questions.