Organization is Key
Organizing your Nuke script is one of the most important tasks in any setup. Whether it’s your future self or a colleague picking up your shot, you want to instantly understand what’s going on in the script.
Backdrop nodes are a great way to achieve this. You simply select a group of nodes, create a new backdrop node, and everything is visually grouped together. However, when you do this, the backdrop color is generated randomly. Personally, I’ve never been a fan of those bright, random colors.
In addition to grouping nodes, I like to label my backdrops. By making the label large and bold, it’s easy to spot when zoomed out in the DAG. One thing that always annoys me is unnecessary clicks: After creating a backdrop, I always add a label, so I want the label field to be immediately in focus.
Making Backdrops More Functional
To improve this workflow, I customized the default backdrop script provided by The Foundry and made a few adjustments:
- Backdrops are always a neutral grey—no more distracting colors. If you layer them along the Z-axis, the backdrop’s brightness adjusts to ensure they remain visible.
- Added a shortcut (Shift + B) to quickly create backdrops for selected nodes.
- Once a backdrop is created, the label field is automatically focused, allowing you to enter a description right away.
You can find the latest version on GitHub:
https://github.com/claussteinmassl/nuke-auto-backdrop
Installation instructions are available in the repo’s ReadMe.
