Atlas Export Nuke Layers 🎞

AtlasExportNukeLayers is the Nuke export for the 2.5D matte-painting case: it writes the entire depth-band layer stack - every clean-plate layer, its mesh, and its projection - to a Nuke scene, not just a single camera card. Where AtlasExportNuke exports one projection graph, this one fans out to per-layer Nuke scenes for the multi-band clean-plate setup you build with the pack's layers machinery: sky dome, depth-band clean plates, all as separate layers that comp can manipulate independently.

That's the difference that matters for real matte painting. A single flat card projection is fine for a subtle dolly; a foreground building, a mid band, and a sky dome each need to be their own layer if you're going to move the camera meaningfully or fix one band without touching the others. This node is how the layered stack leaves ComfyUI in one piece.

How it works

You feed it the solve and an output_dir, and it writes the layer meshes (OBJs) and the Nuke scene that assembles them, returning the nk_path and a summary. The optional retopo_method applies an export-only retopology pass to every layer mesh before Nuke writes its OBJs - same options as the mesh exporter (off, quad, decimate, voxel_remesh) - with retopo_target_vertex_count, retopo_smooth_iterations, retopo_crease_angle, and retopo_pure_quad to tune it. Retopologizing before export is a genuinely useful move: clean quads on the layer meshes make them far more pleasant to work with in Nuke's 3D viewport and to hand to a texture pass.

An optional output_profile carries OCIO-style annotations, and project routes the export into the project tree's nuke/ lane.

The inputs

solve and output_dir (default atlas_exports/nuke_layers) are required. Then the retopo block and output_profile/project. Outputs are nk_path and summary.

Install and gotchas

Part of the pack - ComfyUI Manager → search atlas-camera, or git clone https://github.com/mikejamesvfx/atlas-camera.git into custom_nodes, restart. Pure Python exporter, no extra dependencies, no GPU.

Two gotchas. First, the layers have to exist upstream: this node exports the layer stack on the solve, so if your graph hasn't actually built the multi-band layers (the layers path on AtlasInput or the staged layer nodes), there's nothing to fan out - you'll get a thin export and a summary that says so. Second, retopology is export-only here, which is the good kind of behaviour: your live viewport projection mesh is never touched, only the files Nuke reads. If you were hoping a layer export would give you painterly-quality topology straight off, set retopo_method to quad and budget some time for it. For the layered clean-plate stack - the actual matte-painting workflow this pack exists for - this is the handoff to Nuke.