New Here And To Nuke

[ilsvm]

I'm new to Maya and to Nuke. And was told from advanced Maya/Shake user to look at Fusion or Nuke.
Thus far, I've tried the Fusion forums and was totally ignored. But from what I've red in this forum, you guys give a darn and that's what a new guy needs right now.

I've also got a copy of the Nuke demo and have no clue where to start. But I do know where I want to go with Maya and Nuke.

Questions:"Can I do this with Nuke?"

1.Add vapor trails, model(Jet plane) and scene(blue sky & clouds) done in Maya?
2.Add water vapor,wake and explosions?(speed boat model) traveling up river and explode into the hydro dam.
( I would have live DV footage of the river and hydro dam.
3. Do I need RAID 0 for video or can I get away with just a second sata2 hardrive for video?
(also the dv footage would be no longer than 30 seconds)

examples of what I want to build to:

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/transformers\_hd.html

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809420332/trailer

P.S. I just found Nuke, Download & tools. So waht Im asking is,"Can somebody break all this down for me, like a (very)genreal How-To. working with Maya and Nuke?????????????

thanks,
D.shane

[user_deleted]

Sounds like you should really just start looking into the tutorials to get an idea how the software works and what you can achieve with it.
Generally what you are after can easily be done with Maya and Nuke given you know the packages but if you don't it might be a bit of a mission without giving yourself some time to learn and understand your tools first. So I suggest going through the pdfs that come with Nuke and maybe checking out Rob Nederhorst's training DVDs.
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/dvds/rne01.html

cheers,
frank

[ilsvm]

Thanks, Frank!
I was looking at that DVD but I was also looking for a friendly forum.
I will get the DVD.

Also, is this system worth using for a render node?
(Old system, not using)
XP Pro
1 Gig of Ram(max out at 4 Gigs)
P4 3.0Ghz
100 base ethernet

Thanks guys,
shane c.

[user_deleted]

QUOTE(D. shane @ 02/05/07, 06:15 PM) [snapback]259004[/snapback]
Also, is this system worth using for a render node?
(Old system, not using)
XP Pro
1 Gig of Ram(max out at 4 Gigs)
P4 3.0Ghz
100 base ethernet

Thanks guys,
shane c.

Sure, why not. bit more ram might not hurt but if you're only on video sized images that should be ok (I'm no hardware expert though).