Labelmaker

Labelmaker is a wholesale replacement for Foundry Nuke's autolabel system, showing you far more information at a glance in the node graph. No more opening the properties panel to see what a node is doing — Labelmaker shows you right in the DAG.

This README is the complete reference. A print-friendly User Guide (this document minus the installation section) is built from it as a PDF at docs/user-guide.pdf — run make pdf to rebuild it — and is bundled in every release.

Installation

Single User

Drop the entire Labelmaker folder (not just individual files) into your ~/.nuke/ directory, then add the following line to your menu.py:

nuke.pluginAddPath('Labelmaker')

Note: this goes in menu.py, not init.py. Labelmaker only affects the UI and does not need to load in headless render sessions.

Facility

Put the Labelmaker folder somewhere on a shared location and add it to the Nuke plugin path the same way as above. Artists can then layer their own personal config on top of the shared install — see Configuration.

Features

Regular Knob Readout

Labelmaker's core job is to read a node's ordinary knob values and print them right on the tile, so you can tell what a node is doing without opening its properties panel. A Blur shows its size, a Transform its translate and rotate, and so on.

By default a knob line only appears once its value differs from the knob's default, so an untouched node stays clean and an adjusted one announces exactly what changed. You can flip this to always-on in the preferences (see Always Show All Labels).

Colour Swatches

See the colour of your grades right in the node graph.

Color and AColor knobs (e.g. in a Grade node) automatically get colour swatches. Labelmaker uses an approximation of the AlexaToRec curve to tonemap colours so even quite bright values stay legible. Swatch text colour adapts for readability. This can be disabled globally in the preferences, or per line with the colorize config key.

Custom TCL in Autolabels

Config entries can include arbitrary TCL strings that are evaluated as if written in the node's label knob. For example, the base config for Shuffle uses "in [value in]-->out [value out]", which displays in rgba --> out rgba on the node. This keeps TCL out of the label knob and lets you update the display of every node in every script by editing the config.

Channels, Masks, Merges and Mix

Labelmaker reads the whole channel story off a node — the channels it operates on, any channel mask, (un)premultiplication, mix, and, for Merge-style nodes, the operation and the channels flowing through it — so you can read a composite without opening a single node.

• Channels — any node with a channels knob shows the channels it is operating on, e.g. (rgb).

• Masks and unpremults — the channel readout reflects masking and (un)premult state:

  • M — masked by a channel
  • Minv — masked by the inverted channel
  • /* — unpremultiplied/premultiplied by a channel

  For example, (rgb M red) /* alpha means the node processes rgb channels masked by red and (un)premultiplied by alpha.

• Merges and channel operations — a Merge might read (rgba) plus (rgba) --> (rgba); a non-default also merge, bbox, metadata from, or range from appears on its own line when it differs from the default. ChannelMerge and Copy get the same treatment for the channels they route.

• Mix — when a node's mix knob is set to anything other than 1.0, the current mix value is shown on the node.

Regular Old Labels

The label knob works exactly as before, including TCL expressions, and is shown alongside Labelmaker's readouts.

Other Readouts

A few more things Labelmaker surfaces automatically.

• Node class — Labelmaker ensures you can always tell what class a node is. If a node has been renamed to something that no longer starts with the class name — for example Transform1 renamed to guy — Labelmaker displays Transform | guy so you always know what you're looking at. Nodes that haven't been renamed display normally.
• File readout — Read and Write nodes show the basename of their file path directly on the node, so you can identify sources and outputs without opening the properties panel. Write nodes also show their colorspace, file type, and render order when they differ from the defaults.

Auto De-overlap

When a node's label grows taller (because more knob values come into view), Labelmaker automatically pushes any nodes the grown label now overlaps down to make room, whether or not they are connected to the grown node. Pushed nodes cascade: if pushing a node makes it overlap nodes below it, those are pushed too.

The push is a spatial sweep — nodes are moved based on where they sit in the DAG, not on how they are wired — and it is debounced with a 150 ms delay so a burst of label changes resolves in one pass. It does not pollute the undo stack. Nodes are never retracted when a label shrinks, side-by-side nodes at the same height are left where they are, and pre-existing overlaps elsewhere in the script are left alone. Backdrops and Viewers are skipped. This feature can be toggled in preferences.

De-overlap All Nodes

Edit > Node Layout > De-overlap All Nodes runs a one-shot spatial sweep across the entire script. Nodes are processed in top-to-bottom order; any node whose bounding box overlaps the node above it is pushed down to clear it, and the push cascades to nodes below. Unlike the automatic push, this operation is fully undoable.

This is especially handy the first time you open an existing script after enabling Labelmaker: because the new labels are taller than Nuke's defaults, nodes that used to sit clear of one another may now overlap, and a single De-overlap All pass tidies the whole script at once.

Configuration

Labelmaker reads one or more JSON config files. Each top-level key is a node class name; its value is a list of line definitions displayed in order.

{
    "NameOfNodeClass": [
        {
            "name": "knob_name",
            "label": "optional display label",
            "default": "optional — omit line when value equals this (use a list for multi-value knobs, e.g. [0.0, 0.0])",
            "always_show": true
        },
        {
            "tcl_string": "[value in] --> [value out]"
        }
    ]
}

Keys for knob entries:

Key	Required	Description
name	yes	Internal knob name
label	no	Display label shown in the DAG
default	no	Skip this line when the knob is at this value
always_show	no	Show this line even when the value matches default
colorize	no	Color/AColor knobs are colourised by default; set false to disable for a line
tcl_string	—	Alternative to name; raw TCL evaluated in node context

The shipped base_config.json already covers many common classes — Read, Write, Grade, Transform, Blur and other filters, Merge2, ChannelMerge, Copy, Shuffle, Reformat, ColorCorrect, Retime, FrameRange, Roto/RotoPaint, and more — so most scripts show rich labels out of the box. A personal config at ~/.nuke/labelmaker_config.json (or the path set in preferences) layers on top of it; because overriding happens at the node-class level, defining a class in your personal config replaces that whole class definition rather than merging line by line.

Config Editor

Open the editor via Edit > Labelmaker Config Editor... to add and tune labels through a GUI instead of hand-editing JSON. It's a floating, non-modal window, so you can keep working in the DAG while it's open.

• Pick which layer to edit from the Editing layer dropdown. Read-only layers (such as a base config on a shared install) are shown as READ-ONLY and can be browsed but not changed.
• Each node class shows where it sits in the cascade — overrides ..., overridden by ..., or, for a class defined only in a lower layer, a greyed-out inherited row.
• To customize an inherited class, select it and click Fork to Edit (or double-click it). This copies the whole class definition into the layer you're editing so you can override it. Because configs replace whole classes, your copy then fully controls that class.
• Add, delete, and reorder labels per class, switching freely between simple knob readouts and TCL labels.
• Save writes the layer to disk and reloads the live autolabeller, so changes apply without restarting Nuke. If your personal config doesn't exist yet, saving creates it.

Preferences

Open the preferences dialog via Edit > Labelmaker Preferences...

Preference	Default	Description
Enable Labelmaker	on	Master on/off switch. When off, Nuke's default autolabel is restored.
Always Show All Labels	off	Show all config lines regardless of whether values are at their defaults
Disable Colorization	off	Turn off colour swatches
Use Base Config	on	Include the shipped base_config.json
Enable Auto De-overlap	on	Automatically push overlapped nodes down when a label grows taller
Personal Config Path	~/.nuke/labelmaker_config.json	Location of your personal config overrides

Preferences are saved to ~/.nuke/labelmaker_prefs.json and apply immediately.

Caveats

Node Heights Change

By default, knob lines are hidden until the value differs from the default. This makes it easy to see at a glance which knobs have been adjusted, but nodes change height as you edit them.

If this bothers you, enable Always Show All Labels in the preferences. Nodes will be a consistent (taller) height at the cost of being more verbose and less scannable.

Performance

Labelmaker has been used on production scripts of substantial size without issue. The autolabel routine runs as a low-priority idle process. If you do encounter performance problems, please open a GitHub issue and include the approximate node count and any node class that seems to be the culprit.