smartElements for Nuke

smartElements is a 2D, 3D and toolsets manager for Nuke that lets you easily categorize, browse and re-use your favorite elements and assets. Build up a pool of commonly used media for you and your team. smartElements contains multiple features that can be customized to your needs and if you have some programming knowledge you can take over full control and create your own custom pre- and post processors that run when ingesting media.

Learn about license types
  • Trial
Description

The media browser for Nuke

smartElements is a media browser for your every days work, regardless of whether you work alone or in a small or large team. Create a pool of commonly used media and simply access elements that you use often in one place. Bringing media into smartElements is as easy as dragging a folder or a file into smartElements. To use media in your comp simply drag it from smartElements into your DAG. You can categorize your media by stacks and lists. You can favorite your most often media and search media by many keywords.

You can categorize media inside lists that are contained inside stacks. This gives you a lot of flexibility in organizing your media. You can use a stack per show, user, or any other way you like.

Renderings can automatically be registered to smartElements in order to build up your projects and having a quick overview about your current progress.

If you have some technical knowledge, you can even further customize smartElements and create your custom pre- and post processors that let you perform additional tasks when it comes to ingesting your media into smartElements.

Main features

• Element library for Nuke
• Store 2D/3D elements and toolsets
• Galery, list and filmstrip views
• Categorize your elements in stacks and lists
• Tag elements and search by various criteria
• Create custom pre- and post processors
• Create playlists


A detailed tutorial video that shows how to install and use smartElements can be found here:

In Depth Tutorial

Which kinds of licenses do you offer?

We offer node locked licenses and site licenses for single products as well as annual subscription licenses to use ALL cragl products with one license. All products work online and offline.

license models

Additional

For additional info about smartElements please refer to https://www.cragl.com/smartElements

Discussions

Want to talk about it?

Head over to r/aescripts to chat with fellow users about this product.

Need Support?

Please open a support ticket to be connected directly with the author of this product

Version History

2.56.0 -

Oct 12, 2025

• Implement ActionVFX Bridge
• Add 'Remove all' button in ingest matrix
• Create animations
• Expose help button in AI Generator view
• Tags - Keep TagEditor open when adding/deleting a tag on an element
• Settings - Move ingest and import processor help buttons to top right
• Improve tooltips
• Remove 'Clear' command
• Fix - Metadata View has no attribute button_open_ingestion_matrix

2.55.0 -

Sep 28, 2025

• Log in to your ActionVFX account, download and ingest owned products - directly inside smartElements
• Add Vendor Logo to third-party stacks

2.54.0 -

Aug 25, 2025

• Access Fullres ActionVFX Practise footage
• Access Cache Previews in top toolbar for third party elements
• Add home view for all third-party stacks

2.52.0 -

Jun 14, 2025

• Implement GenAI models for video and image generations

2.51.0 -

May 21, 2025

• Implement ActionVFX into smartElements
• Add convenience function to download all third-party elements thumbs

2.50.0 -

May 9, 2025

• Pin/Unpin a list
• Copy/paste playlist path to and from clipboard
• Filter favorite elements regardless of favorite rate number
• Make pagination work with tags and live filter

2.49.0 -

Feb 15, 2025

• Copy element path - paste element path
• Drop .txt file that contains folder paths for ingestion
• Copy to working file import processor - Ensure forward slashes
• Sanitize all terminal command paths
• Update flip/flop/flipflop to hotkey E
• Fix scrolling in Nuke-12

2.48.1 -

Jan 15, 2025

• Fix incorrect framerange when transcoding during ingestion

2.48.0 -

Dec 29, 2024

• Configure to show element count
• Confirm aborting ingestion when closing ingestion window
• Add Overview documentation video to written documentation

2.47.0 -

Nov 11, 2024

• Auto reload library when creating a new toolset
• Fix - Use custom thumbnail when registering a new toolset
• Show HOME section only in gallery view
• Ingestion - Prevent from ingesting when no list is selected

2.46.0 -

Oct 21, 2024

• Run smartElements in standalone mode
• Remember window size

2.45.0 -

Oct 2, 2024

• Create temp playlists

2.44.0 -

Sep 27, 2024

• Implement trash bin
• Use arrow in all QComboBox widgets
• Fix - Replace element thumbnail

2.43.0 -

Aug 25, 2024

• Update to nuke-16

2.42.0 -

Aug 18, 2024

• Integrate FX Elements third-party element web stacks

2.41.0 -

Jun 14, 2024

• Ignore @eaDir when bringing elements into DAG

2.40.0 -

May 25, 2024

• Reveal element from selected node
• Clear selection after having inserted elements into

2.39.2 -

May 6, 2024

• Fix - Ingest to stack that has been added via environment variable
• data_extraction - Write metadata.nk to element root, not source root

2.39.1 -

Apr 26, 2024

• Fix ingestion data extraction when using soft copy

2.39.0 -

Apr 15, 2024

• Implement element ingestion matrix

2.38.0 -

Apr 4, 2024

• Optimize for fullscreen mode
• Speed up media crawl when ingesting
• Add hotkey overview
• Override hard/soft copy ingestion mode via environment variable
• Keep filter when switching viewing modes and switching lists
• Wrap very long element names into multiple lines
• Move selected elements to other category

2.37.0 -

Nov 27, 2023

• Add live filter
• Implement to abort ingestion
• Search - Allow regular expressions
• Fix ingest via api in standalone mode exited silently

2.36.0 -

Oct 16, 2023

• Add element history section
• Auto set thumbnail
• Search - Add -is not- and -does not contain- operators
• Use more accurate progress bar when ingesting
• Settings - ingest processors | import processors - show help buttons
• Playlist widget list - do not show playlists that do not exist on disk

2.35.0 -

Sep 12, 2023

• Create element ingestion report

2.34.0 -

Sep 2, 2023

• Add API

2.33.0 -

Aug 22, 2023

• Add additional metadata and search elements by metadata
• Search elements by width, height, frame length

2.32.0 -

Jul 29, 2023

• Update to nuke-15

2.31.0 -

Jul 5, 2023

• Gallery View - Show QuickInfo

2.30.0 -

Jun 17, 2023

• Add Home View showing preview thumbnails for each list

2.29.0 -

May 23, 2023

• Implement element Head-up-Display

2.28.1 -

May 18, 2023

• Speed up launching time when being in offline mode

2.28.0 -

Apr 21, 2023

• Add button to toggle play/stop all elements / all selected elements
• Notify when trying to ingest to the 'ALL' list
• Fix - color dialog is under smartElements main window on windows

2.27.0 -

Feb 25, 2023

• Add studio model
• Add help menu

2.26.0 -

Jan 21, 2023

• Bulk adjust thumbnail for multiple elements
• Add filter section, order elements in ascending and descending order
• Drive visibility of local 'default' stack by environment variable
• Fix deleting all stacks lets a user not create a new stack

2.25.0 -

Jan 15, 2023

• Make preview frame to use when ingesting configurable

2.24.0 -

Jan 11, 2023

• Configure to mark new elements

2.23.0 -

Jan 4, 2023

• Versionize elements
• Support .mxf video files

2.22.0 -

Dec 27, 2022

• Colorize lists, tags and elements to quicker find items
• Add additional data to elements
• Keep info window fully in screen

2.21.0 -

Dec 17, 2022

• Update to nuke-14

2.20.0 -

Nov 5, 2022

• Implement favorite sync to view favorites from other users
• Add ALL list that shows all elements of a stack

2.19.0 -

Oct 23, 2022

• Add jkl shortcuts to rewind, stop and play video widget
• Toggle flip flop mode for videos using shortcut f

2.18.1 -

Oct 13, 2022

• Fix custom onDrop callback overwrites default drop callback

2.18.0 -

Sep 18, 2022

• Implement media playlists

2.17.0 -

Sep 12, 2022

• Enhance overall performance and speed up ingesting elements
• Show element info as tooltip
• Lock selected stacks via environment variable
• Show current stack in window title
• Add progressbar for ingesting jobs
• Add element ingestion live log

2.16.0 -

Sep 9, 2022

• Add sidebar info on the right
• Add documentation button
• Fix metadata is not correctly ingested when ingesting under Nuke-13

2.15.1 -

Aug 25, 2022

• Fix ingesting broke with previous update

2.15.0 -

Aug 23, 2022

• Add functionality to mark elements as deprecated

2.14.0 -

Aug 15, 2022

• Ingest from .txt file
• Fix filmstrip view does not display the last element

2.13.0 -

Jul 31, 2022

• Implement filmstrip viewing mode

2.12.0 -

Jul 26, 2022

• Add fullscreen player mode
• Add comment to element in thumbnail view
• Improve favorite rating system

2.11.0 -

May 2, 2022

• Add context menu command to play all elements at once

2.10.0 -

May 1, 2022

• Show progressbar when loading elements
• Use continuous loading for elements
• Add elements view limit

2.9.1 -

Nov 5, 2021

• Fix ImportError for Python-3

2.9.0 -

Oct 29, 2021

• Introduce media playback option, implement to scrub media
• Support ingesting R3D files
• Fix creating full length preview when ingesting .mp4 files
• Add most used section
• Add history section

2.8.1 -

Jan 16, 2021

• Fix dropping license into license window raises UnicodeDecodeError

2.8.0 -

Jan 10, 2021

• Fix reading trial license data fails decrypting
• Send email to license author when machine installs license

2.7.1 -

Dec 29, 2020

• Port to Nuke-13
• Fix Paste tag from clipboard needs Nuke restart to show tagged media
• Show media in alphabetical order in tag view mode
• Fix Sending media with white space to RV does not resolve to path
• Fix Use multiple video files when it has a file sequence like naming
• Fix Setting thumbnail for toolset does not process under Windows
• Upload custom thumbnail: lower file extension to check for

2.7.0 -

Sep 30, 2020

• Add custom media commands to trigger custom code on selected media

2.6.2 -

Sep 15, 2020

• Disable register renderings by default

2.6.1 -

Sep 9, 2020

• Fix search does not contain matching elements
• Remove non matching elements in search in list view mode

2.6.0 -

Sep 4, 2020

• Search lists and tags
• Add additional stacks via environment variable
• Add functionality to rename an element
• Fix clicking cancel button will still perform deletion
• Fix move Tag window and Info window onto the top under Linux
• Fix typing T into the tag window's input closes the tag window

2.5.0 -

Aug 19, 2020

• Update thumbnail directly without creating snapshot in ItemInfo widget

2.4.0 -

Aug 10, 2020

• Speed up running in offline mode

2.3.0 -

Jul 31, 2020

• Filter elements by selected tags using an any-all mode
• Add remember function when asking for re-ingesting or skipping media
• Fix ingesting a mov file shows frames count 1 in metadata
• Fix re-ingesting existing media in gallery mode hid the whole row

2.2.0 -

Jul 24, 2020

• Close tag editor when loosing focus
• Close current tag editor when opening another tag editor
• Add multiple tags at once by concatenating them with comma
• Copy tags, paste tags from one element to another

2.1.0 -

Jul 21, 2020

• Add tagging system
• Keep original aspect ratio of media previews
• Restrict modifying permissions when having environment variable set

2.0.0 -

Jul 12, 2020

• Revamp media video player
• Add functionality to set one or multiple poster frames for media
• Add hotkeys to ItemInfo widget
• Add hotkeys to insert and reveal element
• Set media viewing (normal, flip, flop, flip-flop) and playback speed
• Optimize loading speed

1.2.0 -

Jun 22, 2020

• Add import processor to time offset media
• Fix After render copies from non existent paths under Windows

1.1.0 -

Jun 17, 2020

• Create import processors on importing media
• Fix render whole frame range of video when ingesting a video

1.0.0 -

Jun 10, 2020

• Initial release

Compatibility

Nuke/NukeX

15.0, 14.0, 13.2, 13.1, 13.0, 12.2, 12.1, 12.0, 11.3, 11.2, 11.1, 11.0, 10.0, 9.0, 8.0