Using Contact Sheet: Tag Filtering

You have the option to populate the Contact Sheet Viewer by using tags on shots in the Timeline.

Note:  Tag Filtering is available in Nuke Studio and Hiero, but not in HieroPlayer.

The example below shows a simplified sequence that has three tags applied in various ways to different clips. The beginning and end clip are also populating the Contact Sheet Viewer via the Manual Picker.

To start filtering the Contact Sheet by tags, you can simply select which tags and boolean operation you’d like to use.

Tip:  To add a tag selected shots, right click the clip on the Timeline, go to Tags > Tag Shot Selection. Read more about how to tag shots at Using Tags.

Clicking the Tag Filter drop down in the Contact Sheet menu bar will display all the tags currently present on the sequence being sent to the Contact Sheet. Here you can also see check boxes indicating the boolean operation.

The two check boxes next to each tag entry have three states:

• Inactive (gray) - this tag is not be used to display a shot in Contact Sheet

• Active (highlighted) ‘+’ PLUS - This tag is being used to include shots in the Contact Sheet and is performing an “AND” boolean

• Active (highlighted) ‘-’ MINUS - This tag is being used to include shots in the Contact Sheet and is performing an “MINUS” boolean

The check boxes make it quick to toggle between the different states and see your changes dynamically update the Contact Sheet Viewer. Note that you can only have one state for a particular tag enabled at a time. For instance if you had a ‘+’ check box enabled for a tag then clicked the ‘-’ check box the ‘+’ state would automatically be disabled and the ‘-’ checkbox enabled.

Clicking an active checkbox again disables it, effectively removing that tag from the filtering.

In this simple sequence we’re first going to enable the Tag Filter Toggle button on the left so we can see changes in the Contact Sheet Viewer as we change the tag filtering options. As we have no pre-chosen tags, this effectively shows an empty Contact Sheet.

Now opening the tag filter drop down, check the ‘+’ button next to the Blue tag. You’ll see that three shots are added to the Contact Sheet because they contain a Blue tag.

Now if you check the ‘+’ button next to the Green tag only two shots are displayed because we are asking the Contact Sheet to ONLY filter and display shots that meet that “AND” boolean. In other words the clips MUST contain both a Blue AND a Green tag. You’ll notice that there is a clip that contains just a Blue tag and just a Green tag that are not displayed.

Now if you click the ‘-’ button next to the Magenta tag you will only see the one shot which has a Blue AND Green tag but NOT a Magenta one.

Using this simple mechanism it should be possible to filter and display a lot of combinations. For instance if you wanted to see all shots that contained no tags then you could just switch to ‘-’ on all the tags and you would then see what is left; in this case the two un-tagged shots at the beginning and end of the sequence.

The manual Pick Mode selection and Tag Filter selections are persistent, meaning that you can use the Tag Filter/Pick Toggle button to quickly switch between the two modes and see what was last used.