VDBRender adds native OpenVDB rendering to Nuke
Compositor Marty Blumen has released VDBRender, a simple free add-on for rendering OpenVDB volumes like smoke, fire and clouds inside Nuke.
It makes it possible to render volumes directly inside the compositor without the need to round-trip them to external renderers, speeding up VFX, motion graphics and animation workflows.
Render OpenVDB volumes directly inside Nuke
Although Nuke has a FieldVolume node for importing OpenVDB files, it’s an experimental tool, and isn’t intended for use in production.
VDBRender fills that gap in Nuke’s feature set, making it possible to render OpenVDB volumes natively inside the software, and generate the outputs necessary for use in production.
A straightforward, physically accurate tool with support for deep output and AOVs
Blumen describes VDBRender as “intentionally minimal and task-focused”: a typical workflow is simply to load a VDB, connect a camera, select a preset, and render.
There are currently nine presets, including various types of smoke, fog, clouds, fire and dust.
For greater control over the look of a volume, there is a three-point lighting rig, a Sun and Sky system, and – as of version 3.0 – spherical harmonics-based environment lighting.
Rendering is physically based, and supports multiple scattering and emission-driven in-scattering, for realistic rendering of fire and explosions.
The add-on supports deep output and AOVs, including Density, Emission, Shadow and Depth; and supports velocity motion blur.
Intended to work in VFX production pipelines
Blumen has worked as a compositor at VFX studios including Luma Pictures, Framestore and Crafty Apes, and VDBRender is architected with production workflows in mind.
The add-on is “compiled with AVX2 and FMA optimisations, and uses techniques such as per-scanline accessor pooling and early ray termination to maintain interactivity where possible”.
It currently supports OpenVDB 12, but Blumen says that support for OpenVDB 13 is planned, in line with the new CY2026 spec for VFX Reference Platform.
The add-on has had a good response from other VFX artists on LinkedIn, with former FuseFX Head of 2D Erin Nash describing it as “killer”.
License and system requirements
VDB Render 3.0 is compatible with Nuke 17.0+ on Windows. It hasn’t been tested on Linux or macOS. You can find compiled binaries via the links below: it’s a free download.
Source code is available under an open-source MIT license.
Download free Nuke add-on VDB Render from Nukepedia
Download the source code of VDB Render from GitHub
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