In 2005, Nuke 4.5 introduced a new 3D subsystem developed by Jonathan Egstad. In 2002, Nuke was publicly released by D2 Software. Nuke won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 2001. FLTK was subsequently released under the GNU LGPL in 1998. Nuke version 2 introduced a GUI in 1994, built with FLTK – an in-house GUI toolkit developed at Digital Domain. In addition to standard compositing, Nuke was used to render higher-resolution versions of composites from Autodesk Flame. Nuke (the name deriving from 'New compositor') was originally developed by software engineer Phil Beffrey and later Bill Spitzak for in-house use at Digital Domain beginning in 1993. Nuke's users include Digital Domain, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Blizzard Entertainment, DreamWorks Animation, Illumination Mac Guff, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Sony Pictures Animation, Framestore, Weta Digital, Double Negative, and Industrial Light & Magic.

Foundry has further developed the software since Nuke was sold in 2007.

Nuke is available for Microsoft Windows 7, OS X 10.9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and newer versions of these operating systems. Nuke is a node-based digital compositing and visual effects application first developed by Digital Domain, and used for television and film post-production.

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