natron first stable release of open source compositor

Natron : open source compositor release v1.0
***Open source, cross platform, node based compositor Natron releases stable v1.0:

https://natron.inria.fr/natron-1-0-0-stable-released/

release notes:

https://github.com/MrKepzie/Natron/…n-1.0.0-release

No comments? I am surprised that there is not more excitement from Blender users with the arrival of Natron. Maybe solo/hobby users prefer to do it all in Blender, since the Blender compositor is quite capable? With Natron you are essentially getting the basic toolset/UI of Nuke for free, with the highend tools left out(3d, stereo, optical tools, 3d tracking, particles). This would have been a mere pipe dream a year ago.

If you work in any sort of pipeline, separating out the 3d side from the comping side is usually par for the course. Just having good masking tools and a RAM cache alone make Natron more usable than the Blender compositor. If you are a Windows user then there is also the free Fusion, so we are spoilt for choice these days! Natron does however allow OFX plugins and will have optical flow tools in the upcoming v1.1, unlike Fusion free. If you need 3d tools and particles in your comps, then Fusion is the obvious choice.

Btw, I am a longtime AE/Fusion user but am very impressed with what is happening with Natron. I especially look forward to the upcoming look/feel UI changes :slight_smile:

I tried it and I’m quite surprised on how fast it render frames. I also see how powerful it is during that meeting : http://www.blendernation.com/2014/12/04/blender-user-group-paris-blendernatron/

But because it’s a young program, it’s still have too much crash :frowning:
But I keep an eye on it, read the documentation about OpenFX and what’s can be doable with Python soon.

This program seems exciting. The problem is that without proper documentation… i am not aware of what can be done with it that is not possible with the Blender compositor.

I guess this could also be what others are facing at the moment… as well .

I can’t speak for Natron, but documentation has historically been a rather weak point for FOSS in general, there’s just some tasks that don’t get done very well because most people see it as ‘boring’.

Regardless, it seems like a good quality application that fills in a major hole in FOSS when it comes to doing things like film and large-scale project (good at least for those who just need an open source compositor and not the whole package like Blender is). It looks to me like it will become everything that Jashaka couldn’t.

We also have to consider how clones of existing software can be perceived at first. A quick glance and most would assume its just Nuke, not an open source clone.

It does have a lot of similarities, but there is an upside, as most of the documentation on Nuke’s workspace and flow apply to Natron as well. I’ve messed with Natron and it has a lot of potential once more tools are implemented. I’m hoping the Natron developers focus more effort on image manipulation, since Blender can do all the 3d stuff itself.

Also I hope they don’t get derailed when The Foundry launches it’s free Nuke versions.

The “free” versions of Nuke that will be released are just a glorified PLE for learning or hobby use. You can’t use it as a freelancer or small studio, so Natron would be more attractive for these users. The release of the free Fusion is what has put a dampener on the news of Natron, but unless you are a Windows user then that may not be relevant.

Fusion has been developed for 25 years and Natron only 1, so you can’t really compare their featureset, but there is no reason not to learn both if you are on Windows. By learning Natron you are essentially learning Nuke anyway (should you ever need to use it on a job) with the advantage that you can use it for paid work.

There will always be a place for truly free and OS tools like Blender, Krita and Natron for many reasons and pipelines. With all the dramas and acquisitions that go in this industry (the recent Foundry news as a case in point) these tools make for a safe harbor in your workflow and are becoming more enticing to many users that wouldn’t have considered them years ago.

kind of wish they would have done something else with the interface. Even a different more modern theme would have worked better.

They are planning on revamping the UI look and feel with a more modern style in the near future. The look hasn’t been publicly released yet so no idea what it looks like. Hopefully it will be skinnable to switch between various themes or Nuke-style. Personally I am finding the notch on the sliders to be very hard to read.

More info here:
http://home.seekscale.com/blog/natron-a-new-open-source-compositing-software

can’t see download links, would really love to try it out, as possible replacement for AE.
sorry,didn’t see it dived into the title graphics :slight_smile:
thanks for this , quite eager to try it

After messing with it some more I can see that Natron does have some pretty powerful capabilities and seems to work pretty fast when using multiframe rendering. I’ll likely keep it in my arsenal. Blender might have better 3D compositing capabilities, but for 2D Natron is the definite winner (especially once it gets the O-flow tools that are in development)

Edit: after playing around with Natron some more my opinion hasn’t changed much. Natron has most of the tools that Blender’s compositor does, minus some of the filters like glare and chromatic abberation. Being more familiar with Blender I find some operations easier to set up in it’s compositor, and its roto and tracking capabilities are much more refined than Natron’s (at least at this point). Natron, on the other hand has better tools for managing color spaces and its rendering is faster.

Reading EXR files is very slow compared to Fusion, I hope they can improve performance. I’ve never been a fan of Nuke’s interface and always prefered Fusion user-friendliness also, I hope Natron could keep nuke’s workflow and shortcuts and make a cleaner interface.

Bringing this back a bit.

Couple things to note, its been updated to 1.2.1 (some significant improvements/additions since release).
https://natron.inria.fr/v1-2-1/

Licensing Change to GPL V2
Reasoning:

       The main reasoning is that in the future there will be  derivative work spun off Natron, and we want to be able to still control  where our source code is going and who is selling it.

GPL will enable us to have a commercial version of Natron that will be identical to the open-source version, but with support.
If we were to keep the MPL, there are some features that unfortunately we would have to refrain from implementing without disrupting:
A) An open-source version equal to the commercial version.
B) Good relationship with the developers in the eco-system (other companies making money off plug-ins).
Matthieu, as for the studios you mention, they can still make customisation of the software via Python (that’s what most studios do) since loading Python scripts in a GPL software does not make them GPL. If they want to make a complete derivative work of the source code, they would have then either to:
A) Make it GPL so everyone can benefit of it
B) Buy to us a commercial license where we allow them to do so
Choice B) is what most studios will use anyway because they are not going to use a product without having complete support on it.
All this licensing scheme is in the hope to sustain the quality of the open-source product we give, while still receiving funds from other sources. Unfortunately we are not going to be funded by the French government forever.
What Blender cannot do compared to us is selling their software as a commercial license (with support etc…), because they have over 300 contributors, making it impossible to have everyone agree on selling their intellectual property.
In our cases, the number of people owning the software is small and known making it pretty easy for us to re-license the software as we wish.
Hope this clarifies the reasoning. If you’ve got any question I’ll be glad to answer.
Alex

Don’t know why you need to have a commercial version to add a dedicated support package (especially since it won’t offer anything not found in the free version).

Just add a paid support service (complete with having their feature requests and bug reports at a higher priority). The studios get the support they want and the general community still benefits.

What Blender cannot do compared to us is selling their software as a commercial license (with support etc…), because they have over 300 contributors, making it impossible to have everyone agree on selling their intellectual property.

This is bullshit. You can sell Blender binaries and support all you want, but it still requires that you distribute the sourcecode with the binaries.

If anyone is interested, there is a Facebook Group called NatronNation that is dedicated to Natron at https://www.facebook.com/groups/NatronNation/.

You can also find more tutorials about it at Natron Tutorials from NatronNation: A Facebook Group and https://colorgrade13.wordpress.com.

Cool thanks for the links

Natron 2.0 is now out on a new website

It seems like the project is still going strong and the fear that non-commercial Nuke killed it has not come to fruition.

From here it still looks as before:
Except for the new front page, latest stable is 1.2.1 and snapshots are exposed along (no need to search for that anymore).

I found it under “snapshots” http://natron.fr/snapshots/ , for windows, linux and MacOSX