HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Natron is a free and open-source node-based
compositing Compositing is the process or technique of combining visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously ca ...
application. It has been influenced by
digital compositing Digital compositing is the process of digitally assembling multiple images to make a final image, typically for print, motion pictures or screen display. It is the digital analogue of optical film compositing. Mathematics The basic operation us ...
software such as Avid Media Illusion, Apple Shake,
Blackmagic Fusion Blackmagic Fusion (formerly eyeon Fusion and briefly Maya Fusion, a version produced for Alias-Wavefront) is post-production image compositing developed by Blackmagic Design and originally authored by eyeon Software. It is typically used to crea ...
, Autodesk Flame and Nuke, from which its user interface and many of its concepts are derived. Natron supports plugins following the OpenFX 1.4 API. Most open-source and commercial OpenFX plug-ins are supported.


Origin of the name

Natron is named after
Lake Natron Lake Natron is a salt or alkaline lake located in north Ngorongoro District of Arusha Region in Tanzania. It is in the Gregory Rift, which is the eastern branch of the East African Rift. The lake is within the Lake Natron Basin, a Ramsar Sit ...
in
Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands an ...
which, according to Natron lead programmer Alexandre Gauthier, provides "natural visual effects" by preserving its dead animals.


History

Natron was started by Alexandre Gauthier in June of 2012 as a personal project. The project was the winner of the 2013 ''Boost Your Code'' contest by
Inria The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics. It was created under the name ''Institut de recherche en informatiq ...
. The prize was a 12-month employment contract to develop Natron as a
free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the sour ...
within the institute. The first widely available public release was 0.92 (June 6th, 2014), which brought rotoscoping and
chroma key Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a visual-effects and post-production technique for compositing (layering) two images or video streams together based on colour hues ( chroma range). The technique has been used in many fields to ...
ing functionalities. Subsequent beta releases brought additional features such as
motion blur Motion blur is the apparent streaking of moving objects in a photograph or a sequence of frames, such as a film or animation. It results when the image being recorded changes during the recording of a single exposure, due to rapid movement or l ...
,
color management In digital imaging systems, color management (or colour management) is the controlled conversion between the color representations of various devices, such as image scanners, digital cameras, monitors, TV screens, film printers, computer print ...
throug
OpenColorIO
and
video tracking Video tracking is the process of locating a moving object (or multiple objects) over time using a camera. It has a variety of uses, some of which are: human-computer interaction, security and surveillance, video communication and compression, aug ...
. Version 1.0 was released on December 22nd, 2014, together with a large sample project by François "CoyHot" Grassard, a professional
computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great dea ...
artist and teacher, demonstrating that Natron could execute interactively graphs with more than 100 nodes. In January 2015, the Art and Technology of Image (ATI) department in
Paris 8 University Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis (french: Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis) is a public university in Paris, France. Once part of the historic University of Paris, it is now an autonomous public institution. It is one of the th ...
announced that they would switch to professional-quality
free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the sour ...
for teaching
computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great dea ...
to students and artists, including
Blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsify food and other substances. A stationary blender consists of a blender container with a rotating ...
,
Krita Krita ( ) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital art and 2D animation. The software runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and ChromeOS, and features an OpenGL-accelerated canvas, colour management s ...
and Natron.


Licensing

Before version 2.0, Natron was licensed under the
Mozilla Public License The Mozilla Public License (MPL) is a free and open-source weak copyleft license for most Mozilla Foundation software such as Firefox and Thunderbird The MPL license is developed and maintained by Mozilla, which seeks to balance the concer ...
version 2.0, which allowed redistributing it with
closed-source Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and int ...
plug-ins. Since version 2.0, the software was relicensed under the
GNU General Public License version 2 The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...
or later to allow better commercialization. All plugins that are distributed with binaries of Natron 2.0 or later have thus to be
compatible Compatibility may refer to: Computing * Backward compatibility, in which newer devices can understand data generated by older devices * Compatibility card, an expansion card for hardware emulation of another device * Compatibility layer, compo ...
with the
GPLv2 The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...
.
Closed-source Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and int ...
plug-ins, including commercial ones, can still be used with Natron, although the GPL according to the FSF does not allow loading and linking
closed-source Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and int ...
plug-ins, or plug-ins that are not distributed under a GPL compatible license, but they have to be distributed separately. Data produced by Natron, or any software distributed under the GPL, is not covered by the GPL: the copyright on the output of a program belongs to the user of that program.


Features


Hardware

* Low hardware requirements: a 64 bits processor, at least 3GB of RAM (8GB recommended) * A graphic card that supports
OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...
2.0 or OpenGL 1.5 with a few commonly available extensions
ARB_texture_non_power_of_twoARB_shader_objectsARB_vertex_buffer_objectARB_pixel_buffer_object
.


Render engine

* 32 bits floating point linear color processing pipeline : all frames are represented as floating-point
RGBA RGBA stands for red green blue alpha. While it is sometimes described as a color space, it is actually a three-channel RGB color model supplemented with a fourth ''alpha channel''. Alpha indicates how opaque each pixel is and allows an image to ...
samples with premultiplied alpha, permitting the use of
alpha compositing In computer graphics, alpha compositing or alpha blending is the process of combining one image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency. It is often useful to render picture elements (pixels) in separate pa ...
operators defined by Thomas Porter and Tom Duff. * Support for multi-core architectures: all processing is multithreaded using a
thread pool pattern In computer programming, a thread pool is a software design pattern for achieving concurrency of execution in a computer program. Often also called a replicated workers or worker-crew model, a thread pool maintains multiple threads waiting for ...
. *
Color management In digital imaging systems, color management (or colour management) is the controlled conversion between the color representations of various devices, such as image scanners, digital cameras, monitors, TV screens, film printers, computer print ...
is handled by th
OpenColorIO
library, including support for the
ACES ACeS (PT Asia Cellular Satellite) was a regional satellite telecommunications company based in Jakarta, Indonesia. It offered GSM-like satellite telephony services to Asian market. The coverage area included Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Philip ...
color encoding system proposed by the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motio ...
. * Support for many image formats, using OpenImageIO, including multi-layer
OpenEXR OpenEXR is a high-dynamic range, multi-channel raster file format, released as an open standard along with a set of software tools created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), under a free software license similar to the BSD license. It is not ...
. Additional image layers can be used to store several color layers, or for non-color information such as depth,
optical flow Optical flow or optic flow is the pattern of apparent motion of objects, surfaces, and edges in a visual scene caused by the relative motion between an observer and a scene. Optical flow can also be defined as the distribution of apparent veloci ...
, binocular disparity, or masks. * Support for reading and writing video files through the
FFmpeg FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing o ...
library, including
digital intermediate Digital intermediate (typically abbreviated DI) is a motion picture finishing process which classically involves digitizing a motion picture and manipulating the color and other image characteristics. Definition and overview A digital intermediat ...
formats such as DNxHD and
Apple ProRes Apple ProRes is a high quality, " visually lossless" lossy video compression format developed by Apple Inc. for use in post-production that supports video resolution up to 8K. It is the successor of the Apple Intermediate Codec and was introd ...
. * Full support of the OpenFX 1.4 API, enabling use of
open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
or commercial plug-ins. * Support for low-resolution rendering for previewing the output of computing-intensive visual effects.


Tools

* Image transform (position, rotation, scale, skew). *
Video tracking Video tracking is the process of locating a moving object (or multiple objects) over time using a camera. It has a variety of uses, some of which are: human-computer interaction, security and surveillance, video communication and compression, aug ...
functionalities. * Keying: Keyer, Chroma Keyer, Difference Keyer, Hue Keyer, PIK Keyer. * Paint: Solid, Pencil, Eraser, Clone, Reveal, Blur, Smear, Dodge, Burn. * Manual rotoscoping, using
Bézier curve A Bézier curve ( ) is a parametric curve used in computer graphics and related fields. A set of discrete "control points" defines a smooth, continuous curve by means of a formula. Usually the curve is intended to approximate a real-world shape ...
s. * A wide range of additional effects (color transforms, geometric transforms, image generators...) are available. *
Key frame In animation and filmmaking, a key frame (or keyframe) is a drawing or shot that defines the starting and ending points of a smooth transition. These are called ''frames'' because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of film ...
-based parameter animation, using
Bernstein polynomial In the mathematical field of numerical analysis, a Bernstein polynomial is a polynomial that is a linear combination of Bernstein basis polynomials. The idea is named after Sergei Natanovich Bernstein. A numerically stable way to evaluate pol ...
s (the polynomial basis behind
Bézier curve A Bézier curve ( ) is a parametric curve used in computer graphics and related fields. A set of discrete "control points" defines a smooth, continuous curve by means of a formula. Usually the curve is intended to approximate a real-world shape ...
s) for interpolation. * Animation curves editing : Curve Editor. * Keyframes editing : Dope Sheet. * Support for
stereoscopic 3D Stereoscopy (also called stereoscopics, or stereo imaging) is a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word ''stereoscopy'' derives . Any stereoscopic image is ...
and multi-view processing.


Advanced

* Support for batch-mode rendering through a command-line tool, allowing the final render to be processed on a
render farm A render farm is a high-performance computer system, e.g. a computer cluster, built to render computer-generated imagery (CGI), typically for film and television visual effects. Origin of the term The term ''render farm'' was born during the p ...
. * A project format written in XML and easily human editable. * Node presets can be imported/exported easily via XML. * Python script language (Python 2.7).
SeExpr
script language (Walt Disney Animation Studios). *
WebGL WebGL (Short for Web Graphics Library) is a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins. WebGL is fully integrated with other web standards, allowing GPU-accelerated ...
1.0 script language (Shadertoy) for hardware accelerated 2D/3D visual effects development. * Customisable UI. * "PyPlug" custom node creation system (equivalent to Nuke Gizmos).


See also

*
List of video editing software The following is a list of video editing software. The criterion for inclusion in this list is the ability to perform non-linear video editing. Most modern transcoding software supports transcoding a portion of a video clip, which would count a ...
*
Comparison of video editing software General information This table gives basic general information about the different editors: Active Discontinued / inactive Definition * professional: used for full length Hollywood movies; * professional (small): mainly used for paid ...


Notes


References


External links

* {{Compositing Software Compositing software Free and open-source software Software that uses Qt Animation software