Natron (software)

Natron

Original author(s)	Alexandre Gauthier, Frédéric Devernay
Initial release	October 22, 2014; 9 years ago (2014-10-22)
Stable release	2.5.0[1]  / 26 November 2022
Repository	github.com/NatronGitHub/Natron
Written in	compositing software
License	2015: GPL-2.0-or-later[a] 2013: MPL-2.0[b]
Website	natrongithub.github.io

Natron is a

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 in Tanzania which, according to Natron lead programmer Alexandre Gauthier, provides "natural visual effects" by preserving its dead animals.^[4]

History

Natron was started by Alexandre Gauthier in June 2012 as a personal project. The project was the winner of the 2013 Boost Your Code contest by

The first widely available public release was 0.92 (June 6, 2014), which brought rotoscoping and chroma keying functionalities.^[5] Subsequent beta releases brought additional features such as motion blur, color management through OpenColorIO, and video tracking.

Version 1.0 was released on December 22, 2014,

Before version 2.0, Natron was licensed under the Mozilla Public License version 2.0, which allowed redistributing it with closed-source plug-ins.

Since version 2.0, the software was

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 bit processor, at least 3GB of RAM (8GB recommended)
• A graphic card that supports OpenGL 2.0 or OpenGL 1.5 with a few commonly available extensions (ARB_texture_non_power_of_two, ARB_shader_objects, ARB_vertex_buffer_object, ARB_pixel_buffer_object).

Render engine

• 32 bit floating point linear color processing pipeline: all
  Thomas Porter and Tom Duff.^[12]
• Support for multi-core architectures: all processing is
  thread pool pattern
  .
• Color management is handled by the OpenColorIO library, including support for the ACES color encoding system proposed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
• Support for many image formats, using OpenImageIO, including multi-layer OpenEXR. Additional image layers can be used to store several color layers, or for non-color information such as depth, optical flow, binocular disparity, or masks.
• Support for reading and writing video files through the
  DNxHD and Apple ProRes
  .
• Full support of the OpenFX 1.4 API, enabling use of open source 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 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 curves.
• A wide range of additional effects (color transforms, geometric transforms, image generators...) are available.
• Key frame-based parameter animation, using Bernstein polynomials (the polynomial basis behind Bézier curves) for interpolation.
• Animation curves editing: Curve Editor.
• Keyframes editing: Dope Sheet.
• Support for
  stereoscopic 3D
  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 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 Archived 2016-08-18 at the Wayback Machine script language (Walt Disney Animation Studios).
• WebGL 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
• Comparison of video editing software

Notes

References