
Natron: Open-source compositing software for Mac, Windows and Linux - based2
http://natron.fr/
======
touchofevil
I'm a compositor & motion graphics artist. I've never used Natron, but I've
done a lot of compositing in After Effects and a little bit of compositing in
Nuke (which is the industry standard for photorealistic vfx compositing).
Another free compositing option is BlackMagic Fusion [0]. Fusion is a node
based compositor, like Natron and Nuke. Fusion has a free version that has a
few restrictions and a paid version that is $1,000.

I've always been surprised that open source software like Blender and Natron
has not really caught on at studios. Nuke licenses cost between $4,000 and
$8,000 per seat, plus a maintenance cost of over $1,000 per year per seat.
These cost add up very quickly and vfx jobs even at big studios generally end
up having a razor thin profit margin of 3-5% [1][2] So it's strange that these
vfx studios haven't embraced open source software to cut costs.

[0]
[https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion)

[1]
[https://vfxsoldier.wordpress.com/about/](https://vfxsoldier.wordpress.com/about/)

[2] [http://www.ew.com/article/2013/04/05/peter-jackson-
hollywood...](http://www.ew.com/article/2013/04/05/peter-jackson-hollywood-fx-
crisis)

~~~
berkut
As someone who works in the industry developing software, it's because for the
high-end VFX studios, software like Blender and Natron just don't cut it in
terms of efficiency, power and flexibility.

Artist time costs more money than software licenses do, and as the open source
software isn't generally good enough for their needs, using better off-the-
shelf software that have fairly decent and flexible plugin APIs is good enough
for them.

A lot of the code VFX studios have is proprietary (as in unique to the
individual studio who wrote it) plugins for host apps like Maya, Katana and
Nuke, and shaders/integrators for renderers like PRMan and Arnold.

There are open source projects that are used for _glue_ in the VFX industry:

[https://github.com/alembic/alembic](https://github.com/alembic/alembic)
[https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenSubdiv](https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenSubdiv)
[https://github.com/imageworks/OpenShadingLanguage](https://github.com/imageworks/OpenShadingLanguage)
[https://github.com/ImageEngine/gaffer](https://github.com/ImageEngine/gaffer)
[https://github.com/dreamworksanimation/openvdb](https://github.com/dreamworksanimation/openvdb)
[https://github.com/openexr/openexr](https://github.com/openexr/openexr)

But these have almost exclusively been internal proprietary projects started
within studios that have been open-sourced, to help transfer assets between
studios, and are mostly open file formats for images, volumes and geometry, as
well as other intermediate tooling.

~~~
touchofevil
I guess I've just always been a little surprised that studios didn't open
source more of their internal software. For example, Nuke was originally
internal software at Digital Domain before they sold it to The Foundry, I
believe. Rhythm & Hues also has a lot of its own internal compositing and 3D
applications. And Pixar's Renderman software is also not open source (I know
some aspects of Renderman are open source, but the actual Pixar Renderman
software is not open source). It just surprises me that more of these internal
applications didn't get open sourced. Blender is a good example of one that
did. While I'm sure these studios were getting an edge by having their own
software in the early days of cg, now I would think the studios would actually
benefit more by open sourcing their apps so that other developers can
contribute to the project. And the studios that make this software might be
able to cut back on their dev teams. Just something I've always wondered
about.

~~~
berkut
But having their own software still gives them an edge - that's why some
companies are actually going the other way entirely - like Weta writing Manuka
renderer and Animal Logic writing their Glimpse renderer. It allows them to
iterate extremely quickly on-depand for shows that have issues and design
things properly, instead of shoe-horning existing (and often badly designed
and implemented) open source software that can do simple stuff, but wasn't
designed with full flexibility in mind.

Different pipelines work in completely different ways, and what works for one
studio doesn't necessarily work well for another.

However, I do agree in principle that given a clean start (Which is never
going to happen given the hundreds of thousands of lines of code VFX studios
have in plugins for proprietary systems) it would make sense for all VFX
studios to share a loose framework application that very flexible and advanced
plugins can be written for. Image Engine's Gaffer is probably the best fit
currently. In some respects it looks like Fabric Engine might at some point
fit this bill, however it's not open.

------
throwaway2016a
For those of you like me that don't know much about video editing and you're
curious what compositing is, here's an article: [http://www.dummies.com/how-
to/content/compositing-video.html](http://www.dummies.com/how-
to/content/compositing-video.html)

~~~
semi-extrinsic
This article is nice, but it's missing discussion of a key component which is
painfully obvious in the composited image: you have to match the lighting on
your subject with how it would look in the actual scene.

You can do this digitally (as part of color grading), but the ideal solution
is to do it IRL with light color. Especially if you're shooting with a
consumer grade camera and have to live with the severely limited colorspace
headroom.

------
a_e_k
As I understand it, this is basically an open source clone of The Foundry's
Nuke software. Nuke is used widely in the VFX industry -- probably the
dominant software in its niche.

I'm not knocking the effort it takes to clone its GUI, plugin API (OpenFX
[0]), or basic plugins. But I'll also point out as an alternative that The
Foundry offers a free non-commercial version of Nuke [1].

[0] [http://openfx.sourceforge.net/](http://openfx.sourceforge.net/)

[1] [https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/non-
commercial/](https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/non-commercial/)

~~~
LinuxFreedom
The non-commercial version is a crippled trialware. Also you will get bitten
very aggressively if you built your project in the first phase in a non-
commercial version and some time later manage to get funding and want to
import your work into a commercially licensed version - import will not work.
Especially this looks like a proactive attempt to harm people - potential
customers! - very stupid idea.

It is the same as everywhere else - honest users are seriously harmed by
licensing policies while thieves are just using the latest torrent release.

Nuke is, no question, an industry leader, but an open source competitor will
hopefully make the featureset of this kind of software more widely available
also for projects with very low budget [while starting]. Meanwhile TheFoundry
management should look at Unreal for licensing ideas.

~~~
taspeotis
> Also you will get bitten very aggressively if you built your project in the
> first phase in a non-commercial version and some time later manage to get
> funding and want to import your work into a commercially licensed version -
> import will not work.

Qt has a somewhat similar provision in their licenses [1]. Personally I think
it's acceptable, but walking a fine line. It's an attempt to make sure users
can't skirt paying for a commercial license if they are, indeed, commercial.

I would hope that if you contacted their customer support and politely explain
how your project was using the free license in the spirit it was intended to
be used, they would allow imports from the free version, say as a once-off
when you purchase the licenses.

[1] [http://www.qt.io/faq/#_Toc453700698](http://www.qt.io/faq/#_Toc453700698)

------
zaphar
This looks superficially like Blenders Node based compositing engine. Some of
their demo videos used blender as part of the pipeline. I wonder what a
comparison with Blender would look like. Does it offer any value if you are
already use Blender?

Either way more Open Source competition in this space is a good thing. For a
long time Blender was the only Video Editing software out there with any
quality.

~~~
LinuxFreedom
This is a compositing package, much different from blender.

If you believe that blender is a "quality video editor" please try at least
kdenlive to understand what a decent video editor looks like. The video
editing feature set in blender is a nice addon for hardcore Blender users but
totally inaccessible for anybody else and missing a lot of must-have features.
But it is nice, however, to see that they are working on it, maybe in a few
years it will be great.

~~~
zaphar
I have in fact tried kdenlive in the past and found it be (for my needs which
are admittedly small) to be subpar compared to Blender. Addtionally, so as far
as I know it's only available on Linux while both Blender and Natron appear to
be available on multiple platforms which is an important feature to me.

I'm not a professional video editor of course and everyone looks at this stuff
with different slightly desires. Blender had NLE before kdenlive even existed,
if I recall correctly. My comment was in reference to that period of time.
It's nice to see competitors like kdenlive and natron have appeared.

What must-have features are missing? Last I checked it did basic video editing
really well and it's compositing engine is really quite nice. It's not Adobe
Premiere but for most use cases I've found it to be the most complete and
featureful editor out there that is both multiplatform and Open Source.

~~~
Joeboy
I'm with you on the Blender VSE vs Kdenlive question fwiw. First tried
Kdenlive years ago and couldn't get sound to sync, so gave up. Tried again a
few months ago, can't remember what the exact problem was but found it to be
wanting compared to Blender.

I will admit that Blender has an unusual UI that will deter a lot of people.

~~~
quadrangle
was a few months ago when you tried kdenlive before or after their recent
major overhaul? Basically, did you use the older version that was the
traditional sequential-numbers versioning or the newer date-based versioning?
(note that lots of progress has happened in even just the last few months)

~~~
Joeboy
Dunno to be honest. I've become a bit cynical because for the last decade or
so people have claimed that there are good FOSS editors, then when you try and
use them they fall apart at the first opportunity. Blender's the only NLE I've
found that's not comically flaky. It's possible Kdenlive really has improved
though.

~~~
tjl
How many NLE software packages have you used?

I find it interesting that it seems that for a some people, Blender is their
first experience with a node-based editor. They've been around for years.
While I haven't used Nuke (or Shake), I was very good with Houdini for CG
which is all based around nodes. It does include some basic compositing (or at
least it did the last time I used it).

~~~
Joeboy
I tried maybe a dozen FOSS NLEs before finding Blender. Many, many years ago I
used Premier.

The other big node-based thing is audio synthesis / effects, for example Pure
Data. As far as I know these are the only areas where dataflow programming has
really taken off.

~~~
tjl
LabView is node-based. It's extremely popular (and quite old).

[http://www.ni.com/labview/](http://www.ni.com/labview/)

Matlab's Simulink is also node-based (probably because of LabView). It's also
widely used.

[http://www.mathworks.com/products/simulink/](http://www.mathworks.com/products/simulink/)

------
dr_zoidberg
I have an older, portable version lying around in my machine and I really
liked it (though knowing very little about compositing when I downloaded it).
It helped me do some nice animations to explain a few things through video.

Now I'm a bit surprised that they require you to register to download any
version... I know it's free, but it still feels unnecesary... I just want the
file, why do I have to register?

~~~
mpnordland
Here is an unencumbered download link for Linux:

[http://downloads.natron.fr/Linux/releases/64bit/files/Natron...](http://downloads.natron.fr/Linux/releases/64bit/files/Natron-2.0.5-Linux-x86_64bit-
portable.tar.xz)

Replacing Linux with Windows does not work for me, but it may for you if you
are using that OS.

~~~
enzanki_ars
EDIT: Oops. Should have tested some of these before posting... Seems like it
only works for some links but not others. Leaving for future reference.

\-----

Windows 64bit:
[https://downloads.natron.fr/Windows/releases/64bit/files/Nat...](https://downloads.natron.fr/Windows/releases/64bit/files/Natron-2.0.5-Windows-x86_64bit-
setup.exe)

Windows 64bit Online Installer:
[https://downloads.natron.fr/Windows/releases/64bit/files/Nat...](https://downloads.natron.fr/Windows/releases/64bit/files/Natron-
Windows-x86_64bit-online-release-setup.exe)

Windows 64bit zip:
[https://downloads.natron.fr/Windows/releases/64bit/files/Nat...](https://downloads.natron.fr/Windows/releases/64bit/files/Natron-2.0.5-Windows-x86_64bit-
no-installer.zip)

Mac:
[https://downloads.natron.fr/Mac/releases/Natron-2.0.5.dmg](https://downloads.natron.fr/Mac/releases/Natron-2.0.5.dmg)

Linux TGZ:
[https://downloads.natron.fr/Linux/releases/64bit/files/Natro...](https://downloads.natron.fr/Linux/releases/64bit/files/Natron-2.0.5-Linux-x86_64bit.tgz)

Linux Online Install:
[https://downloads.natron.fr/Linux/releases/64bit/files/Natro...](https://downloads.natron.fr/Linux/releases/64bit/files/Natron-
Linux-x86_64bit-online-install-release.tgz)

Linux Portable:
[https://downloads.natron.fr/Linux/releases/64bit/files/Natro...](https://downloads.natron.fr/Linux/releases/64bit/files/Natron-2.0.5-Linux-x86_64bit-
portable.tar.xz)

Linux RPM:
[https://downloads.natron.fr/Linux/releases/64bit/files/Natro...](https://downloads.natron.fr/Linux/releases/64bit/files/Natron-2.0.5-1.x86_64.rpm)

Linux Debian:
[https://downloads.natron.fr/Linux/releases/64bit/files/natro...](https://downloads.natron.fr/Linux/releases/64bit/files/natron_2.0.5_amd64.deb)

    
    
      Note: Future versions - URL is in form 
      http://natron.fr/login?os=Linux&file=https:
      //downloads.natron.fr/Linux/releases/64bit
      /files/Natron-2.0.5-Linux-x86_64bit-portable.tar.xz
      - Remove the http://natron.fr/login?os=Linux&file= 
      part and you are good to go.

~~~
dr_zoidberg
The Linux Portable download goes through happily, but every other link
redirects to login page. Thanks for the effort though.

------
erichocean
It's worth noting that Natron uses a number of very high-quality open source
projects under the hood, including OpenImageIO[0] and OpenColorIO[1]. Many of
them (unlike Natron) have a commercial-friendly BSD-like open source license.

[0]
[https://sites.google.com/site/openimageio/home](https://sites.google.com/site/openimageio/home)

[1] [http://opencolorio.org/](http://opencolorio.org/)

------
jscheel
Huh, guess I can stop keeping my really old copy of Shake around. Was so
bummed when Apple canceled that.

~~~
lcrs
Shake is more complete than Natron still - and some parts of Shake are still
world class, the spline-based warping for example is still on par with Nuke
and Flame, and the included versions of Keylight and Primatte haven't been
hugely improved on since. And Smoothcam is super handy.

I have had to take increasingly drastic measures to keep it running on modern
Linuxes though, and on OS X it sadly now seems impossible :(

~~~
bsenftner
I never understood why Apple ruined Shake. I'm friends with Shake's developer
too, but he never discusses it. He got paid, is what I figure.

------
evolve2k
Anyone know some really good tutorials to get moving with this?

From my brief explorations in the past, I just haven't found graph based
compositing to be intuitive. I'm hoping it makes more sense once you
understand a few key concepts.

------
neves
BTW, I really liked the MOOC Visual Effects for Guerrilla Filmmakers
[https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/vfx-for-
filmmakers](https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/vfx-for-filmmakers)

It uses Hit Film Express, a free version of the commercial product. I was able
to learn the basic techniques of VFX and started to use Hit Film to edit my
family videos. Win-Win.

------
cyphar
+1 for GPLv2 or later. It's nice to see new software have strong copyleft
licenses.

------
protomyth
Is there a reason its not signed on the Mac?

~~~
rdsnsca
Probably the $99 / year cost of a software licence to sign it.

