Natron

Natron

Natron is a piece of software designed for compositing purposes, and it is entirely free and open source. The software is node-based, which makes it easy to use and customize. The software is similar to other compositing systems like Nuke, Apple Shake, Autodesk Flame, SoftEddie, Blackmagic Fusion, and Avid Media Illusion. The user interface for Natron was designed to mirror the best aspects of these other systems, and it has plugin support for the ultimate expandability.

Download Natron
Features of Natron
  • Compositing
Pros of Natron
  • Open source
  • Plugin Support
Cons of Natron
  • No Obvious Negatives
Natron Reviews

If you want a piece of compositing software that has all the most sought tools in the genre without any of the professional cost associated with premium programs, Natron is the best solution. It is completely open source, which means it can be used and modified by anyone. It supports plugins in the OpenFX format, and it also supports many other commercial and open source plugins. It doesn't take much in the way of hardware to run this software at its peak level. It can run on either 32 or 64 bit systems, and it only requires 3GB of RAM. You'll also need a graphics card with support for OpenGL 2.0. It is possible to use a card that only supports OpenGL 1.5 if you take advantage of a few extensions to get the functionality of OpenGL 2.0. The software offers support for the OpenColorIO library, so color management is comprehensive. This also includes support for a color encoding system called ACES, which was suggested by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Many image formats can be used with the software, and you can take advantage of layering functions to store colors and more. Masks, optical flow, depth, and binocular disparity are a few other layers that can be created in this fashion. Natron also works with video files. It can read and write such files through various intermediate formats for optimal workflow, and it can perform such functions by way of the FFmpeg library. Supported intermediate formats include Apple ProRes and DNxHD. Since the software is compatible with the API for OpenFX 1.4, plugins from either open source or commercial developers can be integrated into the software. This list of tools in Natron is quite extensive. You can perform standard image transformations like rotations, scaling, skewing, and positioning. You can also take advantage of video tracking features, and you can use several different painting tools to add custom visuals. These tools include industry standards like burn, smear, dodge, reveal, blur, eraser, clone, pencil, and solid. It even includes support for manual rotoscoping. The software also includes tools for image generation, geometric transformations, color transformations, and much more. You can create animations based on keyframes, and you can build animation curves with ease thanks to the curve editor. For easier processing, the software supports multi view and stereoscopic 3D view. With the command line tool, you can use the software to render in batches, which can help reduce the load on your system. Humans can easily edit the individual projects since the format is produced with XML. Using this language, you can also export and import presets for various nodes.

Natron Video

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