A few days ago I was telling you about Cinelerra, that interesting professional video editing software for Linux. Well now it's Natron's turn, other software also related to video, but quite particular. Of course, it is still free and open source software, as well as free and under the GNU GPL v2 license.
Natron is a node-based compositing software, that is, a program that will use a set of techniques used in film and television and other interactive media to create complex digital images from the organization and arrangement of various sources, which could be video, photographs, static or animated images, etc. . Something widely used in visual and special effects post-production.
Natron has been influenced by similar digital composition software such as Avid Media Illusion, Apple Shake, Blackmagic Fusion, Autodesk Flame, Nuke etc. projects. Also, this project has been designed to support plugins to extend their capabilities through OpenFX plugins both commercial and open source API compliant for those plugins that Natron includes.
As for the features or tools that Natron can allow would highlight some very advanced ones such as:
- Image transformation, such as rotate, scale, tilt or rotate, etc.
- Video tracking.
- Manipulation (Hue, chroma, Despill, PIK,…).
- Paint using various tools, such as a solid image fill tool, pencil, eraser, cloner, reveal, blur, rub, dodge, or burn.
- It also supports manual rotoscopy, using Bézier curves.
- It has a large number of additional effects, such as color transformation, geometries, images and much more.
- Keyframe based parameter animation, using Bernstein polynomials for interpolation.
- Editing animation curves using the curve editor.
- Keyframe editing with exposure sheet.
- Support for stereoscopic 3D and multi-view processing.
- etc.