The first release candidate of v2.0 of the open source compositing software is out, providing a glimpse at the major improvements that will be available in the 2.0 release, including Python scripting support, roto painting, dopesheet editor, extensible UI via Pyside plus many new nodes. Read on for more.
New features include:
- Python 2.7 API:
- Parameters expressions
- User-defined parameters
- Script editor to control the application overall
- User-defined python callbacks
- Integration of Pyside to the GUI so that the interface is extensible with new menus and windows
- Nodes group to have cleaner graphs with hidden sub-nodegraphs
- PyPlug: You can export a group as a Python plug-in and re-use it in any other project as a single node as you would use any other plugin
- SeExpr integration within a node
- New SeNoise and SeGrain nodes based on SeExpr
- RotoPaint node with Wacom tablets support
- DopeSheet editor
- Render statistics to debug complex compositions
- New Text plugin with many more controls than the previous Text node
- New TextPango node-based on the Pango library to directly input Pango Markup Language (html-like)
- Many new nodes, based on the ImageMagick library: ReadPSD, ReadSVG, Charcoal, Oilpaint, Sketch, Arc, Polar, Polaroid, Reflection, Roll, Swirl, Tile, Texture
- New nodes:
- STMap
- IDistort
- LensDistortion
- TimeBlur
- OCIODisplay node
- GmicEXPR, to enter GMIC expressions
- Rewritten WriteFFMPEG and ReadFFMPEG nodes. Most widely used codecs are supported.
- New merge operators: grain-extract, grain-merge, color, hue, luminosity
- New gamma and gain controllers on the viewer
- Multiple viewers can now have their projection synchronized to enhance image comparison
- Support for multi-layered workflows for cleaner graphs
- Better support for multi-view workflows
- Various performance and stability enhancements across the board
Also of note, as the adoption of the software keeps expanding, a number of new tutorials are surfacing on YouTube. More on Natron’s website.
