Natron 2.0 released!

Natron development keeps accelerating. The team headed by Alexandre Gauthier has released v2.0 of the cross-platform open source compositing software, which brings a major update, incorporating features such as Python scripting support, roto painting, dopesheet editor, extensible UI via Pyside, many new nodes, etc. Read on for the details.

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
• Python API is available at http://natron.readthedocs.org
• PyPlug: You can export a
  group as a Python plug-in and it be re-used in any other project as a
  single node as you would use any other plug-in
• SeExpr integration within a
  node: http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/seexpr.html
• New SeNoise and SeGrain
  nodes based on SeExpr
• RotoPaint node with Wacom
  tablets support
• DopeSheet editor: This is
  where you can control easily keyframes and clips in time for motion
  graphics purposes
• Render statistics: Available
  in the Render menu, use this to debug complex compositions
• New Text plug-in with much
  more controls than the previous Text node
• New TextPango node based on
  the Pango library to directly input Pango Markup Language (html-like),
  see https://github.com/olear/openfx-arena/wiki/Pango
• Many new nodes, based on the
  ImageMagick library: ReadPSD, ReadSVG, Charcoal, Oilpaint, Sketch, Arc,
  Polar, Polaroid, Reflection, Roll, Swirl, Tile, Texture
• More new nodes: STMap, IDistort, LensDistortion, TimeBlur, OCIODisplay node, GmicEXPR (to enter GMIC expressions)
• Rewrote entirely the
  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 synchronised to enhance image comparison
• Support for multi-layered
  workflows for cleaner graphs
• Better support for
  multi-view workflows
• The Read node can now read multi-view EXR files. Decoding
  speed of EXR has been greatly improved.
• The Write node can now write multi-view and multi-layered
  EXR files. Encoding speed of EXR has been greatly improved.
• Viewer: The channel selected in the “Alpha channel”
  drop-down can now be overlayed on the image when using the “Matte”
  display channels
• The RotoPaint/Roto Transform and Clone tabs now have a
  viewer handle overlay to help manipulating the parameters
• DopeSheet and CureEditor: The scaling interactions with the
  bounding box of selected keyframes are now correct but may lead to
  keyframes being located at floating point times.
• A “P” indicator at the bottom right of a node will indicate
  that a node is a pass-through. Hovering the mouse over the “P” will
  indicate from which input this node is a pass-through of.
  The pass-through input will also be indicated with a plain arrow
  whereas all other inputs will have their arrow dashed.
• Python API: it is now possible to retrieve the layers
  available on a node with the getAvailableLayers() function, see Python Reference
• Ability to write multiple channels into the EXR.
• Python: PyPlugs can now be used to create toolsets, such as
  Split And Join in the views menu
• New Glow PyPlug
• New bloom node
• EXR format reading/writing speed has been greatly improved
• The HSVTool node now has an analysis button to set the src
  color
• File dialog performances have been greatly improved
• It is now possible to list all available drives in the file
  dialog on Windows
• New progress panel to manage renders to cancel, queue,
  pause or restart them
• ReadFFMPEG/WriteFFMPEG performances have been improved
• WriteFFMPEG has now a better interface to display possible
  format/codec combination
• The viewer now has the ability to pause updates so that no
  render is triggered upon any change that would modify the displayed
  image
• User interface for parameters has been improved and
  requires less mouse clicks
• Undo/Redo shortcuts (CTRL-Z or CMD-Z on Mac) now follow the
  mouse over focus indicated on the interface tabs
• The curve editor has received major speed enhancements when
  manipulating thousands of keyframes
• The dope sheet zoom is now always appropriate, even for
  still images
• Value parameters can now have Python expressions written
  directly in their spinbox and can be used as calculators
• New Despill node
• New Reformat node that replaces the old Resize node
• More responsive playback
• NodeGraph: optimize for speed when the scene contains a lot
  of nodes and add auto-scrolling when reaching the border of the view

Plus bug fixes and minor enhancements. A new demo project by François Grassard is available. It contains a fully-featured project demonstrating the use of a complex node-graph including usage of PyPlugs. Also of note, the number of tutorials for Natron keeps expanding.

More on Natron’s website.