Open source compositing tool nears launch

Funded by French national research institution INRIA the development of the open source node-based compositing application is receiving strong support from CG artists, building an enthusiastic group of followers and contributors.

The project promises to make quality compositing tools available to artists at large and is being headed by Alexandre Gauthier-Poichat and Fréderic Devernay. The team has recently announced the availability of a release candidate 2 version, which offers a rewritten rendering engine for optimized multi-threading as well as the inclusion of additional nodes (filters). The official launch of v1.0 is expected in the coming weeks.

Feature highlights include:

• Cross-platform compatibility (OS X/Linux/Windows)
• 32 bits floating point linear colour processing pipeline
• Dozens of file formats supported: EXR, DPX,TIFF, JPG, PNG, etc.
• Support for many commercial, free and open-source OpenFX plugins
• Intuitive user interface
• Rotoscoping
• Tracker node
• Realtime feedback thanks to optimised multi-threaded rendering pipeline

Natron can be downloaded from http://natron.inria.fr/