# Natron's Features Workbench

Legend
strikethrough: Not present in Natron
Italic: included in the proposal

(Community) means community scripts or plugins functionality

## Natron proposal by Bonalex 2021/10

Natron is a full featured production software. With companion "community plugins" and "community scripts" it will get even more creative and efficient.

> []IMHO I think installing community scripts ans plugins should be strongly encouraged on the download page.

### Visual Effects
Natron features a node based interface, can import 3D renders from popular applications, and has hundreds of tools, effects and filters for creating high end visual effects! Nodes gives unlimited possibilities and clearer processing flow.

#### 2D Tracking
Track difficult movements with ease and accuracy to get 1 point or perspective tracking. Natron includes Blenderʼs fast 2D tracker. Luminance variation correction, manual keyframes help you get the right result.

#### Roto
Mask, feather, repeat! Natronʼs rotoscope node allows you to capture sub-pixel details. Each roto point has individual controls for feathering allowing compositors to capture plate motion blur in different areas of each roto-shape. Roto shapes can be tracked for faster results.

#### Keying
Natron provides many keyers to get the right matte in each situation.
- Greenscreen with PIK keyer. Includes screen cleaning tools. Can be setup to behave like Keylight (r) keyer.
- Additive keyer gets back the finest hairs. (Community)
- Lightwrap get the right color integration. (Community)
- Tools for refining matte edges and color edges gives you professional results.
- HSVTool let's you select a color range for advanced color corrections.

#### Effects
In Natron more than 100 image processing effects are at your disposal.
Multiple denoising techniques are available. With SeGrain you can precisely add grain to your images.
Lens flares come with many presets for quick yet fully customizable setup.

#### Distort images
Natron offers simple Bend/Swirl/Skew distortion of images or image based warps for creative heatwave/refraction effects. Distortion based on a roto can be obtained with versatile "IDistort" node.

#### 3D Compositing
Natron has the tools to composite your 3D renders easily
- multilayer EXR support (Community)
- relighting tools like "ReShade" and "SSAO" Screen Space Ambient Occlusion allows you to change lighting without going back to 3D rendering. A normal and Z pass is all it takes. (Community)
- Depth of field with depth pass (Community)
- Motion blur with vectors pass
- Cryptomatte (Community)
- mapping with UV pass
- Lens distortion allows to integrate seamlessly with live tracked footage either with industry standard lens models or STMap

> [] updated cryptomatte must be included the community repository

~~##### 3D~~
> [] Need at least cameraprojection to be advetizable

### Broadcast Design and Motion Titles

Use Natron for Motion graphics. With powerful animation tools Natron lets you composite elements and then apply hundreds of built in effects, or add animated textures:

#### Animation
Curve editor let you precisely animate every element in Natron.The Dope Sheet let you keep track of your keyframes for easy retiming in a clean UI. Path display and transform gizmo in the viewer gives you intuitive feedback.

#### Vectors
Import vector file formats in Natron for logos. You can split your layers for separate animations of each part.
Vector shapes can also be drawn with the Roto node that allows you to draw many shapes and animate them as vectors.

#### 2D Text
Multiple Texts can be generated on multiple layers to allow animating them freely.

#### Animated Textures
Shadertoy node brings the huge library of parametric animated textures in Natron. (Community)

#### Automation
You can link parameters together and add expressions to automate their behavior. Clone nodes can also help process many nodes with complex behaviors. For complex motion or parenting you can stack as many "transform" nodes as you want without quality loss thanks to transform concatenation.

### Professional Tools

#### Floating point HDR color managed workflow
Natron is never compromising image quality. It's engine can deal with high resolutions images even with complex processings. Floating point processing means HDR capability out of the box.
Natron uses OpenColorIO color management. It brings color consistency across your pipeline of choice would it be Blender or professional ACES colorspace.

#### Multi-channel workflow
Natron offers a multi-channel workflow to use multi-pass renders in a single line of nodes.

#### Color analysis tools
Natron has an elaborate color picker plus a ImageStatistics node to get precise information about your image that can even be used by expressions.

#### OpenFX plugins
OpenFX is at the heart of Natron to get extended with unlimited number of (free or paid) external plugins to get optical flow retiming, particles,...

#### Collaboration
Natron help you share and reuse your work. It has user presets to save a single node parameters. Pyplugs can be used to share and reuse parts of a node graph.

#### Python API and PySide
Many tasks can be automated in Natron thanks to a rich Python programming API. Pyside let's you tailor the interface of your tools. These scripts can be launched from outside Natron for a full pipeline integration.

#### Asset management
Natron + Python + command line rendering allows connexion to any asset management or render management software, for the best collaboration workflow.
For Free and without writing a single line of code you can use:
- PRISM Asset manager
- AFANASY render

#### GPU Acceleration
Shadertoy nodes are pure GLSL code for very fast render on the GPU. You can write your own effects with this standard language.

#### In-context help
Natron has documentation at your fingertips. Just hover the mouse over any node paramater and you'll most often be hinted on how to use it. Each node also gives information on its use.

#### Script performance metrics
Natron can tell you precisely wich nodes are taking longer to render. For this just hit F2!

#### Customizable interface
In Natron work the way you like. Interactively reorganize and save your workspaces. Or change menus and keyboard shortcuts with a few lines of Python code.

#### Background rendering
Natron has it's own background render queue. With it you can render a part of your comp while you work on another part.

### Special Tools
Natron can be adapted to most of your needs thanks to it's wide range of tools:

#### Stereoscopic Workflow
Natron can work with multiple camera views. Stereo postproduction or 2D to 3D conversion can be managed natively

#### Midi Input
Midi physical or virtual controls can change any parameter in Natron. Go for real interactivity.

## from Natron Draft
### 2D Tracking
*Natron includes Blenderʼs 2D tracker...

### Roto
*Mask, feather, repeat! Natronʼs rotoscope node allows you to capture sub-pixel details. Each roto point has individual controls for feathering allowing compositors to capture plate motion blur in different areas of each roto-shape*

### Keying
*Natron ships with multiple keyers... *

### Paint
~~Remove objects, clone backgrounds~~
> []Not reliable enough to be advertised

### Animation
*Curve editor and dope sheet! *

## from Nuke

### 2D compositing and VFX

#### Nodal Toolset
*With over 200 creative nodes, Nuke delivers everything you need to tackle the diverse challenges of digital compositing. This includes industry-standard keyers, rotoscope, vector paint tools, color correction and so much more.*

#### Deep Image compositing
~~Deep Image compositing tools let you create and work with images that contain multiple opacity, color and camera-relative depth samples per pixel, so there's no need to re-render CG elements when content changes.~~

#### Machine Learning Toolset
~~Nuke’s suite of machine learning tools allows artists to create and apply their own high-quality sequence-specific effects. As part of this, artists can train neural networks to automatically complete tasks with the CopyCat node and apply this to other areas of a sequence with Inference. Applications of this flexible toolset include upres, removing motion blur, tracker marker removal, beauty work, matte generation, and more.~~

#### Stereoscopic workflow
*Nuke natively supports any number of image streams, making it simple to work with multiple camera views. With an efficient stereoscopic workflow built into the base application, Nuke has everything you need to tackle native stereo postproduction or 2D to 3D conversion work with speed and quality. *

#### Rotoscoping
*With all tools accessible through an intuitive fold-down layer system, the integrated Roto node gives precise control over even the most complicated rotoscope work right within Nuke.*

#### 2D Tracker
*Track and correct difficult objects with ease and accuracy using Nuke's unique keyframe tracking functionality, which makes tackling difficult occlusion problems and luminance variations fast and painless.*

#### Keying
*Nuke provides a wide range of keyers to assist in extracting mattes from images. This includes industry-standard keyers such as Primatte, Ultimatte and Nuke's own IBK, as well as Foundry's Keylight®.*

#### Keylight
*Keylight® is a production-proven blue and green screen keyer that's simple to use and excels at tackling reflections, semi-transparent areas and hair.*

#### Dope Sheet
*Working with compositions that involve time manipulation is simple with Nuke’s Dope Sheet, as it lets you connect the viewer to different parts of the node graph and view multiple paths with an enhanced view of shots and frame ranges. Save additonal time by manipulating keyframes directly in the dope sheet.*

#### Relighting
*Nuke’s Relight node makes it possible to relight renders in the comp environment and preview changes in the 3D environment, without having to use other packages for quick fixes and adjustments.*

#### Text
*The Text node in Nuke lets you enter text directly into the viewer, then edit, modify or animate it on a per-character basis with all the standard word processing and editing features you could need.*

#### Warp Effects
*Warp Effects in Nuke allow you to transform or morph images within parameters you set whether you are working with grids, splines or vectors. Additionally, the Spline Warp node is linked to the Roto tools, so splines can be copied between nodes.*

#### Denoise
*The Denoise node lets you create cleaner images with less grain. Nuke’s powerful wavelet-based noise removal tool quickly reduces image noise and grain, giving you clearer and more visually pleasing results with fewer artifacts.*

#### OFlow retiming
*Nuke’s OFlow tool, based-on Kronos technology, offers high-quality GPU-accelerated retiming across the Nuke range. This functionality is useful for any artists working with retiming, speed-ramping, time-remapping, slow-motion effects and motion blur.*

#### ZDefocus
*The GPU-accelerated ZDefocus node lets you create camera defocusing based-on a depth pass. Just choose a focus point on camera and blur an image according to the depth map channel.*

#### 32-bit floating-point color channels
*Powerful and highly scalable, Nuke's resolution-independent, multi-channel pipeline allows you to read and output at any image size and manage over 1,000 user-definable 32-bit floating-point color channels. Nuke's Multi-threaded, scanline-based rendering engine also enables faster, more accurate results with ultra high resolution footage.*

#### Multi-channel workflow
*A robust multi-channel workflow makes for more efficient compositing by allowing you to manage multi-pass renders in a single stream, separate individual passes for manipulation and work natively with high-dynamic-range imagery (HDRI).*

#### Full HDRI support
*The Nuke range fully supports HDRI formats through a floating-point processing pipeline to ensure any edits or changes you make are done non-destructively, without compromising quality.*

#### Color analysis tools
*Pixel Analyzer gives you easy access to a wide variety of detailed image color values through intuitive in-viewer scrubbing and region box selection tools. Meanwhile, Scopes provide access to detailed levels of color data—such as tone, hue, saturation, contrast and color balance—via a choice of histogram, waveform or vectorscope. *

#### Match Grade
~~Exclusive to Nuke Studio and NukeX, the Match Grade node automatically modifies the color histogram of an image to match a reference, making grading simple and fast. It can also match grades between completely different shots or match elements between source and target shots such as grass areas and face regions within shots.~~

#### Planar Tracker
~~Nuke Studio and NukeX’s Planar Tracker lets you track areas in your image sequence that lie on a plane, allowing for easy placement of new 2D elements on a flat surface and dramatically speeding up common compositing and cleanup tasks.~~

#### Kronos retiming
~~Exclusive to Nuke Studio and NukeX, Kronos offers high-quality GPU-accelerated retiming. Using motion vectors, Kronos produces superior results when speed-ramping or time-remapping, and adding slow-motion effects or realistic motion blur.~~

#### Advanced retiming and warping
~~The advanced retiming and warping toolsets in Nuke Studio and NukeX take the headache out of shot retiming, clean-up, replacement and augmentation tasks. Optical Flow-based Motion Blur generates high-quality GPU-accelerated motion vectors, enabling you to add realistic blur to clips based on the movement of objects within them. The Smart Vector toolset lets you add textures or paint to image sequences that contain complex motion or subtle detail, using automatically generated motion vectors to push or warp an input image sequence across a range of frames.~~

#### Vector Generators
~~Vector Generators, available in Nuke Studio and NukeX, produce high-quality, GPU-accelerated motion vector renders for use in other nodes. They can be used in optical flow retimes or for adding motion blur to your shots.~~

#### Lens Distortion
*The Lens Distortion tool integrates directly into Nuke's 2D image processing environment and supports advanced lens modeling and analysis to let you add, remove or adjust lens distortion in image sequences. Easily apply distortion from one image to another using STMaps.*

#### 360° Stitching and Camera Rig Solving
~~Cara VR’s GPU-accelerated Stitcher and GlobalWarp nodes let you create a high-quality 360° stitch for both mono and stereo output right in Nuke. Built on Ocula's disparity technology, Cara VR stitches seamlessly without line artifacts or ghosting, even on moving scenes, and easily exports STMAPs and UV maps.
Cara VR’s Camera Solver helps you easily solve and refine camera position, rotation, focal length and lens distortion parameters inside Nuke. With presets for popular camera rigs and custom rig support, Cara VR™ can handle footage from any 360° video shoot.~~

#### VR Corrections
~~The Cara VR toolset includes a suite of GPU-accelerated nodes for correcting and refining 360° video, from automatically tracking and stabilizing footage to easily using Nuke’s compositing tools on your VR material. ~~

### 3D compositing and visual effects

~~3D Camera Tracker
The integrated Camera Tracker in NukeX® and Nuke Studio replicates the motion of a 2D camera with an animated 3D camera or point cloud in Nuke's 3D space, allowing you to composite 2D/3D elements accurately with reference to the original camera used for the shot. Refinement options, advanced 3D feature preview and lens distortion handling improve efficiency and accuracy on the trickiest tracking tasks.

3D workspace
~~Nuke offers a limitless, integrated 3D environment that lets you create and render complex scenes composed of 2D footage, 3D models, cards, basic geometry, cameras, lights, and meshes. Great for camera projections for set replacements and other tasks where you need to simulate a "real" environment.~~

### Collaboration

#### User presets and node toolsets
*Nuke’s time-saving user presets enable you to set and save tailored node parameters for effects to use across multiple projects. Node toolsets let you automate your workflow by creating grouped configurations of nodes for specific tasks.*

### Performance and pipeline

#### Python API and PySide
*Available across the entire Nuke® family, the Python API can be used for full pipeline integration and automating common tasks and procedures. PySide is also included to allow users to build custom user interfaces via Python and the Qt frameworks.*

#### OpenColorIO color management
*With OpenColorIO (OCIO), the open-source color management solution from Sony Picture Imageworks, Nuke can setup a single profile to provide consistent colors across all compatible applications to simplifying the color management process.*

#### Blink Script
*The Blink Script node lets you write your own image processing operations inside Nuke. Create your own CPU or GPU-enabled effects for use in the nodegraph or Nuke Studio's timeline. An API allows C++ plug-in developers to harness Foundry's Blink technology, giving the ability to create faster and more complex effects.*

#### Blink GPU acceleration
*The Blink framework delivers GPU acceleration inside Nuke, speeding up interactive processing when using tools like Motion Blur, Kronos, Denoise, OFlow, and ZDefocus. If the GPU is unavailable, Nuke will simply revert back to the CPU.*

#### OpenColorIO color management
*With OpenColorIO (OCIO), the open-source color management solution from Sony Picture Imageworks, Nuke can setup a single profile to provide consistent colors across all compatible applications to simplifying the color management process.*

#### Asset management
*The entire Nuke range has the ability to connect to asset management software like ftrack, Shotgun or in-house systems, ensuring smoother collaboration and organization between artists in teams.*

#### In-context help
*Nuke’s intelligent in-context help system provides an easy-to-use interactive online HTML help that loads in your default browser directly in Nuke. Access a range of help documents and tutorials right in your existing session.*

#### Script performance metrics
*Cross-platform performance metrics in Nuke help you debug slow scripts and uncover any bottlenecks. Run Nuke from the command line to get the full performance profile for a render in XML format or use the Profile node in a script to capture performance data including CPU time, wall time, number of ops and memory usage.*

#### Customizable workspaces
*Set up your toolset in a way that works best for you with the six built-in workspaces in Nuke Studio, which cover compositing, editing, finishing, conforming, reviewing and timeline functions. Further customize your workspaces to suit your project.*

#### Background rendering
*Nuke offers background rendering of comps or sequences directly from the timeline, allowing you to continue working while renders are processed. Built-in Frame Server render farm functionality automatically uses all available resources to enhance speed and performance, either on a single machine or when connected to multiple machines running Nuke Render nodes.*

## from Fusion

### Visual Effects
*Hollywood’s top visual effects are made up of hundreds, sometimes even thousands of different 2D and 3D elements, blended together to create amazing, realistic looking scenes. Fusion features a fully 3D node based interface, can import 3D models and scenes from popular applications, and has hundreds of tools, effects and filters for creating convincing and lifelike visual effects!*

#### Compositing
The starting point for all visual effects is compositing, the layering of one image on top of another. Fusion makes it easy because there are only 2 basic tools you need to get started. The Merge tool lets you quickly composite two images together in 2D space, and the Merge 3D tool lets you quickly composite multiple images together in 3D space.

#### Node Based Workflow
Hollywood’s top artists prefer to work with nodes because they need precise control over every element. Each node is its own image processing operation. Nodes are connected together to create a node tree, which is like a flow chart. Unlike confusing stacks of layers, nodes make it faster and easier to create and edit complex scenes!

#### 3D Workspace
~~Fusion is a true 3D visual effects compositing and animation application that lets you create entire scenes in an infinite 3D workspace. You can create and render complex scenes that combine 2D footage with 3D models, geometric shapes, animated cameras, lights and more. You can even add volumetric effects like fog and mist!~~

#### Keying and Mattes
For seamless compositing you need to be able to remove blue, green or any other color backgrounds. Fusion features several keyers, including the all new delta keyer which uses advanced image science, along with a complete set of matte finesse controls, to give you the cleanest possible keys while preserving fine image detail.

#### Rotoscoping
Rotoscoping uses shapes to isolate actors or objects from other elements in a shot. Fusion’s bezier and B-spline tools let you quickly draw, track and animate custom shapes. Planar tracking data can be used on shapes so you don’t have to manually animate motion, perspective, position, scale or rotation as the image changes!

#### Tracking and Stabilization
To look realistic, objects have to move in perfect synchronization. Fusion can automatically track, match move and stabilize objects in your shots. You can even use the new improved planar tracker to replace signs or other flat objects as they move. There’s also an improved camera tracker that analyzes and matches the movement of the live action camera that was used to shoot the scene!

#### 3D Particles
~~Fusion’s 3D particle generator opens up an entire world of swirling, sparkling, fantastic effects! Use them to simulate realistic snow or rain, complete with physics like gravity, avoidance and bounce. Add behavioral forces to create a flock of birds or colony of ants! Particle systems work in 3D, which means they can swirl and surround other elements in your scene!~~

#### Vector Paint
~~Fusion’s resolution independent paint tools feature flexible brush styles, blend modes and stroke shapes that can be modified at any time! Use the paint tool to quickly remove wires, rigs or other unwanted elements. Simply clone one area to another, smear an image with a brush stroke, or even paint entirely new elements!~~

#### Color
Fusion’s 32-bit floating point color pipeline, integrated Open Color I/O and extensive tool set for processing true linear, converting between color space and display monitoring, along with Analyzation scopes makes the precise work of VFX color processing easy!

#### Virtual Set Extensions
~~Today’s movies often contain small live action sets that look massive, thanks to computer generated extensions! Fusion can import and render 3D models and scenes from popular software like Maya, so you can composite, light and render in one step. In addition, projection tools can be used to quickly render scenes, without having to use complex 3D geometry!~~

### Broadcast Design and Motion Titles

*Motion graphics artists and broadcast designers use Fusion to create everything from animated broadcast promotions and station idents, to incredible title sequences and animations for feature films, episodic television shows, and even commercials! With Fusion, you’re not limited to working with 2D elements, you can import 3D objects and scenes from other applications, or build your own from scratch! Fusion lets you composite elements in a true 3D workspace and then apply hundreds of built in effects, 3D particles and more!*

#### 2D and 3D Titles
Create amazing animated titles with 2D and 3D text tools! You get traditional text formatting controls along with 3D extrusion, the ability to add reflections, bump maps, shadows and more. Use the follower tool to animate individual characters so they fly on and off, ripple glow effects through each letter, or more. The possibilities are endless!

#### Add 3D Logos
~~Commercials and main title sequences often need animated logos. You can import render 3D logos from Cinema 4D, 3ds Max or Maya, or import 2D vector files from Illustrator and other applications. Fusion’s full animation toolset can be used, along with materials, shaders, depth of field, bends, warps, tapers, twists and more!~~

#### Spline Based Animation
*Fusion’s curve editor uses splines for creating smooth motion between keyframes. They can be interpolated as linear, bezier or as b‑splines. This lets you apply custom curves to loop, reverse, or ping pong between keyframes to create sophisticated animations. You can also move, stretch and squish groups of keyframes to create incredible variations!*

#### Replicate Objects
The replicate tool automatically creates rows of repeated objects that can fill any pattern. You can create complex and sophisticated looking animations by simply offsetting parameters on replicated objects! There are also randomize controls for adding subtle variations to create organic looking animations that would be impossible on another system!

#### 3D Particles with Physics
~~Build fantastic particle effects that glow, swirl and sparkle using physics like avoidance, gravity and bounce! Each behavior influences and alters the particles in natural ways. Particles can use 3D geometry, change color over their duration or even emit other particles! Best of all they can swirl, surround and bounce off of other elements in your scene!
~~

#### Vector Paint

Fusion’s vector paint tool can be used to create animated flourishes, glowing streaks that fly through a scene or entirely new images from scratch! There are thousands of combinations for color, texture, and style. Plus, strokes can be made into editable splines that can be animated over time! You can even use a pressure sensitive tablet to control opacity and size of a stroke as you paint!

#### Import Photoshop Files with Layers
Fusion can import and animate an entire photoshop image, a single layer, or all layers individually! Each layer automatically becomes a node, making it easy to get started. Blend modes are preserved and the individual layers can be manipulated with any of Fusion’s tools! Fusion finally gives Photoshop users a way to animate graphics in 3D!

#### Expressions and Macros
*You can link parameters together and add advanced expressions that control the relationship between them with a single slider! These expressions give you an extremely powerful way to control multiple parameters at the same time. Plus, the built in macro feature lets you create and share tools that display only the controls you want!*

#### Third Party Open FX plug‑ins
Fusion Studio has Open FX plugin support and its own native SDK for extended 2D and 3D plugins. Popular plugins from GenArts, RE:Vision Effects, Frischluft and Boris FX are all supported. Native plugins from Flow effects, Karta VR and Krokodove extend motion graphics and 3D beyond other applications.

#### Automate Broadcast Graphics
With Fusion, you can write scripts to automate repetitive graphics! You can even update them live and in realtime! For example, you can use a Python or Lua script, along with a simple text document, to automatically create and render updated broadcast graphics, titles and animations with things such as the weather, sport scores, program listings, news headlines and more! Now you can quickly render out up to the minute graphics and get them on air in seconds!