Feedback after my first production on natron

[Francesco Paglia]

Hi guys,

finally I got a bit of time to write back about some issues I found in Natron  that still do not work properly.

• In a roto node you can animate the opacity of each shape but the keys aren't displayed correctly in the curve editor. Try the following:
  

1. start an empty project
2. add a roto node
3. add a shape
4. animate its opacity
5. add another shape
6. again animate the shape opacity, 
7. you'll see in the curve editor just Roto1>Opacity not a proper solution like Roto1>shape1>opacity, Roto1>shape2>opacity and so on

This makes very difficult to add many shapes and fade them in with different time offset

Today's release has a curve editor seriously improved compared to just 3 days ago, so I wont report the errors I found previously (thanks for this)

• Making a selection of some keypoint of a rotoshape there's no way to add more point to that selection. A SHIFT+drag click could be a great way to do this addition as well as a CTRL+drag click (or ALT if you prefer) can be useful to remove keypoint in that selection
  
• Furthermore If you have many shape overlapping there is no way to "filter" the selection of the keypoint of an specific shape, in nuke there's a great way to do it that is you firstly "active" a shape clicking on it then you can only select the keypoint of that shape, if no shape is active then you can select the keypoint of all the shape (as it works now in natron) 
• Even if it's not his place but can we get a representation of the keyframe of a rotoshape in the curve editor (just as it was a dopesheet) so at least we are able to shift and scale keyframes? (I know this isn't the place to do it but until we do not get a dopesheet editor we do not have way to even make a simple shift of few frames)
•  I still don't know how to use a 2 point tracker to rotate and scale an image (is it possible actually or not? What am I missing); however since there's no concatenation through similar nodes it's impossible to have huge transformation (in terms of scale especially) using  two nodes 
• Could the grade node affect also the alpha channel (if selected of course) so that we can make easily fade in fade out (actually we have to use a dissolve node + a constant node with color and alpha to 0) - this is just a small thing that can reduce the node usage nothing more of course
• Now the paste node system works nicely but i still strongly recommend to have the pasted nodes retained in a selection (until a deselect/or another selection is made) so that we can move all the nodes at once to relocate them in a quick way as soon as they are created
• I can't see the newest node you made for the rc 2 in natron under linux (CImg library) I usually make update via the maintenace tool, do I have to make a fresh installation under linux to get them?

I'm about to start a VFX work (with fluids, flames and lot of smoke) and a displace node would be very useful. Is there a node  in actual natron bundle that do so (I couldn't find anything suitable)? If not do you plan to add it in the near future or not?

If you want I can convert this post to a series of issue on git.

Later,

Francesco

[Alexandre]

Hey,

• 
  In a roto node you can animate the opacity of each shape but the keys aren't displayed correctly in the curve editor. Try the following:
  

1. start an empty project
2. add a roto node
3. add a shape
4. animate its opacity
5. add another shape
6. again animate the shape opacity, 
7. you'll see in the curve editor just Roto1>Opacity not a proper solution like Roto1>shape1>opacity, Roto1>shape2>opacity and so on

This makes very difficult to add many shapes and fade them in with different time offset

Today's release has a curve editor seriously improved compared to just 3 days ago, so I wont report the errors I found previously (thanks for this)

This is clearly something that has not even been implemented. We could implement this as well as bezier animation edition but requires some time to do it .

• Making a selection of some keypoint of a rotoshape there's no way to add more point to that selection. A SHIFT+drag click could be a great way to do this addition as well as a CTRL+drag click (or ALT if you prefer) can be useful to remove keypoint in that selection
  

Sure I will add it

• Furthermore If you have many shape overlapping there is no way to "filter" the selection of the keypoint of an specific shape, in nuke there's a great way to do it that is you firstly "active" a shape clicking on it then you can only select the keypoint of that shape, if no shape is active then you can select the keypoint of all the shape (as it works now in natron) 

Consider it done, it’s one line of code.

• Even if it's not his place but can we get a representation of the keyframe of a rotoshape in the curve editor (just as it was a dopesheet) so at least we are able to shift and scale keyframes? (I know this isn't the place to do it but until we do not get a dopesheet editor we do not have way to even make a simple shift of few frames)

See 1st answer

•  I still don't know how to use a 2 point tracker to rotate and scale an image (is it possible actually or not? What am I missing); however since there's no concatenation through similar nodes it's impossible to have huge transformation (in terms of scale especially) using  two nodes 

Could you describe what exactly you want to achieve, maybe with a video where you achieve it on another software ?

• Could the grade node affect also the alpha channel (if selected of course) so that we can make easily fade in fade out (actually we have to use a dissolve node + a constant node with color and alpha to 0) - this is just a small thing that can reduce the node usage nothing more of course

ok

• Now the paste node system works nicely but i still strongly recommend to have the pasted nodes retained in a selection (until a deselect/or another selection is made) so that we can move all the nodes at once to relocate them in a quick way as soon as they are created

will add it

• I can't see the newest node you made for the rc 2 in natron under linux (CImg library) I usually make update via the maintenace tool, do I have to make a fresh installation under linux to get them?

Ole Andre seems away since a few weeks and he’s the one maintaining the linux installer. It wasn’t updated since we added the new plug-ins. 

I'm about to start a VFX work (with fluids, flames and lot of smoke) and a displace node would be very useful. Is there a node  in actual natron bundle that do so (I couldn't find anything suitable)? If not do you plan to add it in the near future or not?

I have no ETA on this;) May the community contribute work!

If you want I can convert this post to a series of issue on git.

Later,

Francesco

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Natron" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to Natron-VFX+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to Natro...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Natron-VFX.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Natron-VFX/58ba4b85-f4e9-45bd-b30f-3f0808917c0b%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Francesco Paglia]

Hey Alex thank you for your reply, 

I'm doing the break down of the mentioned VFX but as soon as I have few our I'll make a test video for the 2 point tracking.

Hope Ole will come back soon!

later!

Francesco

--

Francesco Paglia

Vfx and Production Supervisor

mobile  +39 347.82.12.473

e-mail   f.pag...@gmail.com

[soz...@gmail.com]

It's still possible to compile the openFX plugins yourself, I've tried it at home and it worked without issues...
I'm not a coder by the way :)

try to follow install instructions at the bottom of that page :
https://github.com/devernay/openfx-misc

[Francesco Paglia]

Hi sozap, 

thank you for your suggestion, I'm quite busy atm but if i found the time I'll certainly try to do it!

Ciao
Francesco

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Natron" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to Natron-VFX+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to Natro...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Natron-VFX.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Natron-VFX/555b2ac1-6e8d-4e39-9ebd-95e7e48aafec%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Paul Szajner]

yeah, it shouldn't take that long, if you're in a hurry it's a matter of one hour if you're unlucky :)

and after it's done once it's easy to upgrade...

I've attached my binaries, I don"t know what are the chances that they work on your computer , but we can always try...

My specs are :

intel processor,
os : linux mint debian edition,

and for the displace plugin that you were talking earlier, have you tried the tuttle pushpixel plugin ?

It seems to be what you're looking for, tho I haven't tested it yet. That can do the job while a special dedicated plugin for Natron is made, it's a generic filter you always need, so it would be nice to have one tailored for Natron directly ...

Talking about that , is there a wishlist somewhere to discuss about new nodes to be added ? that can maybe inspire some coders to try to make some ?

Then we can maybe try to make a crowdfunding or a GSOC to speedup the development...
With the new additions of the RC2 we are getting very close to have all the everyday filters needed , and we can always start to workaround the missing ones with them...

But there is still some work on the basics filter to use natron effectively, from now on, blender has much of the nodes needed, but is still slow and cannot play in realtime. Natron tackles it very well but still lacks some important nodes...

I hope this projects will get interest from other developers , has it's getting more and more usable !

--

Paul Szajner
Infographiste 2D/3D
showreel : http://www.vimeo.com/11540026
mobile    : 06 27 16 26 89

[Francesco Paglia]

Thank you so much Paul I've added your plug ins and work like a charm!

Let me say that BlurCI have a strange behavior the blur doesn't go over the input boundaries (I think the problem lies in the node itself)

May Alex look into this?

Here a quick preview:

About the TuttlePushPixel I tried to use it but got this error in the consolle:

francesco@define-R4:~/bin$ natron 

__________

Error: No message.

__________

It result in a black frame as soon as I add a mask (that I imagine is the name of the secondary input for the displace)

can someone look into this?

If it will get fixed in few days I'll be very appy to start my first VFX work on natron!! 

it's quite important to have such displace to reproduce the effect of the heat and with so many flame to add I do need it :)

A plugin wishlist  would be awesome and count me in for the donation campaign, Natron is seriously getting production ready and would be awesome to completelly throw away other solutions!

By my side most wanted feature are: 

2D tracking rocking solidly 

warp and morph (with guiding shape)

displace 

concatenation of coherent node.

expressions (shake / nuke style would be awesome)

Thanks for your help and suggestions,

Francesco

[Alexandre]

Hey,

The Blur is working fine, you want to play with the 2 different boundaries conditions. 

The bbox is not growing by design, rather you should crop your input.

Regarding a whishlist, you should enter in contact with stephan...@inria.fr , I’m sure he’d be pleased to post that on the website

On 4 Nov 2014, at 11:56, Francesco Paglia <f.pag...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you so much Paul I've added your plug ins and work like a charm!

Let me say that BlurCI have a strange behavior the blur doesn't go over the input boundaries (I think the problem lies in the node itself)

May Alex look into this?

Here a quick preview:

<boxblur.jpg>

[soz...@gmail.com]

for the displace I found the trick, the plug take only the alpha as the displace map...
try to put a shuffle node before the mask input, and set the alpha channel to red for instance...

It work really nice for me :)

[Francesco Paglia]

@Alex,

I don't just get how it is intended to work.

I'm not saying it isn't right I'm just trying to understand.

How can I get that nice and normally expected blur that goes outside of the original boundaries?

both boundary conditions do not affect alpha nor resize the image...

Here a picture that compare the new blurCImg and the tuttleblur.

@sozap: thank you for your sugestion! The pixel shift is very nice and also very fast!

In fact I found another important issue: it doesn't work if you add as input source an image "RGB" only it must have also alpha otherwise the plug in return an error and the image becomes black.

Also using simple roto shape without putting it over a Constant node of the same dimension of the source node return errors on the edge of the roto domain.

If the mask with "properly dimensioned background - like a roto could be" is set and the readIO image has no alpha Natron crash.

In the image the yellow arrows show the error and the part of the script involved to render it and the red one the properly rendered thanks to the constant used as background to set the proper image size

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Natron" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to Natron-VFX+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to Natro...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Natron-VFX.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Natron-VFX/29adb929-f318-4d15-90c3-5557714f28fb%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[soz...@gmail.com]

Yeah, it's good to know that :)
Tuttle OFX is made with the in-house philosophy, so you must be in the "house" to know well how it works...
it's a bit sad because you can test it and think it doesn't work; but for now with a bit of workarounds and good information it seems great.

@Alex, I'll contact stephane, since I'm french it will be easy to talk with, and we'll see if we can work something out , at least it can separate plugins request from purely natron related tasks.

[Alexandre]

Francesco, 

Do you mean that you’d like to have a feather effect ?

If so, you should use the copy rectangle node, this is kind of a convenience that they added in the TuttleBlur (and  in the Nuke Blur node) to apply feather.

What we will do is add a “AdjustBbox” plug-in so you can grow your image before bluring, which should apply the feather desired.

BTW, I added support for bezier animation in the curve editor, could you test it and give me feedback on it ? I made tons of changes to support this and potentially have broken other things.

On 4 Nov 2014, at 20:00, Francesco Paglia <f.pag...@gmail.com> wrote:

@Alex,

I don't just get how it is intended to work.

I'm not saying it isn't right I'm just trying to understand.

How can I get that nice and normally expected blur that goes outside of the original boundaries?

both boundary conditions do not affect alpha nor resize the image...

Here a picture that compare the new blurCImg and the tuttleblur.

<blur.jpg>

@sozap: thank you for your sugestion! The pixel shift is very nice and also very fast!

In fact I found another important issue: it doesn't work if you add as input source an image "RGB" only it must have also alpha otherwise the plug in return an error and the image becomes black.

Also using simple roto shape without putting it over a Constant node of the same dimension of the source node return errors on the edge of the roto domain.

If the mask with "properly dimensioned background - like a roto could be" is set and the readIO image has no alpha Natron crash.

In the image the yellow arrows show the error and the part of the script involved to render it and the red one the properly rendered thanks to the constant used as background to set the proper image size

<displace.jpg>

[Francesco Paglia]

Hey!

2014-11-05 11:44 GMT+01:00 Alexandre <immar...@gmail.com>:

Francesco, 

Do you mean that you’d like to have a feather effect ?

If so, you should use the copy rectangle node, this is kind of a convenience that they added in the TuttleBlur (and  in the Nuke Blur node) to apply feather.

I did it!

The scope of the copy rectangle is to expand the area of the blur to the whole frame that is a possible workaround but it seems it expand a lot the area involved in the process slowing down the render considerably compared to tuttlenode 

 

What we will do is add a “AdjustBbox” plug-in so you can grow your image before bluring, which should apply the feather desired.

That's great.

 

BTW, I added support for bezier animation in the curve editor, could you test it and give me feedback on it ? I made tons of changes to support this and potentially have broken other things.

Just for your information I've just downloaded (via the maintenance tool) natron, in the interpolation panel do I have to find "bezier curve" or is it named in some other way?

Bezier should enable the edit of the curve changing the lenght of the handles right?

If so I can't see them.

here the hash of the downloaded version:

09e31f8d7d7fe41d01b97f88938dda4bdac5aeb3

The maintenance tool updated misc ofx and natron itself 

[Alexandre]

When you create a Roto node, it will appear in the tree on the left hand side of the curve editor. For each new bezier created, a new entry in the tree will appear.

The “animation” entry curve is used to control the keyframes of the “whole” shape. 

We thought about adding ways to control each animation of each point but it was too messy and not very intuitive (in the addition to being very slow and cumbersome). So now what you can do is just move the keyframes along the X axis to adjust the speed of the motion;)

You can also animate “per bezier" parameters animation such as feather, opacity and so on

[Francesco Paglia]

ahh that's great!

Let me test it right now!

I didn't get it in the previous mail, that's a very nice addition!

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Natron-VFX/4E2239FE-2554-4088-953E-85B06CBE2242%40gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Francesco Paglia]

Ok just tested and the keyframes of the animation are simply awesome! 

The strange thing I noticed is about all the animatable option present in the controls panel

Step to reproduce:

1. add a roto node 
   
2. add a bezier (let's call it bez01)
3. add a second roto node
4. add a bezier of this second roto node (bez02)
5. add a key to the opacity of bez02

it will add the opacity key on the first rotonode to bez01 instead of bez02.

the key are suddenly displayed in the curveEditor.

You can try animating which parameter you like in the property panel the result is that keys are reported to the first roto node

 

[Alexandre]

Ok I fixed it, tell me if you encounter any other bug

[Francesco Paglia]

Hey Alex I found this bug.

If you add two roto node and the first one do not contain any bezier the key in the properties panel are set to the right curve as expected but if there is a bezier in the first and second node then the key are still applied to the first roto node.

 

I also tried this to change bezier name to verify if it's a name problem but it still happen

Step to reproduce:

1. add a roto node
2. add a bezier and rename it "renamedBezier"

1. add a second roto node
2. add a bezier

1. set a key in the opacity property of the  Roto2.bezier1 

the key are set to the Roto1.renamedBezier

here the natron hash: 2002da47e449c706f74d15fd38d554bc712b4512

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Natron-VFX/43075DBB-281B-42E6-A242-8E4E7AB0F2CC%40gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Alexandre]

I fixed that bug in the train today, I will commit it you should have the fix by tomorrow

Alexandre Gauthier-Foichat,

Natron Project:  https://natron.inria.fr 

INRIA

655 av. de l’Europe, 

38330 Montbonnot St-Ismier ,

FRANCE

[Francesco Paglia]

OK, 

let me know once is fixed I'll test it asap 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Natron-VFX/07059720-0E67-496A-8460-710C538E2C7A%40gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Alexandre]

it’s pushed, now you just need to let the snapshots server crunch the code and serve it to you on a sliver tray!

good night