Vfx made with natron

[Francesco Paglia]

hi guys
I just want to share with you  my latest Vfx job made with Natron.

The project is made of 5 Sequence for a total amount of 24 shots here the link to the final output:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REd7BeVPjzs

We did it in 12 days and I seriously stressed Natron capabilities putting lot of effort to see where Natron limits are.

The project itself wasn't that complex in terms of how many inputs were put in a shot but each layer got a good amount of transformation in terms of keying, displacing, channel reordering, grading and so on .

Since new Linux builds are not available starting from the 4th of November I couldn't benefit of the latest updates.

However here my impressions:

Bugs I found:
When a input get a bit of modifications through let say 10/20 nodes playback becomes a pain. If you hit play Natron simply lock himself and become useless I had to render out sequences of file to see the result. Maybe cache have to be managed a bit more efficiently, a tree with 100 nodes is not playable while render works smoothly.

Double click on a roto node should start with "add a new shape" only if there are no other shapes in the scene.If there is already one the action proposed must be the selector - I can't say how many shapes made of a single point I had to delete because of this. It's a very irritating behaviour! :)

With a shape selected made of cuspid point when hitting Z the handle get a strange (too wide) length and have to be rearranged by hand loosing lot of time. The length of the handle should be coherent with the shape flow.

Parameter of a shape are not saved in that shape itself but only in the first roto node added (known issue - just a reminder)

Keyframes  in the timeline aren't always showed correctly... Some time I get displayed key from nodes not selected and not all the keyframes of a parameter are displayed (happen mostly  with roto node with 2+ animated rotoshapes).

Moving a bunch of key frame in the curve editor result in a not correct key frame shift... Let me explain better:
Add a grade node,
Animate a parameter like multiply at least set 3 key frame
In the curve editor select those keys and move all of them to the right
The result is not all the key offset as expected eventaully blu or red channel moves some keyframe less than neded.

Adding in the same node sequence an erode a dilate and again an erode node results in arbitrary crash in render out time but starting over and over (10+ time in a sequence of 80 frms)  I could render the entire sequence 

I got tons of crash I couldn't predict. core dump mainly. It happened from time to time and in a way I couldn't easily debug... Sorry hadn't enough time to go in deep  properly as soon as I get time I'll try to find them out.

BlurCimg reset his status when copy pasting it. To reproduce:
Add a blurCimg node,
Set channel to operate on RGBA
copy the node
paste the node
the pasted BlurCimg is set to RGB (alpha becomes skipped)

Color Correct reset occasionally his status when a project is closed and reopend  - it happen if there are more than two node of the same type in the tree

Overlay of the Transform node remain present in the viewer even if there are no one added in the parameter tab, to clean up the viewer I had to close and reopen the project

General consideration:

Would be very useful to change rotoshape color to get nice contrast while editing different type of image (try to roto a red flame with a red colored shape... isn't that easy)

Dilate / Erode should be improved in terms of quality of the output it returns very big squares even at step 1 and consider to set automatically "alpha" as selected as soon as the node get added (the action normally is used to shrink mattes)

A keychew node like the shake's one would be the most awesome tool ever to add in the group of matte editor nodes Fast, Smooth, Nice, Powerfull as no other are.. I missed it very much! 

Here a link I found online that show a bit what I'm  talking about: http://www.manualslib.com/manual/233850/Apple-Ma434z-A-Shake.html?page=994

Keyer in luma mode - the low part of the filter doesn't work ... simply doesn't change anything... Am I missing something here?

Animation editor - Curve extrapolation would be very useful things like loop, incremental loop, ping pong, extend would be really appreciated 

I really miss a vector blur node... nothing to add more here :)

Multilayer open EXR are simply unusable, they load way too slow... I had to strip out the layers in blender prior to read them as separate sequences.

Last thought for Alex and probably the most important to me:

I perfectly understand that the Tuttle suite isn't under your control and you can't be responsible for the bug they have but in my opinion you should also consider that a compositor software with a little set of node isn't simply usable in production, in my case, if the TuttlePushPixel wasn't in Natron I simply couldn't use it in this production and couldn't make such a rich report.

In a scarcity of resources like any open project lives getting benefits from other project is a huge saver, and  the tuttle library is a great resource and a big enabler for natron.

You always have time to implement better and more efficient node by yourself and deprecate other node in the future but while you're working on other things that are real priority for stability / efficiency I would recommend to keep  under your interest the node from Tuttle library that are not already rocking solidly in Natron.

Said that I really enjoyed the chance to make my first VFX work with a Pipeline completely Open Source !!

Keep up the good work!

Francesco

[Stephane Ribas]

Very very nice!!!!!!!

we are in a conference all the week, I will publish the link on our web soon :-)

Stephane Ribas
INRIA / D2T / BoostYourCode
fOSSa / Poppy Project / Natron compositing
+33 4 76 61 55 98 / +33 6 37 54 32 75
!follow me on twitter and linkedin!

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[Francesco Paglia]

Hi Stephane,

please do not publish anything publicly on the website until I get allowed to do it,

I posted it on the forum simply because it is just for a limited number of users :)

however if you like some image in particular I could make some screen shot that are no reference with the original context :)

Thanks

Francesco

--

Francesco Paglia

Vfx and Production Supervisor

mobile  +39 347.82.12.473

e-mail   f.pag...@gmail.com

[Stephane Ribas]

opps sorry!

no prob :-)

[Alexandre]

hey Francesco;)

Nice work!

Bugs I found:
When a input get a bit of modifications through let say 10/20 nodes playback becomes a pain. If you hit play Natron simply lock himself and become useless I had to render out sequences of file to see the result. Maybe cache have to be managed a bit more efficiently, a tree with 100 nodes is not playable while render works smoothly.

I might need a project sample in order to reproduce, have you tried setting the “Number of parallel renders” in the preferences to 1 ?

Most probably this is because you have so many nodes that all images of all nodes for rendering a single frame do not fit in RAM. I’ll double-check that the Cache is not removing images that are currently used for the computation of a frame

Double click on a roto node should start with "add a new shape" only if there are no other shapes in the scene.If there is already one the action proposed must be the selector - I can't say how many shapes made of a single point I had to delete because of this. It's a very irritating behaviour! :)

Everytime I do the same mistake I’m like “ok I fix it right now!” and then I forget… 

With a shape selected made of cuspid point when hitting Z the handle get a strange (too wide) length and have to be rearranged by hand loosing lot of time. The length of the handle should be coherent with the shape flow.

I see it could need a bit polishing. I think we’ll do that when we’ll add root-paint functionalities 

Parameter of a shape are not saved in that shape itself but only in the first roto node added (known issue - just a reminder)

This is probably already fixed, let me know (when snapshots are back online) if this is not

Keyframes  in the timeline aren't always showed correctly... Some time I get displayed key from nodes not selected and not all the keyframes of a parameter are displayed (happen mostly  with roto node with 2+ animated rotoshapes).

Parameters of roto-shapes do not display their keyframe on the timeline (it is really messy to implement), but the animation of the shape do

Moving a bunch of key frame in the curve editor result in a not correct key frame shift... Let me explain better:
Add a grade node,
Animate a parameter like multiply at least set 3 key frame
In the curve editor select those keys and move all of them to the right
The result is not all the key offset as expected eventaully blu or red channel moves some keyframe less than neded.

I think I fixed this a week ago

Adding in the same node sequence an erode a dilate and again an erode node results in arbitrary crash in render out time but starting over and over (10+ time in a sequence of 80 frms)  I could render the entire sequence 

We fixed a few bugs in all the CImg based plug-ins recently 

I got tons of crash I couldn't predict. core dump mainly. It happened from time to time and in a way I couldn't easily debug... Sorry hadn't enough time to go in deep  properly as soon as I get time I'll try to find them out.

BlurCimg reset his status when copy pasting it. To reproduce:
Add a blurCimg node,
Set channel to operate on RGBA
copy the node
paste the node
the pasted BlurCimg is set to RGB (alpha becomes skipped)

Color Correct reset occasionally his status when a project is closed and reopend  - it happen if there are more than two node of the same type in the tree

These are the same bug which has been fixed a week ago

Overlay of the Transform node remain present in the viewer even if there are no one added in the parameter tab, to clean up the viewer I had to close and reopen the project

Already fixed

General consideration:

Would be very useful to change rotoshape color to get nice contrast while editing different type of image (try to roto a red flame with a red colored shape... isn't that easy)

Can’t you just set the color of the shape  in the parameters ?

Dilate / Erode should be improved in terms of quality of the output it returns very big squares even at step 1 and consider to set automatically "alpha" as selected as soon as the node get added (the action normally is used to shrink mattes)

ok

A keychew node like the shake's one would be the most awesome tool ever to add in the group of matte editor nodes Fast, Smooth, Nice, Powerfull as no other are.. I missed it very much! 

Here a link I found online that show a bit what I'm  talking about: http://www.manualslib.com/manual/233850/Apple-Ma434z-A-Shake.html?page=994

Keyer in luma mode - the low part of the filter doesn't work ... simply doesn't change anything... Am I missing something here?

I’ll report to Frederic

Animation editor - Curve extrapolation would be very useful things like loop, incremental loop, ping pong, extend would be really appreciated 

It’s in the feature requests;))

I really miss a vector blur node... nothing to add more here :)

We’re going to implement VectorGenerator very soon so a motion blur node is not so far away

Multilayer open EXR are simply unusable, they load way too slow... I had to strip out the layers in blender prior to read them as separate sequences.

Can you send me a sample that is “way too slow” please ? 

Last thought for Alex and probably the most important to me:

I perfectly understand that the Tuttle suite isn't under your control and you can't be responsible for the bug they have but in my opinion you should also consider that a compositor software with a little set of node isn't simply usable in production, in my case, if the TuttlePushPixel wasn't in Natron I simply couldn't use it in this production and couldn't make such a rich report.

In a scarcity of resources like any open project lives getting benefits from other project is a huge saver, and  the tuttle library is a great resource and a big enabler for natron.

You always have time to implement better and more efficient node by yourself and deprecate other node in the future but while you're working on other things that are real priority for stability / efficiency I would recommend to keep  under your interest the node from Tuttle library that are not already rocking solidly in Natron.

We also contribute to TuttleOFX as we can;) It is not always easy to maintain so many different things altogether : the stability of the product in the end depends on a lot of things, mainly spending time on the code. If we spend more time on TuttleOFX nodes, then we will spend less time on the rest… we try our best to provide something that should be stable

Said that I really enjoyed the chance to make my first VFX work with a Pipeline completely Open Source !!

Keep up the good work!

Francesco

[Francesco Paglia]

Hi Alex!

Thanks :)

2014-11-18 12:40 GMT+01:00 Alexandre <immar...@gmail.com>:

hey Francesco;)

Nice work!

Bugs I found:
When a input get a bit of modifications through let say 10/20 nodes playback becomes a pain. If you hit play Natron simply lock himself and become useless I had to render out sequences of file to see the result. Maybe cache have to be managed a bit more efficiently, a tree with 100 nodes is not playable while render works smoothly.

I might need a project sample in order to reproduce, have you tried setting the “Number of parallel renders” in the preferences to 1 ?

Most probably this is because you have so many nodes that all images of all nodes for rendering a single frame do not fit in RAM. I’ll double-check that the Cache is not removing images that are currently used for the computation of a frame

Tonight I'll send you some project (I'm out of home for the full day) to test it with the needed footage, will try your suggestion.

 

Double click on a roto node should start with "add a new shape" only if there are no other shapes in the scene.If there is already one the action proposed must be the selector - I can't say how many shapes made of a single point I had to delete because of this. It's a very irritating behaviour! :)

Everytime I do the same mistake I’m like “ok I fix it right now!” and then I forget… 

I could send an e-mail each our until you wont fix it if you like!  :P 

With a shape selected made of cuspid point when hitting Z the handle get a strange (too wide) length and have to be rearranged by hand loosing lot of time. The length of the handle should be coherent with the shape flow.

I see it could need a bit polishing. I think we’ll do that when we’ll add root-paint functionalities 

OK thanks 

Parameter of a shape are not saved in that shape itself but only in the first roto node added (known issue - just a reminder)

This is probably already fixed, let me know (when snapshots are back online) if this is not

I'll check as soon as you set up the new snapshot machine 

Keyframes  in the timeline aren't always showed correctly... Some time I get displayed key from nodes not selected and not all the keyframes of a parameter are displayed (happen mostly  with roto node with 2+ animated rotoshapes).

Parameters of roto-shapes do not display their keyframe on the timeline (it is really messy to implement), but the animation of the shape do

Oh well I think is quite important to see at which keyframe I'm fading in/out a matte.. Of course I can live without but it could be useful

 

Moving a bunch of key frame in the curve editor result in a not correct key frame shift... Let me explain better:
Add a grade node,
Animate a parameter like multiply at least set 3 key frame
In the curve editor select those keys and move all of them to the right
The result is not all the key offset as expected eventaully blu or red channel moves some keyframe less than neded.

I think I fixed this a week ago

Adding in the same node sequence an erode a dilate and again an erode node results in arbitrary crash in render out time but starting over and over (10+ time in a sequence of 80 frms)  I could render the entire sequence 

We fixed a few bugs in all the CImg based plug-ins recently 

I got tons of crash I couldn't predict. core dump mainly. It happened from time to time and in a way I couldn't easily debug... Sorry hadn't enough time to go in deep  properly as soon as I get time I'll try to find them out.

BlurCimg reset his status when copy pasting it. To reproduce:
Add a blurCimg node,
Set channel to operate on RGBA
copy the node
paste the node
the pasted BlurCimg is set to RGB (alpha becomes skipped)

Color Correct reset occasionally his status when a project is closed and reopend  - it happen if there are more than two node of the same type in the tree

These are the same bug which has been fixed a week ago

Overlay of the Transform node remain present in the viewer even if there are no one added in the parameter tab, to clean up the viewer I had to close and reopen the project

Already fixed

Great 

I'll check it 

 

General consideration:

Would be very useful to change rotoshape color to get nice contrast while editing different type of image (try to roto a red flame with a red colored shape... isn't that easy)

Can’t you just set the color of the shape  in the parameters ?

Dilate / Erode should be improved in terms of quality of the output it returns very big squares even at step 1 and consider to set automatically "alpha" as selected as soon as the node get added (the action normally is used to shrink mattes)

ok

A keychew node like the shake's one would be the most awesome tool ever to add in the group of matte editor nodes Fast, Smooth, Nice, Powerfull as no other are.. I missed it very much! 

Here a link I found online that show a bit what I'm  talking about: http://www.manualslib.com/manual/233850/Apple-Ma434z-A-Shake.html?page=994

Keyer in luma mode - the low part of the filter doesn't work ... simply doesn't change anything... Am I missing something here?

I’ll report to Frederic

Great thanks! 

Animation editor - Curve extrapolation would be very useful things like loop, incremental loop, ping pong, extend would be really appreciated 

It’s in the feature requests;))

I really miss a vector blur node... nothing to add more here :)

We’re going to implement VectorGenerator very soon so a motion blur node is not so far away

AHHH that's awesome!  

Multilayer open EXR are simply unusable, they load way too slow... I had to strip out the layers in blender prior to read them as separate sequences.

Can you send me a sample that is “way too slow” please ? 

Sure again I'll send it later tonight 

Last thought for Alex and probably the most important to me:

I perfectly understand that the Tuttle suite isn't under your control and you can't be responsible for the bug they have but in my opinion you should also consider that a compositor software with a little set of node isn't simply usable in production, in my case, if the TuttlePushPixel wasn't in Natron I simply couldn't use it in this production and couldn't make such a rich report.

In a scarcity of resources like any open project lives getting benefits from other project is a huge saver, and  the tuttle library is a great resource and a big enabler for natron.

You always have time to implement better and more efficient node by yourself and deprecate other node in the future but while you're working on other things that are real priority for stability / efficiency I would recommend to keep  under your interest the node from Tuttle library that are not already rocking solidly in Natron.

We also contribute to TuttleOFX as we can;) It is not always easy to maintain so many different things altogether : the stability of the product in the end depends on a lot of things, mainly spending time on the code. If we spend more time on TuttleOFX nodes, then we will spend less time on the rest… we try our best to provide something that should be stable

That sounds really good, I wrote my previous words because I read a couple of time sentence that made me thing the other  way around, so I'm really happy to hear you will take care of Tuttle plug in stability in natron!

Ciao

Francesco

[Alexandre]

I finally made the fix;)

Btw snapshots are almost back online, just need to fix a few things.
I also re-packed the binary of RC3 Natron on Linux, they should allow for more compatibility with all distributions

[polygo...@googlemail.com]

Hi MrKepzie,

I'm new to Natron but have been doing VFX for about 18 years. I'm currently starting a new App&VFX company and am interested in Natron as a compositing solution and alternative to Nuke, you mention here about the Vector Generator (end of 2014) I currently have the same issue as Francesco, I need to do a vector motion blur in Natron using a vector render pass out of Arnold and can't find that functionality. I found the Vector to Color but I'm guessing that's the wrong tool? Is the functional already within Natron or coming in the next months? If so could you quickly describe how to hook that up.

Thanks for any help and for the great software!
Pete
PolygonPete.com

[Frédéric Devernay]

Hi Pete,

You already have STMap, which does backward warping, but as for forward warping we are working on a full solution, which will make it either into 2.1 (scheduled for end May) or 2.2 (end July). By a full solution, I mean retiming/motion blur/ image warping/view interpolation.

Fred

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