We thought exactly the same thing and though we were more clever than the Nuke guys. Our first binary distributions were Ubuntu-based (probably 12.04 or 14.04 at that time). We finally figured out the reason. This is really the only way to get linux binaries that run everywhere. Now if you think you are better than the guys at the Foundry, then try it (and don’t forget you’ll have to test it on dozens of Linux distros).
Once again, just think about that: what is the cost of building on CentOS 6 (or 7) versus any other distro? nothing
@devernay I understand your point. On my side, I prefer to not enter into “cleverness” of people discussion.
For me, each situation requires to make choices and understand the consequences of them.
Sure, building host is not an issue. And that’s also my point.
Where I’m worried is all about “care effort” required in current situation.
Making decisions based on what a firm with incomes and closed sources does is not a model sustainable in the situation of Natron: genuine developers busy on paid job, few dev/care from others (by judging it from github and openhub statistics).
I know making decisions is not as easy as we may think. That why I ask you all these questions to understand the dev history of Natron.
I think living in FOSS environment with a model based on closed-source/non-free competitors is a dangerous choice.
It’s my view (well… based also on my experience), I understand if someone is not agree with me.
So now, to return to some “better” news. I’m able to build for CentOS6 and Fedora 29, first one with almost all debs build inside (current SDK model), second one with almost all from system (event Qt4, yes I know the point of ThreadPool patch…).
As I can’t test CentOS6 version (I don’t want to spent time to install it), I’m testing the Fedora.
Works almost well, even if I got few crashes (when playing with ffmpeg reader when the frame is crossing the end of the stream). I continue to read the code to make me more familiar with it.
I’m one of the “lost” devs from Natron, that due to several reasons I cannot discuss in public had to leave the project. It’s sad to see Natron in this state (I was not aware), I though that Natron would be doing much better by now.
First of, @devernay I Salute you! for continuing the development, very few people know how much hard work that is, and you have done it alone for a very long time. I think it time to take some of the burden of your shoulders. Also, I’m sorry for just popping up here after years of silence, I hope no hard feelings (I meant no harm, just personal/work issues that escalated beyond my control).
I’m willing to use some of my spare-time to help maintain Natron again, I can’t let this project just die, we have all dedicated too much time to this project just to see it fade away.
Give me a list of the most critical things that needs to be done (start with infrastructure and build).
Btw, I have not used Natron since 2.1.9, so be gentle
Hey guys just wanted to chime in say that we are still waiting to see if we have the contract. If it comes through we will be gaining a lot of developers which will be awesome.
So fingers crossed we have done all we can for our proposal its a waiting game now.
I can’t help but wonder if animal logic maybe interested in what your doing. It might be worth getting in contact with them. I know that they use CentOS they may even through some money and developers to see where things may go.
Of course they will want to keep there own things that they want to do. if there can be a compromise than i think it could be a nice little marriage. Getting one studio will only lead to more.
I like the software, I want to make tutorials. Maybe help with the documentation. The program is mostly useless for a beginner. I’m a compositor, I’m working on big titles. I work with Nuke every day. Unfortunately, there are some basic features that are missing or poor in performance in Natron.
For example, for cleanup works:
powerful grid warper
better bezier shape rasterization
better rotopaint (now painful to use)
denoise
and more
Great software, but currently useless for professional work.
The point is where can I help as a compositor:
So true, and there’s per say no chances these features/improvements will ever see the day light.
We would need 2-3 full time highly skilled devs to get Natron being suitable for real productions.
Too many things to be fixed/rewritten.
First we need to fix bugs. Having a stable core is more important than features (IMHO).
Also, some feature requests exists through third-party plugins (mostly commercial), Natron can’t include “all” the plugins
We need developers willing to make the missing plugins or features. The easiest would be creating plugins, there are enough examples in openfx-*.
I will try to dedicate as much time as I can to Natron, but it will never be as much as it was (at least not at this moment), but my time will probably be used to maintain the build system and bugs. Features will be far between (and some features I just don’t have the ability to add (at least not without doing some research/reading etc)).
I’m not that hopeful in regards to new developers (please prove me wrong), Natron has been public since 2013 and there has been minimal contributions to the code from “outsiders” since that time.
I agree with everything you said.
Regarding possible new devs contributions, sadly, i have to agree too.
There was, and still is, a path for Natron to get attention. Not from devs in the first time, but from small/mid-size studios.
Of course, giving advices and critics after war is over is always easy.
I think really hard to find skilled developer without pay.
Natron is not in a good position on ‘marketplace’.
There are some cheap and expensive solutions on the market. Medium and larger companies choose old and proven software. Compositing is a special thing and a sensitive point at the end of vfx pipeline. Natron is not a content maker like Blender. You can make money quickly with Blender. Natron is in a much more difficult situation.
Natron is definitely in a quirky position tool wise. Some of it’s nodes are honestly more advance than equivalent nodes in other software at this caliber, but some basic things people take for granted in other software, like grid warping and certain aspects of the text node require more complex alternative solutions in Natron without resorting to third party solutions. As an owner of Ignite pro I personally have access to it’s grid warp, but if I’m trying to demo for the average user I currently am mostly stuck with Warp fields or Magnetic fields. I’m 90% sure there might be a way to build a cage deformation using roto nodes and STMap nodes, involving inverting from a user defined value point, but I’ve not goten around to testing out my theory yet.
It’s more wants than needs, but there are silly things I get asked how to do quite often. Like uniform dashed outlines the aren’t limited to being static. Natron’s font outlines grow and shrink in length if they “march” around. Likewise we can’t really make dashed or patterned outlines around roto shapes without jumping through hoops. The fact most other comping software has those kind of things, but Natron would require far more complex steps to produce a similar result is just odd; however, there are very few other compositors (other than Blender really) that can open an SVG.
I look forward to everything you guys do. While I’ve only started to play with the BlackmagicRAW plug-in I’ve mentioned it to others with the cameras so hopefully there will be some more useful feed back on that soon as well.
I’m a professional compositor, I wanted to use Natron earlier for some shots and promote Natron, but I can’t play a 4k footage in the Viewer and I found a lot of other problems. It would be good enough if the Viewer works well, other functionality is not so important yet, I think.
