Natron UI (Re-)Design Proposal

Software Natron
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We have had the idea plenty of times for years, every year. The problem: nobody pays for free software. There are many projects that have died similarly and Natron’s survival in such a condition really astonishes me (in a good way) and for that reason I really like the people behind the project and the supporters. But that’s just the truth: nobody’s going to donate. If some do, it won’t be nearly enough to hire and more importantly have them continue is expensive as hell today. Just take a look at Blender Foundation’s ever increasing funding requirements.
Even if a lot of people were to donate, who would the money go to? There is no registered foundation/organization that can act as a treasury. And I wouldnt want to be one of the people receiving funds from unknown international accounts and having to explain on my Income Tax form that I am indeed not collecting money to form a terrorist organization.
Jokes aside, these points have been said and reiterated by a lot of people for years and years and I’m just reiterating them once more. This has been discussed over and over and has never reached a conclusion.

Um… hire the blender developers??? Here’s what the team that overhauled Blender’s UI is doing right now: working for the Blender Foundation. And they ain’t leaving. No other UI team needs to be hired. The Natron UI is fine. It’s a VFX compositing software, not a dress up video game for little girls. We don’t need a fancy UI. We need a functional UI. And the current UI is 98% there. It’s almost fully functional apart from a few bugs and quirks. We dont need a team to overhaul the UI. We need maintainers who can improve the current one and fix bugs. Until there is a HUGE update, there will be no UI change and even in case of said HUGE update, the UI update will probably follow the likes of Nuke, not Blender and here’s why:

It’s abso-fucking-lutely not. The 2.8x UI was designed with the 2.7x>2.8x update in mind and it was 10000000000% not futureproof. If you have used Blender since before the 2.8 update, you will know how consistent the UI (and consequent UI updates) was from the 2.5x major update until the last version to have that UI: 2.79b. 2.80 completely screwed things over. Introduced plenty of bugs and extra processing, added unnecessary overhead, and added confusing concepts and layers of said concepts. To the uninitiated and newbies, it will look appealing but to anyone who does any real work, its a royal pain in the arse. It was not designed for any features that were to come and as a result of the rapid dumb ass development cycle that the devs have pushed themselves into, the new features and the UI that they need to be accessed from are clunky as hell and at times, out right confusing. In one word, the Blender UI is incomplete.

if Natron were to ever need a full UI redesign/overhaul, it should be to make the UI more functional and not pretty. Pretty adds overhead, processing power that I’d rather utilize for doing what the software is intended for. Functionality is what’s important for a software like Natron. Can I clearly see and use the tools? Can I clearly read the UI? Can I clearly see the nodes and links? Is the image engine and core getting all the processing power that it can get? If the answer to those questions is yes, then it’s a good UI for something like Natron. We do not need a UI overhaul like Blender at all. Focus needs to go towards functionality and fixing bugs.

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I get it. But I’m tired of people (often newbies) praising the Blender 2.80 UI when it was designed in such a bad manner and still remains incomplete. I should have posted the full reply on that one but got carried away by some other task. I have found that sugar coating things like this doesnt work at all. Sorry for the usage of bad words, but that is what I genuinely feel about the Blender UI. No hate towards any person here, not at all.

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Regardless, I have seen some interesting concepts and design mockups by some very capable people (like Songtech and Hank) here and on the discord. A lot of those designs and concepts were discussed with the current devs and maintainers (Rodlie, Bonalex, etc) and either rectified or completely changed with one thing in mind: functionality. Being pretty to look at gives Natron zero plus points if its a mess under the hood. What do we absolutely need right now? We need to keep the boat afloat and keep making developmental progress. A UI redesign is not going to help with that. The current UI is almost perfect in that despite some bugs and quirks, it does the job. It’s not confusing. It’s almost 1:1 with one of the leading compositing software out there (Nuke). It does not add a performance overhead. It is not difficult to get used to as a newbie (to newbies not understanding this: just get over it. it’s just another UI).
I genuinely do not understand the obsession with the mess that Blender’s UI (language) is. And I also do not understand why Blender users (especially newbies and people who have only ever used Blender) want every software to follow the exact developmental steps that Blender devs did. I’m not making this up, it’s literally a pattern all over the Blender and Open Source DCCs communities. Similarly GIMP was also hated for NOT being like Ps even though it was never meant to be anything like Ps. I just don’t understand it.
Every DCC out there, whether proprietary or open source has its own design and operational philosophy and the UI should compliment that philosophy. With regards to Blender, a lot of the philosophy that built it in the early years was thrown out of the window when the 2.80 update happened and every update since has just been a duct tape here, wd40 there kinda mashup of half assed fixes to core problems that were introduced by the new developmental philosophy. It is just not an example to follow.
If people think Natron needs a total UI overhaul like Blender, I sincerely request all to research and contemplate both the positives and negatives for each little thing. In the end all we need Natron to be is functional. If you want examples to follow, look at the other software in Natron’s specialist niche: compositing. Software like Nuke, Flame, etc. Does the UI stay the same for each version? Yes and no. Yes because the design language is fixed. No is technically still a yes because things only change if they improve the current.
Please please please take a moment or two to just think about the nature of the software in question and other factors like the development status, etc before suggesting vague ideas. Similar ones have been thrown around for years and havent reached conclusions for one simple reason: the current UI works and most of those ideas add zero value or improvements or are just not worth the time and effort.

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Yes I understand and I vented my own frustrations on a different thread about a different topic earlier today too. We are at the same place.

I actually agree with you that hiring blender’s UI probably wouldn’t be a great fit, even if it were financially possible. I think people underestimate the amount of domain knowledge it takes to make a good UI/UX.

But ya have to do better than one sentence swear word responses.

This reply was a lot better.

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They 100% do. And if the UI was designed solely with community suggestions and feedback in mind, it would become death by design by committee just like Blender. IF there is to be a UI overhaul, a dedicated team is needed; that much I agree on but the primary design language needs to be influenced by the maintainers, developers and specialists and not the larger community. Don’t basically do what Blender devs did. Dont build stuff you can’t maintain in the long or even short term.

I totally understand. I was going to post the full thing in that single reply but I got carried away by some different task (I’m at my native place for the Ganesh festival in India which is still not over and there’s always someone who needs help or something that needs to be dealt with…) and instead of saving as draft, I replied… My bad on that one.

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Regarding the UI I agree with @El_Artista.

Natron follows the UI “standard” for node based compositing. You don’t fix what works.

Natron however needs a small style change (or refresh, call it what you want), where we fix some ugly buttons, maybe adjust some colors etc. But that’s about it (IMHO).

People that want major UI changes are probably not compositors, they usually come to Natron by mistake and assumes/want UI/UX from NLE’s, AE etc.

This is mostly a information problem, most websites etc put Natron in the motion graphics category against AE. This is at best misleading.

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Ok, here’s my version of Natron’s UI overhaul:

natron_ui_redesign_1_1
natron_ui_redesign_1_13840×2160 452 KB

I would like to hear some criticisms.

P.S.: @El_Artista I know you like to be all negative and write those huge walls of text, but can I ask you to be more economical with your words please?

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I like the word ‘realistic’ a bit better than ‘negative’. I run and manage the Natron Discord server. I’ve been using Natron for years since back when its development was still funded by Inria and have seen what currently seems like it’s slow demise. I’ve seen plenty of people who want to help maintain and develop Natron. I’ve seen lots of those people suggest (seemingly) crazy ideas like making Natron CUDA accelerated and make it sound like they could do it in one night with a single tin of red bull, and the very next day they disappear. Few ideas such as QT5 were actually realized because of the contribution from community developers. I along with the rest of the still standing members of the community can tell you the probable outcomes of this based on what we have seen over the years.

You may but I won’t abide. I prefer to be as elaborate with my words as possible.

In all honesty, this is one of the better designs that I have seen over the years. I’ve seen a lot of people trying to turn Natron into some frankenstein version of Ae, but this is not that. However based on just one image and no breakdowns/explanations of why you chose to make things the way they are, I can’t get behind it. A mockup is just the tiny part of the tip of the iceberg. Every single UI element in Natron has a purpose and there is very specific operational philosophy behind each of those elements. How you would adapt that philosophy into your UI redesign, or completely abandon it in favor of a new (hopefully better) one still remains to be seen. It’s not just shapes, colors and icons. Icons can be updated without a UI change. Colors can be updated in the theme preferences. Many aspects of the UI can be changed using a QSS Stylesheet. But UI means a lot more than that. Design isn’t how something looks, its how something functions. There’s very little that is not left to the imagination in your design eg: what happens when I select a node?, What happens when I select a noodle?, What happens when I try to move something?, etc. Each of these tiny things is part of what makes up the whole of the Natron UI, and consequently the UX and all of those things need to be taken into consideration and be either improved upon or done in a better way for the UI (overhaul) to be considered worth the effort. Without, it simply isnt.
Those things aside, who’s going to realize this design if all elements of it were complete? Current efforts in development and maintenance are dedicated towards keeping the project alive and fixing as many bugs as possible. I have already explained the situation regarding new developers above. This thread has been active for more than 3 years now. That should also tell you everything you need to know about the development status. Yes, a small refresh is needed as Rodlie says above, but an overhaul like Blender, not going to happen anytime soon because we don’t have enough developers and even if we did, we’d rather they work on more important stuff like adding important missing features, fixing bugs, etc.
The current UI isnt a development/maintenance oversight. Not at all. It’s just designed to be from the beginning as functional as possible without adding unnecessary overhead to the software (almost a clone of Nuke’s). UI needs processing power to be displayed on the screen, just like everything else in Natron. The prettier you try to make it, the more overhead it adds. The current UI has the perfect balance. It’s functional, it’s usable, it’s flexible and customizable, and it doesn’t add much overhead if at all. There’s honestly nothing more anybody who’s doing any serious work should ask for from a UI.

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@El_Artista You really like to hear yourself talk…

I like the word ‘realistic’

Well, ‘realism’ only got you here, so maybe let’s try something?

In all honesty, this is one of the better designs that I have seen over the years.

I consider this to be high praise coming from you, so thank you!

A mockup is just the tiny part of the tip of the iceberg.

Of course it is, you can’t expect me to work through every aspect of the UI and how everything works right away. It will take several months of work. This is just a demo to show that I have some experience in UI design and wouldn’t you like to have a proper Pro UI instead of what we have currently.

Design isn’t how something looks, its how something functions.

I mean, you’re talking to me like I’m a small child. Of course I understand how big and complicated the task of just fleshing out every aspect of the software is.

The current UI isnt a development/maintenance oversight.

Look, the UI of any software is PARAMOUNT, just get it already. It’s how the user interacts with all the amazing features under the hood. Everything else is secondary. I’ve switched form Maya to Blender as my main 3D app only because of the UI overhaul and so did a huge number of others. The new UI can breathe new life into this project and what happend to Blender post 2.8 is proof enough for me.

It’s just designed to be from the beginning as functional as possible without adding unnecessary overhead to the software (almost a clone of Nuke’s).

Sure, there will be more overhead, obviously. But what do you expect — you have to pay for nice things. But if you do this kind of work, your PC should be able to handle it. It’s gonna be worth it

Anyway I just want to say this:

  1. I’m able to design everything and think through every feature.
  2. I’m able create a very good HTML/CSS/JS prototype. Which imo is a good tech option for the final UI implementation, it’s not that resource intensive, it’s mature and is easy to maintain.
  3. Only thing I can’t do is to actually implement it into Natron.

So if there are some enthusiasts out there who would like to change this whole situation, I’m willing to do my part for free. That’s all I’m saying.

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Aight, buddy. You’ve got just as much dedication as I’ve seen from many other devs who said they’ll take on collosal projects to “save Natron”. If you think you’ve got it, go ahead. I hope you’ll be better than many other wannabe contributiors I’ve seen and wish you all the best. If not, well this thread will drag on for another three years and then some.

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Just casting a line to see if something bites.

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Let’s stop all the macho posturing, please. It isn’t getting anyone anywhere.

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The mockup looks good for the most part, but the biggest problem is:

It would be a major undertaking to modify Natron enough to look similar to the mockup. Note that Natron has been in maintenance mode for years, only bug fixes and keeping up-to-date with third-party software is worked on.

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The mockup looks good

Thanks! I’ve put my heart & soul into it (jk).

I would imagine that it would be, but so what? That’s why I was talking about crowdfunding or something before — to hire a proper specialist.

UI/UX ≩ fixing bugs and other boring stuff. Better to bitch about bugs than bitch about how bad the UI is.

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As somebody who is a UI/UX designer for a job and has also spent a good deal of time on updated UI mockups, it’s cool that designers want to contribute their time to the project (the FOSS world needs more designer contribution!) but it’s unfortunately not the bottleneck here :slight_smile:

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Back to Davinci Resolve it is then.

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The “boring” stuff is the important part. Real users want something that works.

What’s the point in looking good if you don’t work? you can’t polish a turd etc.

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So what you’re saying is: right now Natron is a turd under the hood?

And UI is more about being readable, intuitive and convenient than just “looking good”. Right now Natron’s hood is definitely a turd you cannot polish, you have to throw it out and start from 0.

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No. Read what I wrote.

Stop being stupid.

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Ok I will, I’m sorry.