Workflow Tutorial: Compositing Blender Cycles Passes in Natron

[@marioCazares]

I believe "shift x" is shortcut to quickly switch A and B input. Great tutorial by the way! Can't wait for Natron to grow :)

[@sethweber2224]

Dude thank you! You do a great job explaining things, super helpful!

[@espressojoe]

Wow... This is absolutely insane... Opens a lot of doorways... I love the glassy part... :D

[@mvraghavendra5]

Fantastic tutorial sir. Glad to watch it. please keep on enlightening us.

[@YafuLinux]

Thank you very much! I was a little lost about how to work with Blender and Natron, using Multilayer OpenEXR. This will be helpful.

[@SuperMontyrock]

thank you sir for this amazing tutorial In my experience its the best explanation for render passes especially for node-based software so thanks :D

[@AdamEarleArtist]

fantastic i cant wait for more

[@WinfriedKlum]

Awsome tutorial. I want more :-). I had some problems with the pass indices from blender but anyway...

[@constellation3702]

Nice Tutorial

[@raghavaindrarao2393]

thank you so much midge sinnaeve

[@agrglez7973]

nice job!

[@activemotionpictures]

When I import a "mist" Z pass from blender, my image is all white on Natron how do I correctly import a Zdepth pass from Blender into Natron?

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

You have to set the mist size and limits in the world properties panel of Blender to get it to look right and re-render. From there everything should work normally. :)

[@Fudushae]

Excellent tutorial! I'm new to Natron and was wondering how do you apply a z pass render from Blender into Natron?

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

I believe there's a ZBlur node that's meant for that kind of thing. But I haven't used Natron for a while, so I can't remember the exact workflow. It's in there though! :)

[@Fudushae]

Thanks for the reply, unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a zblur node in Natron. I've tried the Defocus node from the community plugins but isn't offering the desired result. Natron is great piece of software, wish it had more documentation :(

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

It's been a while since I've used it myself, so my information might not be 100% accurate anymore. It is a great piece of software though. You can always have a look at Blackmagic Fusion as well. They offer a free version that has a lot of great tools similar to Natron. It's free, but not open source.

[@elvioknl]

Does anybody know if there is a vector blur filter in Natron or something like that?

[@uzefulvideos3440]

I don't understand why all this Natron stuff was done, the final image is just like the one rendered with blender but with a few changed colors. Can somebody explain?

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

It's meant as a guide on how to correctly bring them together again in a compositing application. Generally the end result of the video would be a starting point for adding more complex compositing on top.

[@jaih12]

The z pass is useful for adding depth to 2d footage overlays.

[@Eradifyerao]

I have been trying to figure this out for almost a year without success...

[@davidmonteiro6822]

Thanks Midge. When working with CH exr images in Natron i am getting washed out colors after rendering! Any idea why?

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

What do you mean by CH exr images?

[@davidmonteiro6822]

@@MidgeSinnaeve was a mistake... Exr images

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

@@davidmonteiro6822 EXR's store color information in a specific (neutral) way. The colors might look different because the application you're using to render them displays colors differently. In Blender for example, Filmic applies a color transform that doesn't get saved when you use EXR's which is why they might look different when opening them in another application. I suggest googling a little bit about things like OpenColorIO (OCIO), LUT's and tone mapping for more info on what's happening.

[@Meteotrance]

is there a way to make vector blur or kind of motion blur with natron with the VECTOR output of open exr file ?

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

Right now, it's not possible as far as I know. There is an automatic motion blur node (TimeBlur), but it doesn't support a vector input.

[@Meteotrance]

hope the guy at Inria try to make a basic one, Natron is still a young software, they try to make it work so hard, they still need to optimized it a lot.

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

True, but for such a young project it's already quite impressive. If you need more though, I'd recommend checking out the free version of Fusion as it now runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion

[@shackeditaotao]

Dis is deep compositing ?

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

Unfortunately not, Natron doesn't support Deep compositing.

[@Fridaytubeful]

Hi Midge, its possible to use position pass or world poisiton pass in Blender?

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

There's no set shader for it in Blender, but you can build your own in Cycles. A quick Google search led me here: blender.stackexchange.com/questions/7397/how-to-render-world-position-pass

[@samuelmanoel]

how i can use vector passes to make motion blur in natron?

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

At this point, I don't think there's a native Motion Vector Blur in Natron (yet), but I'm sure if you ask on the forums (forum.natron.fr) someone might have a solution. I do know that Reelsmart Motion Blur has a Natron version of the plugin.

[@Eradifyerao]

Please help me appreciate the justification of using Natron compositing for this rather than something like Gimp or Inkscape. I didn't see any really impressive results (really even justifying the use of separate passes at all). It would make far more sense if it were a video of course...

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

If GIMP works for you, just use GIMP. :) There's not really a better or worse piece of software to use, this was just an introduction in to how node based compositing works.

[@Eradifyerao]

@@MidgeSinnaeve Don't get me wrong - Natron looks SOOOO much better for compositing than Blender, it's just that the Gimp/Photoshop/Inkscape workflow seems more intuitive if you're just working on still images.

[@Eradifyerao]

@@MidgeSinnaeve I'm also curious - can render passes be used in animation rendering?

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

@@Eradifyerao Yup, that's where they really shine for bigger projects. :)

[@Eradifyerao]

Try this out if you want to do a more complex render sequence - I was able to do what I normally do with gimp over a really cool animation...

[@Fridaytubeful]

Where can I find the gain node, in Grade node?

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

The Color Correct node. :)

[@jaih12]

How much does rendering the extra passes slow down your render time?

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

Wouldn't be able to give you an exact figure, but the main ones aren't too bad. Something like a velocity pass though adds quite a bit of time.

[@jaih12]

Midge Sinnaeve is the velocity pass for motion blur? I just finished a 26 day across two machine, 10 second clip... 5 hours a frame basically. I was wondering if the motion blur is what dinked it so bad...

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

Yeah, Motion Blur is pretty rough on render times. The velocity pass is so you can add it in later, but it still does the same calculations so the render time is the same as with regular motion blur baked in unfortunately.

[@jaih12]

Midge Sinnaeve where does the z pass go? I watched a video of Andrew Kramer’s using a z pass to insert things 3 dimensional into video later... I’m wondering if a z pass rendered in blender would do the same?

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

Yeah, should work fine. If you have depth of field baked in the render I would even suggest using the mist pass instead, if you're using it for masking at least. Don't forget to change the values of it in the World settings to make sure it encompasses your entire scene.

[@Fridaytubeful]

Hi Midge, do you know if Natron has exposure node? Thank you!

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

Yeah, you would use "gain" in the color correct node for example. :)

[@Fridaytubeful]

Thanks for your support, do you know when Naron will support 3D, deep image an position to points? I try to fin enviroment node and I cannot find it.

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

The best place to look for that kind of information would be on their forum: forum.natron.fr/ Keep in mind though that it's an open source project, so advanced features like those could be a while. :)

[@Fridaytubeful]

MIdge, do you know if Natron has enviroment like Nuke? my last question... Thanks!!!!

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

I don't think so atm.

[@slr666]

hey, you have a very nice theme for Blender? what is it ?

[@MidgeSinnaeve]

github.com/mantissa-/amaranth-themes