EmberGen vs Natron
EmberGen
jangafx.com
Natron
natrongithub.github.ioSide by side
| Figure | EmberGen | Natron |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Visual Effects Software | 8.1 (#9) | 7.6 (#20) |
| Purpose | EmberGen is a real-time tool for creating fire, smoke, explosions, and other volumetric effects. | Natron is a free, open-source VFX compositing application for digital post-production. |
| Support | The maker offers trial support through Discord or email and lists documentation, tutorials, forums, and email support for users. | The project points users to its Discord for community support and to its official forum for discussion. |
Plans
In their own words
Natron
Natron is a free, open-source application for visual-effects compositing in digital post-production. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows and uses a node-based workflow to build, group, and save custom tools and presets. Its interface includes more than 100 nodes, with listed tools for chroma keying, matte refinement, rotoscoping, rotopaint, tracking, and stabilization. Natron supports OpenFX and community-made plugins, as well as OpenImageIO, OpenColorIO, and 32-bit floating-point linear color processing. Python scripting includes expressions, user-defined parameters, scripts, callbacks, and GUI extensions. Rendering options include headless command-line work and integration with render farms for distributed rendering. Natron has no 3D workspace, though it can be used with Blender and supports CHAN camera-tracking files. Listed minimum requirements are 3 GB RAM, 5 GB free disk space, a 1280×1024 display, and OpenGL 2.0 for hardware-accelerated GPU rendering. The project lists version 2.5.0, released November 25, 2022.