Who else?

It looks like updating Graphics Planet takes too much time, so I’ll introduce one of the upcoming members now

As many of you know we are somewhat limited in solid open source VFX production tools on Linux. True, there are all sorts of modellers and Blender seems to become jack of all trades these days, but new specialized tools are always welcome. Which is why I’d like to make a bit of PR for a project called Ramen. Simply put, this is the only standalone open source node-based compositing solution for Linux and Mac. If you wanted a Shake-like or Nuke-like free tool for Linux or Mac, look no further.

Originally it was an in-house project by Esteban Tovagliari who has been employed as compositor professionally for over 10 years. Being tired of dealing with CLI tools he earlier developed to go through daily routine, he decided to streamline the workflow and created a Qt4 based UI for them, which soon was released as an open source project.

The application supports industry standards like EXR, DPX and CIN and has experimental support for OFX plug-ins. Ildar “AkhIL” Akhmetgaleev wrote a review + introductional tutorial on Ramen, which nevertheless was a sort of stress test due to amount of nodes in the final composition

Now, the other part of the story is that the project will apply to participate at Google Summer of Code 2010 and therefore is looking for students. Esteban listed possible projects here. And one of them is: “Add support for OpenGTL”. So here is me cunningly winking at Cyrille Berger: would you like to mentor a student working on that project if we get one?