Forged, and how to read this manual
A compositor built around one rendering path, one undo model, and tools that say what they are doing.
Forged is a node-based compositor. Images flow through a graph, every node is a small honest transform, and the picture you see in the viewer is the picture the render writes — same code, same hashes, same pixels.
What is in the box
| Part | What it is |
|---|---|
| The 2D graph | The mature system: 142 node types across twelve shelf families — comp, colour, filter, keying, transform, masks, time |
| Blacksmith | Crafted tools that do a whole job rather than a whole operation — motion mattes, edge work, day-for-night, vector warp, disintegration |
| Crucible | The matting engine: a model that takes direction, correctable rather than re-runnable |
| Camera Tracker (HDCT) | A full 3D solve from the plate, bit-deterministic by charter |
| Anvil | Model tracking: PinTool and GeoTracker, plus the texture builder |
| The 3D system | Cards, cameras, projections, geometry, volumes, particles, gaussian splats — feeding the 2D graph, not competing with it |
| Unreal | A live session and offline renders, ingested as ordinary layers |
How to read a node page
Every node page runs the same anatomy, in the same order, so you can skim to what you need without reading the page:
- the one-line summary under the title is the same sentence as the node's tooltip in the app and its line in the family index — written once, shown in three places;
- Inputs name every wire the node accepts;
- Parameters are grouped the way the node's own panel groups them, and each entry states type, default, and where it matters the range, the units, and what it interacts with;
- Layers says what channels the node emits or consumes, which is the thing a compositor actually needs and no other manual bothers to list;
- Known edges is where the node's current limits are stated plainly.
The house rule about honesty
Where a tool has a limit, the limit is written down — in the manual and, where it matters mid-shot, by the node itself. A tool that silently does nothing has, from the artist's side, failed and lied. If you find a page that reads better than the software behaves, that page is the bug.