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Katana - Powerful look development and lighting

Take control of your next project.

Spiderman Katana

What is Katana?

Fast and formidable, Katana is a look development and lighting powerhouse that tackles creative challenges with ferocity and ease. It arms artists with the creative freedom and scalability to exceed the needs of today’s most demanding CG-rendering projects.

Features

Studios

Power up your pipeline

USD-optimised tech, combined with multiple APIs, five different commercial renderers and an open-sourced Shotgun TK integration, make Katana the Swiss Army knife of your pipeline.

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Pioneering rendering

Katana’s Foresight Rendering workflows, comprised of Multiple Simultaneous Renders and Networked Interactive Rendering, provide artists with scalable feedback for faster iterations.

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Artists

Artist Focused Lighting

Light at the speed of thought thanks to cutting-edge Lighting Tools, empowering artists to light whole sequences of shots with Katana’s industry-leading, multi-shot workflows.

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Collaborative look development

Katana is made to drive look development of hero or high volume assets while seamlessly collaborating with shot production.

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Katana 7.0- What's new

Start your USD journey with Katana 7.0 and experience the best of both worlds. Now you can get hands on with USD native workflows and benefit from Katana’s powerhouse Lookdev and Lighting tools. Katana 7.0 also brings with it a shared framework with Nuke, plus a core series of nodes, enabling effortless native USD scene manipulation, so Katana fits smoothly into your pipeline, saving further development time and headaches.

Live Render updates are up to twice as fast thanks to a series of performance improvements, ensuring you spend more time on what really matters. Live Rendering is now multi-threaded, ensuring you can meet ever-increasing industry demands with a robust, reliable and high-performance Katana.

Take me to Katana 7.0

Benefits

Studios

Improve your ROI
  • • Work in parallel across multiple stages of production
  • • Speed up production processes
  • • Achieve more within a day’s work
  • • Get the most out of your resources
World-class technology
  • • Use Katana, Nuke and Mari together for unmatched power
  • • Unlock pioneering production rendering workflows
  • • Enjoy seamless integration with multiple renderers, APIs and USD

Artists

Hassle-free creativity
  • • Implement art direction with precision
  • • Make the right choices faster
  • • Avoid layers of technical complexity
  • • Solve problems faster and tackle the next challenge sooner
Perfect for teams
  • • Share work seamlessly
  • • Harmonize across departments
  • • Safely integrate updates from downstream departments
  • • Make and share tools that solve group problems

30 days to lighting success

Want to maximize your trialing experience? Follow along our calendar and, by the end of the 30 days, you’ll go from learning key concepts to discovering collaboration through LiveGroups, and everything in between. Get ticking and reach your goals!

Claim your calendar here

Debunking the myths of pipeline integration

USD made easy: Katana ships with a ready-made USD plug-in to make the move to USD as cohesive and seamless as possible.

Vital integrations and collaborations, such as the Katana Shotgun TK open source plug-in, render farm plugins like Deadline and Qube, plus leading asset management software make Katana work seamlessly as part of any pipeline.

Our teams are committed to supporting your studio’s switch to Katana, and making its integration into your pipeline easy and seamless. To find out more about the deployment process, watch Katana Deployment Essentials

  • Team
  • Enterprise

Exclusively available to new customers requiring up to 10 interactive seats
Minimum 3 year term

Subscribe $2,499/yr*
  • Interactive artist session license
  • 3Delight interactive rendering included. Other renderers require their own license
  • Access to technical support
*Price subject to applicable taxes
Subscribe $209/yr*
  • Unlock Katana’s Foresight Rendering power
  • Allows the use of Katana in batch, shell, and script mode
  • Required for command-line rendering with any renderer plugin
*Price subject to applicable taxes

Available to existing customers, and studios requiring more than 10 interactive seats

Subscribe $4,409/yr*
  • Interactive artist session license
  • 3Delight interactive rendering included. Other renderers require their own license
  • Access to technical support
*Price subject to applicable taxes
Subscribe $339/yr*
  • Unlock Katana’s Foresight Rendering power
  • Allows the use of Katana in batch, shell, and script mode
  • Required for command-line rendering with any renderer plugin
*Price subject to applicable taxes

Katana and Mari: the ultimate look development duo

Interoperability between Katana and Foundry’s 3D texture painting tool Mari is a huge part of Katana’s past and future development plans to streamline look development workflows everywhere.

Mari is built for today’s most complex creative challenges, shipping with the Arnold Standard SurfaceVray and 3Delight render engines, plus RenderMan for Mari. Using these, artists can paint textures in Mari with a higher degree of confidence that their art will look correct in the final render, reducing feedback loops between Mari and Katana, and offering a smoother look development process.

Discover Mari

Who’s using Katana

FAQ

How long does it take the average user to get used to Katana?

Artists who only have to work in a Katana pipeline can be trained in a day.  Most people are very comfortable in their first week. Staff that need to make pipeline choices, teach others, etc. will need more time if they are new to Katana. If you need support with Katana, download our free 30 days to success Katana calendar with the latest tutorials, tips and tricks to support you on your journey.

Where can I find Katana tutorials?

For tips, tricks and tutorials to help you get up to speed with Katana, please visit the Katana Foundry Learn page.

How long does it take to get Katana set up in my pipeline?

This depends on how complex your existing pipeline is and what has to be changed.  Some clients have been producing commercial work in the first month, whereas others have taken several months.  Contact Foundry to have a conversation about how long it might take your team.

Where can I find case studies about studios like mine using Katana?

Studios of all sizes find success with Katana. Check out our Insights Hub for stories on how Katana works as part of a wider pipeline, different use cases and processes, and the benefits it brings to look development and lighting workflows.

What training resources and opportunities are there for studios and artists getting set up with Katana?

Foundry has an every growing set of learning resources. Independent artists and some schools have published resources. Katana licenses are available for individuals automatically for 30 days with the option to ask for a further 60 days extension if they are learning Katana at home.

How many Renders do I need per GUI?

This varies based on your particular scenario but we typically see clients using between 10 to 20 render licenses for each interactive license.  Most clients do not use less than 5 render licenses per interactive license. With the Katana 4 Foresight workflows, render licenses can power additional interactive capacity for artists.

What is the licensing model?

Find out more about purchasing and licensing with our Licensing FAQs

Experience Katana

 

Get first-hand insight into how exactly Katana can fit into your pipeline.

Request demo

Discover the creative capabilities of Katana with a free 30-day trial.

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