Archive notice: This article was originally published on June 5, 2015. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
According to The Foundry, the Katana engine has been completely revised, optimising the tool’s interoperability. In addition to a responsive user interface, the new Ops interface has been added, allowing plug-ins to be written.
With the new Lua-based OpScript Node, artists can edit data directly from the Katana UI, offering significantly higher performance than the previous Python-based script nodes as well as multithreading. Support for mathematical operations has also been added. And when Katana 2 now works with renderers that support multi-threated geometry creation, the tool is said to achieve significantly faster performance – including RenderMan and Arnold.
The Graph State Variables (GSV) feature reduces the need for project segementation, because it allows nodes to be set whose behaviour adapts on the basis of the context in which a scene is developed. Work with a large number of light sources has also been improved by the Gaffer Three Super Tool, and live rendering has been optimised.
Anyone not yet very familiar with Katana will find two PDF articles attached about the lighting and look-development tool from DP 07 : 2014, in which Steve LaVietes, who was then part of the developer team at Sony Pictures Imageworks, explains why Katana is so practical for the VFX and animation workflow. Digital Effects Supervisor David A. Smith also reports on SPI’s work with the tool on “The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise of Electro”.
All further information about The Foundry and Katana is available here.
