Archive notice: This article was originally published on 12 August 2020. It has been translated from German where applicable and lightly edited for clarity while preserving its historical context.
Lighting from the viewport
Katana 4.0 introduced a revised lighting mode shaped around cinematography workflows. Artists can place shadows and highlights by selecting points on geometry, creating a light in the scene, or position lights from the current camera view for tasks such as fill lighting.
Viewport manipulators and a movable spreadsheet interface expose numerical parameters and light colour. The release also added Temperature, Magenta and Luminance controls across native light types supported by 3Delight, Arnold, RenderMan, V-Ray and Redshift. Existing GafferThree nodes remained available, although the node itself was not reworked.
Interactive network rendering
Interactive Network Rendering sends test renders to a farm and returns completed pixels while the frame is still processing. Artists can assess and cancel an unsuitable render before the full frame finishes. Foundry planned compatibility with Deadline, OpenCue, Qube! and Royal Render.
Hydra Viewer and availability
Hydra Viewer changes enabled direct interaction with the render ID buffer and allowed work to begin from an image generated in a previous session while the complete scene loaded. Katana 4.0 was scheduled for autumn 2020 through the Katana product page. Test renderer integration, farm submission and scene loading with production assets before deployment.
