In nuce: The Foundry, the developer of software for the creative industries, has released Katana 6.0. Katana is a software for look development and lighting. Paul Denhard, Senior Product Manager at The Foundry, is pleased to announce that Katana 6.0 has further streamlined workflows – even in the case of “large volumes of work and tight timeframes.” According to the press release, Katana 6.0 is aligned with the VFX Reference Platform 2022 and USD 22.05.

In toto: New features include the Performance and Material Solo tabs, which are designed to speed up manual tasks and workflows for artists. These and other new features follow below.

Katana 6.0 | Feature Overview

Debug and Optimise Projects With The Performance Tab | Katana 6.0 Tutorial

Katana 6.0 | Optimise Your Scenes and Projects with The Performance Tab

• Performance tab: Thanks to this, artists should have an easier overview of the size of their 3D scenes and be able to correct errors more effectively. A colour-coded heatmap should allow artists to identify the proverbial bottleneck in the node graph more quickly.

Solo Materials to Preview Parts of Your LookDev | Katana 6.0 Tutorial

Katana 6.0 | Preview Your Work With Material Soloing

• Material Solo tab (Material Solo tab): This provides a preview of the look development, allowing artists to better understand how set nodes will affect the final result. An immediate insight into the components of the material setup is provided. In other words, material networks – even complex ones – can be quickly isolated and debugged. Each individual section can be viewed as a preview.

Share and Reuse Work with LiveShadingGroups | Katana 6.0 Tutorial

• So-called LiveShadingGroups are intended to further enhance look development. LiveShadingGroups give artists the opportunity to share projects and assets with each other. This works in that LiveShadingGroups, once set across scenes, automatically update scenes linked to them – as soon as participating artists make changes.

Katana 6.0 | Quality of Life Improvements for LookDev Artists

• The NetworkMaterialEdit material interface allows artists to customise the material interface within the NetworkMaterialEdit node – thus “breaking away from linear workflows”, as the press release states.

Click further: Full details of the new functions can be found at campaigns.foundry.com/products/katana/whats-new . Digital Production reported on the release of the previous version, Katana 5.0 , on 27 December 2021 – at the time, we highlighted compatibility with Nuke, various rendering upgrades and the Universal Scene Description as the most impressive features.

The post The Foundry releases Katana 6.0! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Lightmap, the software developer from the United Kingdom, has made available: a 25-part package consisting of HDRI maps and a 6-part package for HDR area light textures. The highlight: the packages are completely free of charge.

In toto: The maps were created with HDR Light Studio, the lighting design software from Lightmap. The 25-piece package is intended to simulate the lighting mood of a real studio shot. The package is intended for portfolio renderings and product visualisations. The 6-part HDR area light textures, on the other hand, are intended to imitate real light sources. The two packages, which are available as EXR files, can be used in the common digital content creation tools – for example in: Cinema 4D, 3ds Max or Unreal Engine. The download is possible without registration. Use for commercial projects is permitted.

Click further: Both the 25-part HDRI maps package and the HDR area light textures in six parts are available for download at lightmap.co.uk . Digital Production last reported on Lightmap’s HDR Light Studio software on 8 February 2021 , when Xenon Drop 2 was released.

The post download 25 HDRI Maps and 6 HDRI Area Light Textures for free first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: On his website, Jamie Cardoso has reported on a real-time web application for Unreal Engine 5 that the computer artist, who has been working for the scientific publishing group Taylor & Francis for almost 14 years, is currently working on. This emerges from a post Jamie made on 16 October this year . The highlight: according to Jamie, his app makes it possible to visualise different lighting moods, light colours or IES (Illuminating Engineering Society) lighting profiles, for example – in real time.

In toto: As Jamie goes on to explain, his app can be used to send 4K renderings with just one click of the mouse. Furthermore, the app is designed to run simply via a web browser – so an exceptionally powerful computer is not required. As Jamie writes on his website, he is currently working on the web application for a customer. Due to a non-disclosure agreement with the client, he cannot show the 3D scene that the computer artist is currently developing. Instead, Jamie uses a 3D scene from the Evermotion asset store for demonstration purposes. In the video below, Cardoso takes us through the navigation of the app.

Click further: Digital Production last reported on Jamie Cardoso’s exciting app project on 28 July this year – at that time it was all about sending high-resolution renderings via email (as mentioned above).

Sources: help.maxon.net ( information on IES lights)

Unreal Engine 5 real-time Web Application for IES lights and other Lighting fixtures/conditions (CC)

The post Create 4K lighting renders in Unreal Engine 5 with this app? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Crate’s Godrays – a free plugin for Adobe After Effects that can be used to create volumetric lighting effects – has been published on the online asset library ProductionCrate . This is according to a report on cgchannel.com. In the video posted online alongside the plugin, Crate’s Godrays says: “It’s six times faster than CC Radial Blur, the standard approach to creating light rays in After Effects.” The plugin is available for After Effects CS6 and up and works with Windows and Mac operating systems.

In toto: According to the description of the plugin, its handling should be comparatively simple. A click in the viewport defines the starting point from which the light source should radiate. Parameters such as “beam length”, “diminishing beam power over a certain distance” or “chromatic aberration” are user-definable. There are also four preset quality modes to choose from, allowing you to decide whether a high-quality image of the light effect is more important than the rendering speed.

Click further: A guide has been published on productioncrate.com . It explains how to download Crate’s Godrays (see also the video below). Digital Production last reported on ProductionCrate on 28.07.2022 . At that time, it was the 3D models of the Modern Industrial Pack, which included assets for Blender, Cinema 4D, Maya, Houdini and 3ds Max.

Source: cgchannel.com

100% Free AE Plug-in! Crate’s Godrays

The post Simplify lighting in After Effects with this free plugin first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: The Unreal Engine 5 Lighting Fundamentals course has been published on the Gnomon Workshop learning platform to teach interested users the basics of lighting in the UE 5 game engine. The course takes a complete tour through the possibilities of lighting in UE 5 and is primarily aimed at users who are switching from version 4 of the Unreal Engine to version 5. Digital content developer Charleston Silverman will lead the course, which will run for over three hours, demonstrating lighting techniques that have been tried and tested in practice. Some of the features covered in the course are: Lightmass, path trace rendering, volumetric lighting, particle lights, IES profiles or HDRI backgrounds.

Click further: To the Unreal Engine 5 Lighting Fundamentals course on The Gnomon Workshop. In the past, Digital Production has repeatedly reported on courses offered via the Gnomon Workshop. Below is a selection.

• 21.09.2021: Facial Blendshapes for Maya and ZBrush: Video training for all those who like to puff out their cheeks!
• 5.03.2021: If Chins could Kill: Jaw-cracking rigging tutorial from the Love, Death & Robots rigger.
• 17.02.2021: 3D props for setting fire to grass burners: things get dangerous in the Gnomon Workshop.
• 13.10.2020: Into the fiery stream of vines with champagne simulation: Refuelling your workflow with bubbly.
• 1.09.2020: Hair simulation: Didn’t manage to train as a hairdresser? Snip it now with Grooming in Yeti!

The post Lighting in Unreal Engine 5: More than just lumens! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.