Foundry, the developer of creative software for the Media and Entertainment and Digital Design industries recently released Katana 3.6.
This latest version features fundamental UI and workflow updates with artist-focused snapping functionality that accelerates tasks like light placement. The new Katana 3.6 enjoys the advancements included in 3Delight NSI 2.0, featuring a powerful toon shading toolset, overhauled live rendering, and powerful new texturing tools
The new Network Material Edit node provides a new UX on top of Katana’s industry leading procedural shading workflows. Existing network materials can be edited with minor tweaks or whole new sections of node graph allowing procedural shot based edits. Changes are captured in a color coded UI that clearly document all changes made by any artist facilitating collaboration and subsequent edits..
Katana 3.6 highlights include:
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Snapping in the Hydra powered viewer is just one of many features that have been developed with the specific needs of lighting and look development challenges in mind. Thanks to intuitive visual clues including wireframe, object outline, and face and edge highlighting artists know exactly how they are managing objects.
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The new Material Edit node combines the basis of Katana 3.2’s UI work with the powerful, procedural functionality of the legacy Network Material Splice and Network Material Parameter Edit tools. It offers a natural and intuitive workflow to artists familiar with the Network Material node graph, and a powerful new UX tboosting procedural power across entire look development and lighting teams.
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Dockable Widgets are a key update to its UI with a new modular system, providing the ability to use Dockable areas on the top, bottom, left and right of the UI.
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3Delight NSI 2.0 features a powerful toon shading workflow which can now leverage all the benefits of Katana’s bulk asset look development and sequence based lighting, plus overhauled live rendering and powerful new tools for texture-based look development.
Foundry director of product – pre-production look development & lighting Jordan Thistlewood shared: “Katana 3.6 represents another release that brings us closer to Foundry’s vision of the digital cinematography platform of the future. The work on tools like Snapping is more than just a tool to itself, it is the foundation of much more to come in the future. The new Network Material Edit tool demonstrates our commitment to artist focused UX even in complex production scenarios.
He further states, “Whether an artist is tasked with Look Development or Lighting they can rest assured that Katana is a tool that is being developed to empower them to do their best work. Studios can invest in Katana, confident on the return in their ability to handle increased volumes of production or complexity, raise the quality bar, and control team sizes. Given a track record that spans over a decade of the toughest projects and our plans for 2020 and beyond, Katana is going from strength to strength .”
