Foundry has unveiled Katana 7.0, the latest version of its flagship look development and lighting tool.
The new version integrates Universal Scene Description (USD) workflows natively, allowing artists to handle USD scenes within Katana, significantly streamlining the production pipeline. This enhancement is expected to solidify Katana’s role in managing complex scenes and foster greater efficiency in the creation process.
With the latest iteration, Katana introduces multi-threaded live rendering, which delivers interactive updates up to twice as fast as before. This feature is designed to boost productivity and performance, enabling artists to work with a smoother and more responsive system.
The update also includes an optimized Geolib3-MT Runtime, focusing on improved memory management. This advancement helps ensure that rendering tasks, whether for a single shot or an entire sequence, can be carried out more effectively, with new caching strategies to fit rendering loads on available farm resources.
In line with the VFX Reference Platform 2023, Katana 7.0 ensures better integration with other Foundry products, simplifying the incorporation of Katana into existing production pipelines.
To support users in leveraging these new capabilities, Foundry also offers Katana Learn, a platform providing tips, tricks, and tutorials on features such as the multi-threaded live rendering and USD scene manipulation, aiming to help artists transform their workflows with the updated toolset.
Find out more on the Katana website.
