Katana — Powerful look development and 3D lighting software

Take control of your next project.

A still of Spider-Man with his arms behind his head high above a city landscape, taken from the Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse film.

What is Katana?

Fast and formidable, Katana is a look development and lighting powerhouse, tackling creative challenges with ferocity and ease. It arms artists with the creative freedom and scalability to exceed the needs of today’s most demanding CG-rendering projects.

Features

Studios

Power up your pipeline

Flexible USD-optimised tech, combined with numerous APIs, and multiple commercial renderers, make Katana the Swiss Army knife of your pipeline.

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Pioneering rendering

Katana’s Foresight Rendering workflows, comprised of Multiple Simultaneous Renders and Networked Interactive Rendering, provide artists with scalable feedback for faster iterations.

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Artists

Artist-focused lighting

Light at the speed of thought thanks to cutting-edge Lighting Tools, empowering artists to light whole sequences of shots with Katana’s industry-leading, multi-shot workflows.

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Collaborative look development

Katana is made to drive the look development of hero or high-volume assets while seamlessly collaborating with shot production.

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Katana 7.0  What's new

Start your USD journey with Katana 7.0 and experience the best of both worlds. Now you can get hands on with USD native-workflows and benefit from Katana’s powerhouse Lookdev and Lighting tools. Katana 7.0 also brings with it a shared framework with Nuke, plus a core series of nodes, enabling effortless native USD scene manipulation, so Katana fits smoothly into your pipeline, saving further development time and headaches.

Render updates are now up to twice as fast, thanks to a series of performance improvements, meaning you can spend more time on what really matters — your creative work. With Live Rendering now multi-threaded, Katana 7.0 can meet ever-increasing industry demands, providing you with a robust, reliable, and high-performance tool.

Take me to Katana 7.0

Benefits

Studios

Improve your ROI
  • • Work in parallel across multiple stages of production
  • • Speed up production processes
  • • Achieve more within a day’s work
  • • Get the most out of your resources
World-class technology
  • • Use Katana, Nuke, and Mari together for unmatched power
  • • Unlock pioneering production rendering workflows
  • • Enjoy seamless integration with multiple renderers, APIs, and USD

Artists

Hassle-free creativity
  • • Implement art direction with precision
  • • Make the right choices faster
  • • Avoid layers of technical complexity
  • • Solve problems faster and tackle the next challenge sooner
Perfect for teams
  • • Share work seamlessly
  • • Harmonize across departments
  • • Safely integrate updates from downstream departments
  • • Make and share tools that solve group problems

30 days to lighting success

Want to maximize your trial? Follow our calendar, and by the end of the 30 days, you’ll go from learning key concepts to discovering collaboration through LiveGroups and everything in between. Get ticking and reach your goals!

Claim your calendar here

Debunking the myths of visual effects pipeline integration

USD made easy: Katana ships with a ready-made USD plug-in to make the move to USD as cohesive and seamless as possible.

Vital integrations and collaborations are at the core of Katana, including render farm plugins like Deadline and Qube, and leading asset management software. This ensures Katana's compatibility with any pipeline.

Our teams are committed to supporting your studio’s switch to Katana and making its integration into your pipeline easy and seamless. To learn more about the deployment process, watch Katana Deployment Essentials

  • Education
  • Team
  • Enterprise

Student Licenses

  • See if you qualify for our student license
  • No product limitations: includes access to full Modo capabilities, plus premium content
  • For full-time school or university students
  • Please use your university email address to apply
  • Must be a new Foundry customer

Classroom Licenses

  • Discounted packages for production, VFX and 3D design
  • No product limitations
  • The Education Collective - our production workflow package
  • Get in touch with our Education team below

Faculty Licenses

  • For teachers and educators
  • Get the Education Collective for the same price as students
  • Includes full product versions of Nuke, Cara VR, Mari, Katana and Modo
  • Education licenses may not be used on commercial projects

Online Programs

  • For teachers and educators who do not qualify for our traditional Education program
  • Instructors for courses on Nuke, Mari, Katana and Modo
  • Apply to see if you're eligible for discounts

Exclusively available to new customers requiring up to 10 interactive seats
Minimum 3 year term

Subscribe $2,499/yr*
  • Interactive artist session license
  • 3Delight interactive rendering included. Other renderers require their own license
  • Access to technical support
*Price subject to applicable taxes
Subscribe $209/yr*
  • Unlock Katana’s Foresight Rendering power
  • Allows the use of Katana in batch, shell, and script mode
  • Required for command-line rendering with any renderer plugin
*Price subject to applicable taxes

Available to existing customers, and studios requiring more than 10 interactive seats

Subscribe $4,409/yr*
  • Interactive artist session license
  • 3Delight interactive rendering included. Other renderers require their own license
  • Access to technical support
*Price subject to applicable taxes
Subscribe $339/yr*
  • Unlock Katana’s Foresight Rendering power
  • Allows the use of Katana in batch, shell, and script mode
  • Required for command-line rendering with any renderer plugin
*Price subject to applicable taxes

Katana and Mari: the ultimate look development software duo

Interoperability between Katana and Foundry’s 3D texture painting tool Mari is a huge part of Katana’s past and future development plans to streamline look development workflows everywhere.

Mari is built for today’s most complex creative challenges. It ships with the Arnold Standard Surface, V-ray, and 3Delight render engines, plus RenderMan for Mari. Using these, artists can paint textures in Mari with a higher degree of confidence that their art will look correct in the final render. This reduces feedback loops between Mari and Katana and offers a smoother look development process.

Discover Mari

Who’s using Katana

FAQ

How long does it take the average user to get used to Katana?

Artists who only have to work in a Katana pipeline can be trained in a day.  Most people are very comfortable in their first week. Staff that need to make pipeline choices, teach others, etc. will need more time if they are new to Katana. If you need support with Katana, download our free 30 days to success Katana calendar with the latest tutorials, tips and tricks to support you on your journey.

Where can I find Katana tutorials?

For tips, tricks and tutorials to help you get up to speed with Katana, please visit the Katana Foundry Learn page.

How long does it take to get Katana set up in my pipeline?

This depends on how complex your existing pipeline is and what needs to be changed. Some clients have produced commercial work in the first month, whereas others have taken several months. Contact Foundry to discuss how long it might take your team.

Where can I find case studies about studios like mine using Katana?

Studios of all sizes find success with Katana. Check out our Insights Hub for stories on how Katana works as part of a wider pipeline, different use cases and processes, and the benefits it brings to look development and lighting workflows.

What training resources and opportunities are there for studios and artists getting set up with Katana?

Foundry has an ever-growing set of learning resources. Independent artists and some schools have published resources. Katana licenses are available for individuals automatically for 30 days with the option to ask for a further 60-day extension if they are learning Katana at home.

How many Renders do I need per GUI?

This varies based on your particular scenario, but we typically see clients using 10–20 render licenses for each interactive license. Most clients use at least five render licenses per interactive license. With the Katana 4 Foresight workflows, render licenses can power additional interactive capacity for artists.

What is the licensing model?

Find out more about purchasing and licensing with our Licensing FAQs

Experience Katana

 

Get first-hand insight into how exactly Katana can fit into your pipeline.

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Discover the creative capabilities of Katana with a free 30-day trial.

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