The Foundry's lighting package is quickly moving to become the industry standard package for high-end visual effects houses worldwide.
KATANA, The Foundry's commercially available software, which was originally developed by Sony Pictures Imageworks (SPI) is becoming the solution of choice, not just for large studios like SPI, Digital Domain, ILM and The Moving Picture Company, but also for smaller mid-sized studios and boutique facilities.
Showing a truly global presence, the list of clients now also includes Mikros Image in Paris, Fido in Stockholm, Newbreed Visual Effects in Montreal and most recently the famous Tippett Studio in Emeryville, CA. Other facilities to pick up KATANA this year include LAIKA, SPIN VFX, MPC and Reliance MediaWorks.
Why did they adopt?
Sanjay Das, CTO at Tippett Studio comments: We really looked at KATANA as a game changer for us. Pipeline is key to our operation and we need to push shots through it fast. KATANA fits the mentality of the way we work. It provides us with industrial strength architecture and is a great foundation to which we can add our own tools. Once integrated, it will replace around 50% of our existing pipeline and in the long term we expect it will improve our efficiency by at least 20%. This kind of streamlining means that KATANA will literally pay for itself.
Mikros is already using KATANA on the CG feature, Astrix and the Land of the Gods.
Fabrice Macagno, CTO at Mikros Image comments: KATANA is going to help us to have a more pragmatic approach to the lighting pipeline and at the same time we expect for it to give lighting artists a smoother and a more intuitive working environment, especially with the node based workflow. With KATANA in our pipeline, we will be able to handle large datasets to work in a full asset driven lighting workflow in a collaborative context and to improve the tools available to lighting artists.
Newbreed in Montreal and Fido in Stockholm are two of the growing number of boutique sized studios to pick up KATANA.
Hubert Maston, CG supervisor, Newbreed Visual Effects comments: KATANA fulfilled all of our principal requirements regarding look development and lighting work and was very easy to integrate. KATANA helps artists to spend all of their time working on what is most important; the final image. And this only results in better looking pictures. KATANA has been a fantastic accelerator in our pipeline development schedule, and enables us to handle volume and complexity in much more efficient manner, and by extension increase our productivity. It makes us able to tackle much more complex work, and much bigger volumes than in the past.
Newbreed will be using KATANA on the upcoming Alex Aja directed feature film, Horns, starring Daniel Radcliffe.
Fredrik Limster, CTO at Fido in Stockholm comments: KATANA is the missing piece to our 3D pipeline puzzle, and is now the tool that glues together all our different 3D departments such as animation, hair and cloth, FX and lighting. The asset based workflow fits extremely well into our pipeline. We have been able to easily integrate our production and asset management with KATANA and have our artists pulling assets from FTrack, our asset management system. The ability to manipulate a scene graph on demand is a huge benefit to our lighters.
The Foundry is continuing its rapid development of KATANA and continues to look at ways of pushing KATANA to its limits.
Bill Collis, CEO at The Foundry comments: KATANA has been undergoing rapid in-house development at The Foundry. Its widespread adoption at a range of facilities is testament to the quality of the software. The way KATANA streamlines and simplifies the process within facilities is really changing the way that teams are working to deliver lighting and CG elements. Artists find it easier, more intuitive and less frustrating and facilities are discovering the cost benefits of choosing a package that ends up paying for itself in a relatively short period of time. The organisational structure KATANA enforces allows them to reduce costs and become more efficient than ever before. KATANA is not just for big studios. Take the KATANA survey and find out if KATANA is an ideal solution for you.
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The Foundry's lighting package is quickly moving to become the industry standard package for high-end visual effects houses worldwide. 
