The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have announced that the original creators of KATANA will be presented with a prestigious Academy Technical Achievement Award on 9th February in Los Angeles.
Sony Pictures Imageworks engineers Steve LaVietes, Brian Hall and Jeremy Selan created the software as an in-house lighting and scene management solution for Sony Pictures Imageworks almost ten years ago. KATANA has been used in production by Sony Pictures Imageworks artists since 2004 on more than 30 productions, including Men in Black 3, The Amazing Spider-Man and Oz the Great and Powerful. A rewarding relationship The Foundry entered into a technology sharing agreement with Sony Pictures Imageworks in November 2009 and released KATANA 1.0 in October 2011. Since then, the two companies have been working together to ensure the successful use and integration of each other's technology; exchanging updates and new discoveries. KATANA takes an innovative recipe based approach, enabling facilities large and small to build highly scalable and efficient lighting pipelines without a large internal engineering effort. The Foundry's commercial version of the software takes the KATANA lighting and rendering technology into the wider market. The list of clients includes ILM, MPC and Digital Domain. In 2012 The Foundry's KATANA was picked up by a wide range of studios of various sizes including LAIKA, Mikros Image in Paris, Fido in Stockholm, Newbreed in Montreal and Tippett Studio. This growth is expected to continue in 2013 as VFX facilities recognise the benefits of an industry standard collaborative lighting pipeline. LaVietes comments on behalf of his fellow honorees: For us, the true success of KATANA is seen in its industry-wide adoption and positive impact upon the filmmaking process. The Academy recognition is a wonderful compliment for our work as a team and as a studio. It is truly an honor. Andy Lomas, KATANA Product Manager at The Foundry comments: Its fantastic seeing Steve, Brian, Jeremy and Imageworks getting the credit they are due for their incredible work on KATANA. Even though they have been working on KATANA for nearly 10 years now, it is inspiring to see their continued ambition to take the software even further. This is a vision that we share at The Foundry. Working together with the team at Imageworks, collaborating and sharing code is a real pleasure and invaluable to the future of KATANA.
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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have announced that the original creators of KATANA will be presented with a prestigious Academy Technical Achievement Award on 9th February in Los Angeles. 
