NAB 2011: VFX software company The Foundry will unveil look development and lighting software Katana at NAB next week.

Also on show will be digital production workflow tool Storm together with new releases of Nuke, Nukex and texture and projection painting software Mari.

Katana, which was originally developed at Sony Pictures Imageworks, is described by The Foundry “an environment for preparing 3D assets for rendering.”

The UK-based firm says it will allow artists to define and control the look and lighting of projects whilst maintaining performance with very large datasets.

The software operates “non-destructively”, using a rule-based approach allowing modelling, look development, animation and lighting teams to work in parallel.

The commercial development of Katana was taken on by The Foundry in November 2009. VFX houses MPC and Digital Domain are using Katana in alpha, with a general release slated for “later” this year.

Meanwhile, Mari 1.3 will feature a UV-less texturing workflow with the addition of PTex support, following a technology sharing agreement with Walt Disney Studios. Nuke 6.3 will contain a new deep compositing pipeline, allowing artists to work with deep data from 3D renders.






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