LONDON — The Foundry’s Katana has been licensed by Reliance MediaWorks (www.reliancemediaworks.com), which will used the tool at its UK and Mumbai facilities. The announcement follows site recent license announcements by Digital Domain and ILM. Katana is a look development and lighting software that was originally developed at Sony Pictures Imageworks.
Reliance is already a user of The Foundry’s Nuke compositing solution. Katana operates non-destructively using a rule-based approach that allows modeling, look development, animation and lighting teams to work in parallel.
“Katana is changing the lighting mindset,” says David Fowler, head of technology at Reliance MediaWorks UK. “The industry is very excited and adopting Katana is definitely helping us attract the best lighting talent — they can’t wait to get their hands on it. Katana gives us an off the shelf solution that would otherwise take 12-18 months to write ourselves and would require continual support.”
Katana 1.0 was released in October 2011.