LONDON — VFX software developer The Foundry (www.thefoundry.co.uk) has released Katana 1.0, a new look development and lighting tool that’s designed to replace conventional CG pipelines with a flexible recipe based asset workflow. 

Katana allows for updating of assets once shots are already in progress. Users can share lighting set-ups between shots and sequences. The tool also allows for the use of multiple renderers and specifying dependencies between render passes.

Industrial Light & Magic has purchased a site license of Katana, which it will use on upcoming projects. The tool will be deployed across its San Francisco and Singapore studios. According to ILM VFX supervisor John Knoll, the studio collaborated with The Foundry over the past year, providing feedback on what they wanted to tool to do for their workflow.