Discover how to create a lighting template in Katana
The Gnomon Workshop has released Introduction to Katana: a detailed introduction to Foundry’s lighting and look development software, recorded by Sony Pictures Imageworks’ Taeyoung Kim.
The workshop, which comprises four hours of video training, explains how to set up a reusable lighting template in Katana, and also covers rendering in Arnold and compositing in Nuke.
A detailed introduction to an industry-standard lighting and look dev tool
During the workshop, Kim provides a detailed introduction to Katana, widely used for lighting and look development work in visual effects and feature animation.
He begins by creating a lighting template in Katana, lighting a simple shot and rendering it using Arnold, then compositing the resulting AOVs in Nuke to create the final result.
The lighting template created during the tutorial can be reused in other projects. Kim also shares his industry tips for setting up accurate lighting using an HDRi and a backplate.
As well as the training videos themselves, viewers can download project files for the workshop, including the base assets and Katana .macro files.
About the artist
Taeyoung Kim is a senior lighting and lookdev TD at Sony Pictures Imageworks. His film credits include Vivo, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Smallfoot and Alice Through the Looking Glass.
He previously worked for a number of other visual effects studios, including MPC and Exile VFX.
Pricing and availability
Introduction to Katana is available via an online subscription to The Gnomon Workshop. Subscriptions cost $49/month or $490/year. You can try the training for free.
Read more about Introduction to Katana on The Gnomon Workshop’s website
Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by Gnomon.