Artist-focused look development UX
Katana ships with the industry's most powerful look development architecture and UX. Artists can create incredible look development on a single complex asset or hundreds of variations, all supported by an architecture that allows look development to continue in parallel to shot production.
Manage complex material setups - The Network Material Create node was built to create and manage multiple materials-all part of a node graph system designed to perform efficiently with even the most complex shading networks.Easy procedural edits - Katana's Network Material Edit node provides you with the ability to make procedural edits to network materials made in Katana or imported from USD, coupled with an easy-to-use UI which ensures you can see the full network, plus any existing edits.Your hub for USD based look development - Katana ships with a native USD/Hydra plugin that allows Katana to author, consume and edit USD Preview Surface materials, displayed in full glory in the HdStorm-powered Hydra viewer.
Advanced Look Development Workflows
Katana has several workflows that make it a look development powerhouse for artists, teams and pipelines-from tools that allow senior artists to make look development building blocks that drive consistency of art direction, to tools that allow a single artist to deliver more than anyone could expect.
Multitasking of look development - Materials can store parameters for the surface, displacement or light shaders for multiple renderer plugins at the same time, empowering you to drive both the look of your viewport and any final render with a single assignment.Complexity tamed and shared - Construct Network Materials using a combination of texture maps and renderer procedural nodes in an artist-focused UI. Share nodes between multiple shading networks, and create complex networks with curated controls, exposed for you to adjust without fear of inconsistent art direction.Powerful hierarchical procedural workflows - Variations of assets have never been so easy to look develop as when using Katana's parent and child material toolset, in which all the promoted controls of the parent can be adjusted as procedural overrides on the child material.Make look development modular - Simplify complex shading networks for sharing and reuse by putting them inside Katana's Shading Groups. Here, they can have their inputs and outputs promoted to its surface, shown as custom port connections, with applicable parameters in the parameter interface.