Katana, what is it for?

Javi007

Hello, I have noticed that Katana (or similar software ) are used at film studios.

But, what is that used for? I mean, you can reder in Maya, 3DMax... using Vray, Arnold...
You can use vray or Arnold in Katana. But what is it used for? 
What differences does it have with softwares like 3DMax?

Thanks

throttlekitty

Katana is a standalone app designed to handle lighting and lookdev, and send that to render. That's pretty much it- it's more about the method and being able to make changes quickly.

I've never used it personally, but I've had a taste of managing and lighting large scenes in Maya and it can be rough. My understanding is that it's great when you have assets coming from multiple studios in massive scenes. Big characters, VFX, lots of environment work, one person might be doing lookdev on an earlier version of a character, while a modeler is actively working on it, and the lighting artist is also getting the scene it will be used in built up. In Maya at least, swapping out materials quickly for any given asset isn't a fun task, but something that Katana can be handling.

oglu

its like nuke but for scene building... every assets that gets updated will be loaded into katana... in kata itself you have no geometry...everything gets loaded from disk if you load/refresh the scene or node... but you dont have to... you could open up the scene without loading the geometry and hit render and you get an image... its designed to manage huge scene...

you cant model in there... you cant rig there... its only used to loead final assets coming from maya, max or modo...

its a pipeline tool for studios... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYIfo91Jp18

Javi007

Thanks. I guess it is pointless to use for small scenes