Katana + RenderMan

Katana's powerful and flexible look development environment combined with RenderMan's state-of-the-art rendering technology come together to offer the user a remarkable out-of-the-box experience for for high-end lighting and rendering. RenderMan for Katana (RfK) provides seamless access to RenderMan's powerful rendering system for Katana users, who can take advantage of the plugin's flexibility to create an optimal, customized pipeline.

About the Plugin

The RenderMan plugin for Katana plays a dual role in a production pipeline; it is the bridge by which a user generates rendered images from a Katana scene as well as the provider of access to the tools for building the 3D elements within the scene.  Although RfK is generally referred to as a "plugin" it is in actually a collection of plugins, nodes, macros and other tools which together allow the Katana user full access to the PRMan rendering system. Included in the RfK plugin package:

• Rendering plugin
• Renderer introspection plugin
• Device drivers for Preview and Live rendering are now combined
• GafferThree extensions for PRMan lights
• Viewer manipulators and modifiers for PRMan lights
• Macros for features such as Denoise and Holdouts
• Nodes for PRMan render configuration
• Tutorial scenes

There is no need to "load" the RfK plugin.  Once it is installed and configured Katana will find the package automatically and load the various modules as needed.

Live Rendering

Vastly improved Live Rendering is iterative rendering where you can change parts of your scene and see it update in the render.  Live rendering improves lighting and shading iteration. RfK supports offers the following features:

• Edits to material parameters, adding/deleting, and editing of shading nodes
• Edits to attributes and transform of lights and light filters, including mesh lights.
• Edits to shapes and transforms for objects
• Import and Export assets while Live Rendering
• Object ID picker functionality during live rendering.
• Addition of lights (analytic and mesh) and object creation during live rendering.
• Live updates of renderSettings (ROI, cropWindow)
• Live updates of PrmanGlobalStatements (as supported by PRMan)
• Live authoring of AOVs

Plugin Customization

RenderMan For Katana supports studio customizations as much as possiblecustomization via custom Ops.