KATANA | Mastering LookDev & Lighting for the VFX industry

What you'll learn

Be able to fully control and understand Katana to help you get started in the industry
Gain important software requirement skills in Katana for job applications
Hands-on information and workflows from experienced artist
Creating tools to help you become more efficient as an artist in the industry
Develop Macros, OpScripts and other helper tools
Becoming a versatile artist and land a job in the industry
Fulfill the additional application requirement to be proficient in katana.

Requirements

A technical understanding is needed to fulfill this course requirements
Recommended to know Arnold renderer
Problem solving skills and logical thinking
Eager to learn new techniques and workflows
Working with node based editors is a plus

Description

Arvid Schneider is an established artist, who has been working in the professional VFX industry for more than 10 years. He has worked on big blockbusters like Captain Marvel, Aquaman, Ready Player One, Jurassic World, Transformers and many more.

With his knowledge and expertise, Arvid has prepared a detailed course to get to know and understand the industry standard lighting and look development software Katana. This course will help you to jump-start your career by becoming an advanced lighting and shading TD in today's competitive industry.


Disclaimer

This course is tagged for all levels - but it gets Intermediate and Advanced fairly quickly!

This is a technical and artistic course which means that it will contain quite a lot of theory, bit also artistic hands-on lectures.

This course is using Katana for Windows and Arnold as the main software tools. (But all topics can be achieved on Linux or Mac workstations, the same applies for other renderers).


Mastering Katana

Gain real production insights

Fully understand how to work within Katana and to understand important workflows

Create your own powerful macros and templates to organize your work

Technical course on how to create advanced templates within Katana

Advanced LookDev and Lighting practices

Opscripts, Graph State Variables, Reference Expressions, Macros, Live Groups, Variable Switches


Brief Overview

Introduction to Katana - installation, navigation, UI

Principles of Look Development and Lighting

Creating advanced and versatile Look and Lighting templates

Look development of production assets

Shot lighting of production assets

Rendering shots

Compositing


Accomplishments

You will be able to fully work with Katana at a high level.

Directly jump into a VFX company with advanced knowledge in templates and workflows.

Create and customize custom workflows.

Develop tools and macros.

What this course is NOT

Not teaching a specific renderer (Course is applicable to other renderers).

Not about modelling, texturing or animation.

Will not teach about Python or Lua or other programming languages.

Who this course is for:

Students who want to work professionally in the VFX industry and need a good understanding of the software Katana
Beginner level artists curious to learn VFX standards
Artists who want to add another set of tools to their toolbag