Reliance is already a user of The Foundry’s Nuke compositing solution. Katana operates non-destructively using a rule-based approach that allows modeling, look development, animation and lighting teams to work in parallel.

“Katana is changing the lighting mindset,” says David Fowler, head of technology at Reliance MediaWorks UK. “The industry is very excited and adopting Katana is definitely helping us attract the best lighting talent — they can’t wait to get their hands on it. Katana gives us an off the shelf solution that would otherwise take 12-18 months to write ourselves and would require continual support.”

Katana 1.0 was released in October 2011.