The Foundry and Pixar Animation Studios today announced a concerted technical collaboration to bring KATANA and RenderMan together, creating a combined best-of-breed toolset for high-end lighting and rendering.

KATANA will now include a full RenderMan license as standard, along with a base set of shaders and free KATANA batch render licenses to help get the most out of any RenderMan pipeline**, creating a compelling out-of-the box solution. The results of these efforts will be released to all customers inside future releases of KATANA.

KATANA, the premier lighting tool from The Foundry, and Pixar’s RenderMan, which has long been recognized as the industry standard in visual effects and animation rendering, were both recently used together to great effect on Disney/Pixar’s acclaimed short “The Blue Umbrella,” now playing in theaters with “Monsters University.” The successful outcome involved significant dedicated engineering effort from both parties, not only to better support RenderMan workflows, but to build new features into KATANA itself, based upon Pixar’s own creative expertise and production-proven technology.

These continuing developments firmly cement KATANA and RenderMan together as the ultimate rendering and lighting collaboration, while being open and agnostic remains central to both solutions.

Bill Collis, CEO of The Foundry comments:
“We are thrilled to be working with some of the world’s most creative talent at Pixar as well as the RenderMan team. This development cements KATANA’s already impressive pedigree for a piece of commercially available software – this really is the best of innovative lighting in production today.”

Chris Ford, RenderMan Business Director at Pixar comments:
“RenderMan represents the pinnacle of rendering technology and KATANA represents the state of the art in lighting. At Pixar we are proud of how we achieve excellence in look development and our collaboration sets a new standard for lighting and rendering that complements our extensive investment in RenderMan Studio for KATANA. Our end goal is to help create production-efficient software that is not only loved by artists, but also produces the amazing quality that Pixar’s RenderMan is known for.”

**Every KATANA customer will receive one RenderMan Pro Server license incorporated into the first ten KATANA interactive desktop licenses as part of the base package. Each of these KATANA interactive licenses will also come with ten free KATANA batch licenses to support any additional RenderMan renderers on the render-farm.

About The Foundry
The Foundry was established in 1996. It is now the fastest-growing company in its field today, and is internationally renowned for its product design and collaborative and open approach to development.

Led by CEO Bill Collis and a management team that still includes the original founders, The Foundry is backed by The Carlyle Group with a substantial portion still owned by the staff.

In September 2012, The Foundry merged with Luxology, an independent US-based technology company. The Foundry develops award-winning computer graphics and visual effects (VFX) software used globally by leading artists and designers. The portfolio lets users create inspiring and technical high-end visuals across a wide range of industries including film, TV, commercial and games, as well as the CAD, design and architecture markets.

The Foundry has a stable of award-winning 2D and 3D VFX software including NUKE, its industry standard compositor and MODO, the 3D software package that combines modelling, painting, animation and rendering.

The Foundry has established itself as a critical partner to major feature film studios and post production houses worldwide including The Mill, ILM, The Moving Picture Company, Walt Disney Animation, Weta Digital, Framestore, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Digital Domain.

© The Foundry, its logo and product names are registered trademarks in the UK, USA and/or other countries. MODO is a registered trademark in the USA and/or other countries.

About Pixar Animation Studios
Pixar Animation Studios, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, is an Academy Award®-winning film studio with world-renowned technical, creative and production capabilities in the art of
computer animation. Creator of some of the most successful and beloved animated films of all time, including “Toy Story,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Cars,” “The Incredibles,” and “Brave”. Pixar’s films and artists have won 30 Academy Awards® and have grossed more than $7.7 billion at the worldwide box office to date. “Monsters University,” Disney/Pixar’s fourteenth feature, is in theaters now.