KATANA - Mastering LookDev & Lighting for the VFX industry (Udemy.com)

Advanced Insights to Workflows and Techniques using Arnold

( 31 Reviews )

Created by: Arvid Schneider

Produced in 2022

What you will 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.

Quality Score

Content Quality

Video Quality

Qualified Instructor

Course Pace

Course Depth & Coverage

Overall Score : 92 / 100

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Course 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

Time: 10.5h

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Instructor Details

Arvid Schneider

4.6 Rating
31 Reviews

Arvid loves being creative and technical at the same time, that is why he has been working in the industry as a technical director for leading VFX companies like ILM, MPC, Cinesite. In his 10+ years experience Arvid has worked on several big shows like Transformers, Ready Player One, Jurrassic World, James Bond - Spectre, to name the most recent.

Arvid is specialized in the look development and lighting field, where all the pipeline departments come together to create the final rendered image. Technical and artistic expertise is needed to compete in the high end industry of VFX.
For this reason Arvid is very keen to share and help other artists, new comers or even advanced artists in the look development and lighting field.
Arvid is also developing pipeline optimizations tools to improve efficiency of artists and production. Most of the code is written in python, a little part is C++.
Apart from developing third party tools for rendering packages, he also develops applications for iOS and macOS using Swift.

Reviews

4.6

31 total reviews

5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star

Write a Review

By Andrea Biferi on

Great course. Recommended to everyone that wants to know more about Katana.

By Martin Naydenski on

"Above expectations" is the right way to say it. Really happy with this one. Probably the best software-related training I've seen in a long time! Great stuff!

By Mahendra Pawar on

This course was really cool learned so much about katana, it was too good that arvid has mostly focused on katana software particular instead of adding renderers too into it really enjoyed this tutorial now so exited to complete the assigment

By Kent Sunde on

I enjoyed this course, however the video is at 720p, and the resolution of the screen is much higher, and hard to make out the text. This is an issue when typing the code that the author is entering. Switching to a matching resolution or upping the video stream is what would be needed.

By Felipe Vimeney on

Really impressive and FANTASTIC course!! Arvid is a great teacher and he covers a wide range of knowledge for Katana. It was my first experience with the software and after finishing the course it boosted my knowledge and I'm now able to adjust what I've learned here with the templates we have at the studio. Looking forward for the additional lectures :)

By Edgar Roman Cervantes on

Great course to make yourself comfortable with Katana, especially if you are interested in learn of lookdev industry workflow.Arvid does an excellent job teaching what is necessary to start using Katana professionally and although the workflow you will end up using will depend on your studio, the way Arvid explains each part of the process, makes it easy for you to transfer the knowledge to a new workflow.I think is important to say that the course is great for beginners in Katana, but it is not a good starting point for computer graphics in general. It's really important to have experience with other packages like Maya.

By Dice Saikoro on

A very good course if you are willing to learn Katana. I would love to see another course specially on opscripting and python scripting in Katana.

By Matteo Caruso on

This course is what exactly I aspected from it, a masterclass that goes really deep into the tools, and the logic behind all the best professional lookdev pipeline. Arvid is super in each lesson, He is always precise and clear explaining tools either scripts. Arvid is an awesome artist, and a great teacher, in this course nothing is left behind, all the aspects are faced with semplicity and passion. I really enjoyed this course, and each time I needed some help Arvid was ready to answer my questions. So this course is perfect :D thanks

By on

I've used Katana before so I've known all principles and basics before. But I did not pass any lecture (and I do not recommend doing so) and I found a lot of little useful tips and tricks that gives you new options for your decisions. Tiny diamonds!! Like! He definitely knows what he talking about.This course is as good for beginner as well for experienced users. So most of all, I like technical stuff. May be I would want to see even more like that, but I think it's too personal wish. So I was happy of getting direction to dig that stuff deeply by myself. It really helped me. And by the way, this course is about artistic workflow. And Arvid did great job!

By Valentin NICOLINI on

Really enjoyed this course, i'll recommend it to anyone willing to learn Katana. Worth the investment.

By hailu wang on

This is a professional and comprehensive tutorial for me to learn Katana. Thank you, Arvid.

By Nagy Botond on

Arvid is just a huge gift for the CG students out there. I can't even put in words how much I appreciate him. Honestly, this course is perfect like everything he does. Absolutely recommended. Thank you Arvid.