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28 cgw o c t o b e r • n o v e m b e r • d e c e m b e r 2 0 2 4 f oundry, a leading developer of creative soware for the media and entertainment industry, recently announced the release of Katana 8.0 and Mari 7.1, along with an open beta now available for Nuke 16.0. With the latest updates to Foundry's suite of production-proven tools, studios of all sizes are further supported in building the pipeline they need, both now and in the future. USD roundtripping in Katana As the industry continues to standardize workflows around USD, Foundry is offering its customers even more advanced USD tools and workflows to save time, improve efficiency, and remove devel- opment headaches. Katana 8.0 now comes with complete roundtripping—to and from USD—within the application. With a new USD export feature, all USD changes made in Katana can be exported for re-use in other depart- ments. From lights and materials, to cameras and other geometry, changes can be made and then exported effortlessly, enabling art- ists to use Katana edits in any part of the pipeline. It also includes Pattern-based Collections to enable templates for multiple shots and sequences to be flexible and adaptable. Texturing transformation with Mari With Mari 7.1, artists are empowered to transform the way they paint with new creative workflows in 2D painting and beyond, allowing them to remain fully immersed in their work. Now artists can quickly erase a blemish from an image before projecting, make tweaks, cre- ate decals, and even paint entirely custom patterns from scratch— for unique, fully editable materials. With the powerful new 2D Painting Mode, artists can now easily switch between 2D and 3D painting, or create images on a canvas in 2D and then have a live link between that and their nodegraph in 3D. Artists can easily curate their own modular Smart Mask library, with over 50 Smart Masks and utility nodes from industry professional Stuart Ansley, as well as Johnny Fehr's grunge maps. Introducing multishot workflows in Nuke Nuke 16.0 will soon give artists the option to effectively work with multiple shots at once from one single script—with new features set to enable multishot workflows. Until now Nuke has been developed around single-shot workflows, involving artists recreating the same effect across multiple shots one-by-one, the move to multishot is set to transform the working day of VFX artists. Repetitive tasks such as copy and pasting nodes, recreating changes, and keeping track of edits across multiple scripts drain art- ists' time while increasing risk of errors. Multishot workflows in Nuke 16.0 are set to change that, giving artists time back to focus on cre- ativity. Nuke 16.0 is currently in open beta being tested by studios and artists around the world. For studios yet to update to VFX Ref- erence Platform 2024, the Nuke 15.2 beta is also available access to many of the new features without a pipeline upgrade. working with artists Christy Anzelmo, Foundry's chief product officer notes: "In the current production environment, it's crucial for artists and teams to work as smoothly and efficiently as possible. Across Foundry's portfolio, we've been working to enable artists to focus on creating the best work possible, at scale, with fewer custom workarounds or roundtrips to other applications. The introduction of 2D painting in Mari, native USD roundtripping from Katana, and the upcoming mul- tishot compositing in Nuke deliver new efficiencies that artists and pipelines can take advantage of today. We can't wait to see these tools in the hands of artists!" For more than 25 years, Foundry has advanced the art and tech- nology of visual experience with creative leaders around the globe, including major feature film studios and post-production houses such as ILM, DNEG, Pitch Black, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Wētā FX, Pixar, Marvel, Netflix, Framestore, and Technicolor Creative Stu- dios. In partnership with these companies, Foundry solves complex visualization challenges to turn incredible ideas into reality. Its prod- ucts are used to create breathtaking visual effects and animation on a wide range of feature films, episodic content and commercials. TOOLKIT FUTUREPROOFING & ROUNDTRIPPING FOUNDRY ANNOUNCES NEW UPDATES FOR VFX STUDIOS