Dive into Avatar with Weta and Katana

In numbers

101

lighting TDs

The high number of Technical Directors showcases the complexity of the lighting challenge.

3,200
shots

A large number of highly complex shots involved the reflection and refraction of water.

18.5
petabytes

The Metkayina Village alone has a staggering 66 billion instances of 2,300 unique assets.

Deferred loading

Built to handle large scripts and complex scenes, Katana enabled Wētā’s artists to create, iterate, and deliver the project’s 3,200 shots efficiently, despite gigantic amounts of data-heavy assets. This enabled them to stay on schedule. “We can work on those assets at a very high level and worry about the lighting, not about managing the scene complexity and shuttling things in and out and saving scenes,” says Sam.

Multi-shot lighting

With such a large number of shots, taking a templated approach was vital. Katana’s multi-shot capabilities meant that the Wētā FX team was able to apply their complex setups seamlessly across multiple shots, delivering high-quality results at speed. “We generally work at sequence level and make shot-level lighting adjustments in our templates,” explains Sam. “We won’t be diving into a single leaf or a gourd, but it’s all there.”

Collaboration with comp

Thanks to Katana’s alignment with Nuke, the studio’s lighting artists were able to easily collaborate with the post-production team, passing work back and forth between lighting and comp. “We've been relying on Nuke as a workhorse to do everything in deep compositing, and we've leveraged it even further to do compositing in reflected and refracted spaces, extending the deep tool set further,” says Sam.

Dive into Avatar:

Dive into Avatar:

The Way of Water with Wētā FX.

In numbers

How Katana powered a watertight workflow.

Deferred loading

Multi-shot lighting

Collaboration with comp

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