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NewKat Studios Launches RenderKat

NewKat Studios™ today announced the first version of RenderKat™ distributed computation control software. RenderKat software enables studios to distribute and control rendering and compositing tasks.

Burbank, CA – NewKat Studios™ today announced the first version of RenderKat™ distributed computation control software. The new software allows studios to distribute and control rendering and compositing tasks across a network of computers. RenderKat offers users more than other available distributed computation systems because it reflects the frame-based nature of digital effects animation. It enables studio personnel to completely control the rendering process by enhancing command scripts that drive the computation.
“RenderKat has an intuitive UI geared toward the tasks required of a render farm manager,” states Yiotis Katsambas, president of the Burbank-based digital effects, animation, and software company. “But beyond that, RenderKat is not tied to any one particular renderer. It has an open, scriptable control that enables it to be customized to fit a studio’s pipeline.”

Mr. Katsambas went on to state, “I looked at the solutions that were available for distributed render control while working on films such as ‘Prince Of Egypt,’ ‘El Dorado,’ and ‘Spirit.’ There was nothing that did what was required, nothing that had an extensible and scriptable control system, so we developed it ourselves.”

The first release of RenderKat is available online and comes with scripts to drive Maya™, Arnold, RenderMan® and Shake® renderers. More scripts are being developed for other popular programs, such as Lightwave, and Digital Fusion.

RenderKat Specifications

RenderKat is written extensively in C++ and Python. All elements of a rendered scene and project are tracked. Pre- and post- rendering filters of any complexity can be scripted into the rendering process. The frame range specification process allows the user to group frames or specify lists of frames for optimal computing. RenderKat tracks any problem frames and provides a summary report to help find and fix any problems. There are a variety of user-settable fault tolerance parameters that enable the render farm wrangler to adjust the sensitivity based on their network and computer speeds. Since the control scripts are modifiable, RenderKat can be extended by the user to control other distributed computation products which are not initially supported, including proprietary, in-house programs. New control scripts for popular commercial renderers will be distributed on-line by NewKat when available. Because render settings are stored, other artists can examine and duplicate the settings for other shots on the same project.