Steve LaVietes

With 25 years of experience in visual effects and animation for film, Steve LaVietes began his career as a technical artist on films such as Hollow Man and Spider-Man. As the scope and complexity of the film industry grew, he shifted focus to designing software and platforms to empower other artists. At Sony Pictures Imageworks, LaVietes was the original architect of Katana, an application that provides scalability for rendering and lighting effects. Eventually made available as a commercial product, Katana was adopted by many major animation and visual effects studios. In 2013, LaVietes was honored with a Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the development of Katana. He is currently a supervising lead software engineer at Pixar Animation Studios.