Ruth Hutton
← All work

Campaign

Growing trial downloads through the RenderMan Challenge

I proposed a collaboration between Katana and RenderMan’s annual Art Challenge, offering a 90-day Katana licence to everyone taking part. I co-ran the campaign with Marketing, creating tutorials and launcher scripts, and it drove a 60% increase in trial downloads.

The RenderMan Art Challenge landing page with the Katana getting started video and downloads, beside the challenge template scene in KatanaAssets provided by the RenderMan Art Challenge

The challenge

Without a non-commercial version of Katana, it’s difficult for people to learn the tool outside a studio or school. Our existing 30-day trial doesn’t always give enough time to learn it properly.

What I did

I proposed that we partner with RenderMan for their annual Art Challenge and provide a Katana licence to all entrants for the full 90 days of the challenge.

Alongside the licence, I created a series of tutorials to help people get started with Katana specifically for the challenge, set up downloadable launcher scripts for Windows and Linux, and helped build an example Katana scene using the challenge assets.

Everything was hosted on a landing page built by Marketing, and we announced the offer at SIGGRAPH.

Outcome

Entrants were able to use Katana for the challenge, which led to more entries made with Katana and a 60% increase in trial downloads overall.