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Katana 3.0v5 Release Notes

Release Date

12 October 2018

Previous Releases

• Katana 3.0v4 Release Notes

System Requirements

Officially Supported Operating Systems

  • Windows 7 64-bit or higher
  • Linux 64-bit operating system (CentOS/RHEL 6)

Hardware Requirements

Minimum Recommended
CPU Dual-core processor
Storage 1+ GB available for installation
System RAM 1+ GB available
Graphics RAM 1+ GB available 2+ GB available
Display 800 x 600 1920 x 1080
OpenGL OpenGL 4.3+

'Recommended' does not guarantee that it meets your particular needs

Tested Workstation Hardware

The configurations listed below are those that Foundry have tested with Katana. Due to the constantly changing nature and wide variety of computer hardware available in the market, Foundry is unable to officially certify hardware. The list below can be used as a recommendation and does not guarantee that it meets your particular needs.

  • NVIDIA Quadro M4000

  • NVIDIA Quadro P4000

  • NVIDIA Quadro K4000

  • NVIDIA Quadro K6000

Please download and install the latest graphics driver from the NVIDIA website.

If you encounter any issues, please contact Customer Support directly through the Support Portal at the following address: https://support.foundry.com.

What's New in Katana 3.0

These release notes describe changes from Katana 3.0v4 to 3.0v5.

For an overview of all changes in the Katana 3.0 line, please see the accompanying What's New in Katana 3.0 document.

Feature Enhancements

Hydra Viewer

  • TP 363730 - With the pointer over a viewport of the Viewer (Hydra) tab, the C key can now be pressed to switch the built-in persp camera between perspective and orthographic projection, as in the OpenSceneGraph-based Viewer tab.

Bug Fixes

Modifications of local Graph State using NodeTypeBuilder

A number of bugs related to nodes that reference local Graph State Variables created via "explicit input requests" from buildOpChain() functions of NodeTypeBuilder-defined node types were identified. In order to address them, a new method for modifying local Graph State has been added to the NodeTypeBuilder class. A migration guide for existing NodeTypeBuilder-defined node types has been added to the Katana Developer Guide.

  • TP 339159 - Parameter interfaces for Material nodes and NetworkMaterialParameterEdit nodes are now affected by both global and local Graph State (such as when using VariableSet nodes).

  • TP 354556 - NodegraphAPI.Node.getGraphState() considers local Graph State modifications made by NodeTypeBuilder-defined node types after migrating them from using "explicit input requests" from a buildOpChain() function to using the new getInputPortAndGraphState() method.

  • TP 357925 - With the Dim Nodes Not Contributing to Viewed Nodes toggled menu item in the Edit menu of the Node Graph tab turned on, VariableEnabledGroup nodes that reference local Graph State Variables that are set using NodeTypeBuilder-defined node types are dimmed correctly after migrating them from using "explicit input requests" from a buildOpChain() function to using the new getInputPortAndGraphState() method.

  • TP 358933 - With the Dim Nodes Not Contributing to Viewed Nodes toggled menu item in the Edit menu of the Node Graph tab turned on, nodes upstream of VariableSwitch nodes that reference local Graph State Variables that are set using NodeTypeBuilder-defined node types are dimmed correctly after migrating them from using "explicit input requests" from a buildOpChain() function to using the new getInputPortAndGraphState() method.

  • TP 364945 - Parameter interfaces for RenderSettings nodes were only affected by global Graph State, and not by local Graph State such as when set using VariableSet nodes.

Hydra Viewer

  • TP 347417 - The Viewer Object setting hide did not affect proxy geometry and bounding boxes.

  • TP 352286 - Bounds (and extents) were not returned correctly in the Viewer Delegate for the Hydra Viewer. Viewer Delegate Components (VDCs) were not traversed in the correct order, therefore custom VDCs could not override the behaviour returned by the StandardLocatorsVDC, which was always the first VDC to be evaluated (and accepted).

  • TP 355261 - On certain machine configurations, the Hydra Viewer had been observed to have a slightly unsmooth refresh rate.

  • TP 359690 - When viewing a piece of broken geometry in Hydra, if facesets were present in the scene graph, the Hydra Viewer would crash. Katana now validates geometry when it is first imported into the scene to prevent crashes when parsing geometry data.

  • TP 357742 - Polymesh locations without normals were incorrectly shaded in the Hydra Viewer. Locations of type subdmesh will still be drawn as shaded even if normals are not provided.

  • TP 361019 - When interacting with a Hydra Viewer before it renders the first frame, Katana could crash.

  • TP 364934 - When setting the view mode in the Viewer (Hydra) tab to Flat Shaded, point cloud objects disappeared, and errors appeared in the console.

Other Bug Fixes

  • TP 356537 - The Copy as XML command in the context menu of an entry on the Keyboard Shortcuts tab incorrectly copied the default keyboard shortcut into the resulting XML text, rather than the current keyboard shortcut.

  • TP 356501 - The class UI4.Widgets.TextInfoDialog was defunct and has been removed.

  • TP 362672 - Errors that occurred during the copying of a large number of nodes in the Node Graph tab could lead to the progress dialog not being closed, seemingly hanging the Katana application.

  • TP 363457 - Persisting of catalog items for renderer plugins that use 64 bit object IDs resulted in corruption of the ID data. The ID image is now written to disk using 32 bits per channel, which results in the correct object IDs being retrieved.

  • TP 361351 - Changes to local Graph State made by nodes created with NodeTypeBuilder did not immediately redraw the Node Graph view. Local Graph State changes now immediately update in the Node Graph.

  • TP 365722 - The trial license dialog incorrectly indicated a 15-day trial period. It has been updated to show the correct number, which is 30 days.

Documentation

  • TP 346542 - The Viewer API documentation in the Katana Developer Guide contained a number of superfluous colons, typos, and other issues. Most notably, the page documenting the Viewport class wrongly contained everything from the Foundry::Katana namespace.

  • TP 365848 - The documentation of the Cook Interface (C++) in the Katana Developer Guide wrongly contained the documentation of the entire Foundry::Katana namespace.

  • Ambiguities in the documentation for instance IDs have been fixed to increase clarity.

  • TP 241289 - Documentation for the geometry.arbitrary.<group>.isArray attribute convention has been added.

  • The NodeTypeBuilder page of the Katana Developer Guide now includes a migration guide describing the changes for defining Nodes that modify Graph State. The migration guide shows:

    • How NodeTypeBuilder created Nodes could modify Graph State using "explicit input requests", which should be avoided in the future.
    • How the new getInputPortAndGraphState() method should be used by Nodes to modify Graph State.

Known Issues

Live Groups

  • TP 85118 / BZ 41152 - When editing parameters of a node that is part of a LiveGroup node and reloading the parent LiveGroup node, the UI state of the Parameters tab is reset. This includes scroll bar positions, selections of items, and selections of nested tabs (for example Object, Material and Linking tabs for a Gaffer node).

  • TP 84998 / BZ 41092 - When reloading a LiveGroup node's parameter interface and contents from its source, parameters of child nodes that are edited in floating panes disappear from those panes.

  • TP 84020 / BZ 40598 - Reverting a LiveGroup node does not revert its user parameters.

  • TP 84019 / BZ 40599 - Parameters that are added to LiveGroup nodes are wrongly discarded when performing a reload from source, leading to loss of data.

  • TP 84018 / BZ 40600 - Undoing a revert of an unpublished LiveGroup node does not restore the LiveGroup's editable and modified state.

  • TP 83061 / BZ 40237 - Nodes can be dragged into the Group bubble of a non-editable LiveGroup node.

Materials

  • TP 269449 - Choosing Edit Shader Parameters from the main wrench menu of Material nodes does not show wrench buttons next to shader parameters. This can be worked around by toggling the edit flag on the node.

  • TP 199304 - The namespace parameter on Material nodes wrongly allows the insertion of Unicode codepoints outside the ASCII range.

  • TP 191052 - Katana does not have any support for the texture reference object workflows of V-Ray for Maya.

Parameter Expressions

  • TP 188533 - Expressions linked to non-local parameters on not previously edited Material nodes can't be evaluated.

  • TP 105434 / BZ 47520 - Reference Expressions may not refer to dynamic parameters such as shader parameters.

  • TP 60457 / BZ 31790 - Setting an array or group parameter to an expression results in an invalid expression. Upon setting a valid expression (for example, an evaluation of an equivalent parameter on another node using getParam), the parameter is not immediately updated. To workaround this issue, close and reopen the parameter, or flush caches while the node is not edited.

Rendering

  • TP 344118 - (Windows only) When installing Katana and opting to install the bundled version of 3Delight, the installation of 3Delight is made by modifying system-wide environment variables such as KATANA_RESOURCES. Thereafter, launching any version of Katana will pick up this installation of 3Delight, which may be incompatible with the version of Katana being launched.

    NOTE: This does not affect Linux, where a bundled 3Delight installation is tied to its corresponding Katana installation.

  • TP 208802 - Closing the Histogram tab after use leaves the Monitor tab unable to display rendered images.

  • TP 176598 - Use of nodes that modify Graph State Variables in Interactive Render Filters is not currently supported.

  • TP 114182 / BZ 49288 - When exporting a Catalog item you need to specify the export folder path to an existing folder. If the folder you're trying to export to does not exist on disk Katana will fail to export.

  • TP 94052 / BZ 44199 - The Repeat Previous Render menu command only works on renders started from a 3D node's context menu.

  • TP 74799 / BZ 36926 - The rendererSettings > displayOptions parameter of a RenderOutputDefine node for the PRMan renderer, shown when its type parameter is set to 'raw', cannot be set using the Parameters tab.

  • TP 12517 / BZ 16168 - Only one Monitor tab may display the results of a Preview Render. The use of multiple Monitor tabs is not currently supported.

Widgets

  • TP 123558 / BZ 50911 - When changing an array parameter's tuple count/size, any corresponding attributes are not properly updated in the Attributes tab.

  • TP 65347 / BZ 34949 - Using Compiz can lead to text fields not receiving focus events correctly due to an incompatibility between Compiz and Qt. Depending on your configuration, disabling Compiz "desktop effects" may resolve the problem.

Miscellaneous

  • TP 337653 - Katana logs deprecation warnings when loading the 'PyMockAsset', 'PyMultiMockAsset' and 'PyMockFileSeq' shipping example Asset API plug-ins.

  • TP 218742 - (Windows only) Katana must be installed to a path no longer than ~140 characters. Attempting to install to a longer path results in an unintuitive error: "The system cannot find the path specified."

  • TP 112544 / BZ 49051 - The Viewer tab may lose sync with the Scene Graph tab when changes to expansion state are interrupted.

  • TP 107038 / BZ 47853 - Indication of attribute source nodes (such as the yellow 'glow' in the Node Graph tab) is unavailable as of Katana 2.0v1.

  • TP 84326 / BZ 40709 - The Alembic library does not support multiple process or thread access to an Alembic file. This means that a crash occurs when modifying an Alembic file outside Katana, while it's loaded in an open Katana scene. To avoid this, you must Flush Caches before attempting to update any modified Alembic files.

  • TP 80738 / BZ 39261 - Operations that lock and unlock nodes do not currently create entries in the Undo History, which can lead to an incorrect node graph state when undoing and redoing operations.

  • TP 71965 / BZ 36691 - State badges are currently shown for attribute values of dynamic array child parameters, even though only their parent array parameter should appear with a state badge.

  • TP 70217 / BZ 36176 - The 2D node Disk Render Upstream Render Outputs option does not use the batch render method, batchRender, for upstream render nodes, instead using diskRender.

  • TP 70196 / BZ 36170 - Control keys (notably arrow keys) do not function as expected in shell mode.