External Software

Katana has many dependencies on third-party libraries. Wherever possible, these dependencies are kept internal to the Katana application and do not “leak out” into plug-in code, and as such you should be able to link against your own version of those libraries in your plug-ins. We achieve this using a mix of static linking, restricted symbol visibility (on Linux), and using Foundry-specific namespaces and library names for some libraries.

In some cases, however, this was not possible. For example, you should not attempt to link your plug-in against versions of Python, Qt or PyQt other than the version used by Katana.

If you do experience compatibility problems, please do report them to our support team, as we’re always looking for ways to improve the product.

Note

Switching out libraries Katana depends on with your own is something that should be done with care, as it makes your Katana installation harder for us to support. Wherever possible, you should consider static linking, namespacing or other methods of symbol versioning so that Katana and your plug-in can run different versions of the libraries they depend on.

Library Versions

The following table lists tools and libraries libraries included in or used by Katana, and their current versions. Libraries indicated by “†” cannot easily co-exist with other versions of that library. Generally this is because they are bundled with Katana as a shared library (without a Foundry-specific symbol namespace or library name) or have a Python component.

Name Version Notes
Alembic 1.6.1  
Base32    
Boost 1.61  
Breakpad    
bsd-xdr   Windows-only
Cg † 3.0.0016  
cgkit 2.0a5  
cppzmq    
Curl † 7.53.0  
decorator † 3.4.0  
DSONoises    
enum † 0.4.4 Python library.
Expat 2.2.0  
fmt 4.1.0  
Fpconst 0.7.2  
Freetype 2.5.0.1  
FTGL 2.1.3  
GCC 4.8.2 Linux-only.
GLEW † 1.13.0  
Graphviz 2.28.0 Linux-only.
HDF 5.1.8.7  
Intel Runtime Libraries 17.1.143  
Intel TBB 2017 Update 8  
JPEG 6b  
libc++ 4.0  
Libpng 1.4.8  
Libtiff 3.9.4  
Log4cplus 1.0.4  
Lua 5.1.5  
LuaJIT 2.1.0b3  
Minizip 1.1  
Netlib † 1.14.0 Linux-only.
OpenColorIO 1.0.9  
OpenEXR 2.2.0  
OpenImageIO 1.5.20  
OpenSceneGraph † 2.8.3  
OpenSSL † 1.0.2g  
OpenSubdiv 3.1.1  
Ptex 2.1.28  
PyGraphviz † 1.1 Python library. Linux-only.
PyOpenGL † 3.0.1 Python library.
pyparsing † 1.5.3 Python library.
PyQt † 5.6 Python library. Katana uses the v2 API.
Python † 2.7.13  
PyZeroMQ † 16.0.2 Python library.
Qt † 5.6.1  
qt-json 20121115  
RapidJson 1.1.0  
SIP † 4.18.1 Python library.
Skein 1.1  
USD 19.05 Modified, and Foundry namespaced.
Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 Windows-only.
VXL 1.10.1 Windows-only.
ZeroMQ 4.2.1  
Zlib 1.2.5  

VFX Reference Platform

The table below lists the tools and libraries used by Katana that are also part of the VFX Reference Platform Calendar Year 2017 specification.

The following table lists the libraries included in or used by Katana, and their current versions. Libraries indicated with “†” indicate that plug-ins cannot readily use another version of that library.

Name CY2017 Version Katana Version
Alembic 1.6.x 1.6.1
Boost 1.61 1.61
GCC 4.8.2/4.8.3 4.8.2
glibc 2.12 2.12
Intel TBB 4.4 2017 Update 8
OpenColorIO 1.0.9 1.0.9
OpenSubdiv 3.1.x 3.1.1
OpenEXR 2.2.x 2.2.0
Ptex 2.1.28 2.1.28
PyQt † 5.6 5.6 (with SIP 4.18.1)
Python † 2.7.5 - 2.7 latest 2.7.13
Qt † 5.6.1+ (modified) 5.6.1 (modified)