Release Date

16 September 2019

Previous Releases

• Katana 3.1v5 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 3.1

These release notes describe changes from Katana 3.1v5 to 3.1v6.

For a high-level overview of all changes in the Katana 3.1 line, please see the accompanying What's New in Katana 3.1 document.

Feature Enhancements

• TP 356529 - Example projects can now be opened by double-clicking their respective tree item in the Example Projects tab.

• TP 394987 - The ID of a catalog item is now sent to the renderboot executable as part of the renderboot command line:

  -sequenceID <sequenceID>
  

  The sequence ID can be used to obtain the corresponding catalog item by using a Python function of the CatalogAPI module:

  CatalogAPI.FindCatalogItemBySequenceID(<sequenceID: int>) --> CatalogAPI.CatalogItem.CatalogItem
  

Bug Fixes

User Interface

• TP 208596 - When saving a Katana layout to a file on disk, and restoring the layout, the maximized state was not stored/restored correctly. As part of a fix for this, a new showMaximized attribute is now stored as part of Katana layout XML files.

• TP 253728, TP 304350 - When Katana layouts were saved, the geometry of the panels was being rounded to the nearest tenth, leading to undesirable differences in pane sizes when restoring such layouts.

• TP 283923 - The resizing of item view widgets of various types of nodes in the Parameters tab has been revised to require less precision by replacing tiny corner triangle widgets with large draggable horizontal and vertical dividers. In particular, this change applies to the following types of nodes: GafferThree, Importomatic, LookFileManager, LookFileLightAndConstraintActivator, NetworkMaterial, and all types of nodes that are implemented using PackageSuperToolAPI.

• TP 385179 - When editing a Network Material with page hinting information, an unwanted __i16766396635613626196 parameter (or similar name) appeared.

• TP 404587 - The source file label below the file parameter of ImageRead nodes wrongly appeared with a dark grey text color instead of a light grey text color, making the label impossibly hard to read. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.)

• TP 405262 - When clicking the view selection button at the top of the parameter interface of many 2D nodes, an exception was raised. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.)

Hydra Viewer

• TP 397310 - Geometry was prevented from drawing if arbitrary data other than st or displayColor were invalid. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.0v5.)

• TP 397497 - Improved performance scalability when changing selection in the Hydra Viewer.

• TP 398232 - When making changes to a Katana project's nodes which affect the validity of geometry UV attributes, corresponding primitives were not necessarily updated correctly in the Hydra Viewer, and Hydra error messages might have been printed on each draw until it was updated in other ways, for example by flushing caches.

Other Bug Fixes

• Geolib3's scene data store did not release memory for deleted Ops until they were reused. This memory is now reclaimed when committing the next transaction.

• TP 386841 - When FnGeolibCookInterfaceUtils::cookDaps() was invoked from multiple threads, it would fail to correctly read the default attributes on occasions. This affected Ops that relied on that function, e.g. the AdjustScreenWindowResolve Op, which on occasion failed with an error message: Error getting string value from StringAttribute. The GenericAssign DAP is now thread-safe.

• TP 388426 - When setting the view and edit flags on 2D/Image* nodes, such as ImageRead or ImageBrightness, that were not connected to a valid input, an OverflowError exception was raised. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v3.)

• TP 389565 - When batch rendering a Katana project whose root node was named other than "rootNode", an AttributeError exception was raised. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.)

• TP 394990 - The dead _initKeyboardShortcutCallbacks() Python function was removed from the KeyboardShortcutManagerMixin class, in order to avoid possible confusion about its use.

• TP 397080 - The queuing of Katana EventModule events within (or otherwise during the processing of) Collapsed Event Handlers resulted in incomplete event processing and errors of the following form:

  [ERROR python.root]: A RuntimeError occurred in "EventModuleUI.py": dictionary changed size during iteration
  

  (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v5.)

• TP 397791 - The initialization of plug-ins used by Default Attribute Producers at render time was not thread safe, and could cause the render process to crash.

• TP 404875 - Alembic assets with arbitrary geometry data of type string were not imported correctly by the AlembicIn Op.

• TP 405209 - Warning messages were not consistent between Windows and Linux when loading directory paths into a LiveGroup node's source parameter.

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.

Qt 5

• TP 356345 - Partially covering the Hydra Viewport with a floating tab will cause it to repaint continuously.

Rendering

• TP 381284 - The 3Delight renderer plug-in makes use of source material locations rather than resolved material attributes as a means of de-duplication. This can result in material data being lost when excluding material locations from the Render Working Set during a Live Render session.

• 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 373702 - Clicking in the Viewport and pressing a shortcut whilst the mouse is hovered in another widget will still send the event back to the 'focused' Viewport widget, for shortcuts where the widget hovered over does not handle the shortcut.

• 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 381692 - (Windows only) When logging out and logging back in again, the colors in the UI are incorrect. For example, certain parts of certain types of tabs may appear with a white background color.

• 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.