Katana 3.2v3 Release Notes

Release Date

22 November 2019

Previous Releases

• Katana 3.2v2 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 3.2

These release notes describe changes from Katana 3.2v2 to 3.2v3.

For a high-level overview of important changes in the Katana 3.2 line, please see the accompanying What's New in Katana 3.2 document.

Feature Enhancements

• TP 278213 - The Attribute Name and Attribute Type widget types have been added to the Widget Type submenu of user parameters of type String. Both types of widgets accept drops of attributes that were dragged from the Attributes tab.

  When dropping a dragged attribute onto a parameter for which the Attribute Name widget type is set, the target parameter's value is set to the full name of the dropped attribute, with names of ancestor group attributes separated by dots, e.g. geometry.fov.

  When dropping a dragged attribute onto a parameter for which the Attribute Type widget type is set, the target parameter's value is set to the name of the dropped attribute's type, e.g. double.

  As part of this feature enhancement, the AttributeSet node type has been modified to use the Attribute Name widget type for its attributeName parameter, and the Attribute Type widget type for its attributeType parameter.

• TP 401303 - Label text to use for a user parameter can now be edited in the Widget Options dialog that can be opened by choosing Widget Options in the wrench menu of the user parameter in the Parameters tab.

• 3Delight has been upgraded to version 1.6.19. For more information, refer to the 3Delight Cloud Changelog.

Bug Fixes

Network Material UI

• TP 391105 - Changes to the metadata of a port of a node via NodegraphAPI.Port.addOrUpdateMetadata() were not registered in Katana's undo history, and could therefore not be undone.

• TP 410638 - When viewing a large shading node network inside of a NetworkMaterialCreate node containing a large number of connections, not all of those connections were drawn correctly.

• TP 411560 - When attempting to reconnect an existing connection from another target input port onto the input port of a multi-input node, e.g. a Merge node, the change in connections wrongly did not take effect. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.2v1.)

Other Bug Fixes

• TP 278383 - When using the attributeName widget type for a parameter on a node and editing the node in the Parameters tab, an exception was raised.

• TP 384342 - When a number parameter was created via Parameter.createChildNumber(), the value stored in newly created parameter would suffer from precision loss. The value was being converted from double to float, and then back to double.

• TP 406476 - When a Preview Render that had been defined with "allow concurrent renders" was triggered, an existing Live Render would be disrupted. Although the Live Render would still continue to render, it would not accept more live updates unless restarted.

• TP 410739 - When the Viewer (Hydra) tab was created, GL errors would appear if no other GL tab was present in the Katana layout.

• TP 411112 - Node buttons, which are shown at the top of parameters of edited nodes in the Parameters tab and at the top of the Scene Graph tab for viewed nodes, wrongly allowed users to rename nodes within locked Group nodes (by clicking them or pressing the Return, Enter, or F2 key while pointing at the node button).

• TP 411167 - Copy-pasting a locked LiveGroup containing a shading node would trigger an infinite loop attempting to update the enclosed shading node's name parameter. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.2v2.)

• TP 411844 - Katana's internal USD now loads plug-ins from paths specified by the FNPXR_PLUGINPATH environment variable and notPXR_PLUGINPATH_NAME. This ensures that it does not attempt to load plug-ins intended for a different USD build (which could otherwise cause Katana to crash).

• TP 411950 - When modifying underlying options string array parameters of Graph State Variables via Python scripting, lists of options in the UI for Graph State Variables were not updated correctly.

  As part of fixing this issue, it is now no longer possible to enter new values for global Graph State Variables in the Graph State Variables popup that can be opened from Katana's main menu bar. This is to prevent typos, and to allow for workflows where options of one global Graph State Variable can be modified in response to changes of the value of another global Graph State Variable, for example populating a number of shots based on the sequence the user has chosen.

• TP 412074 - When attempting to kill an external render that no longer exists, Katana would incorrectly kill the last render (Linux), or crash (Windows).

• TP 412130 - When installing Katana in a file system location whose path contains a ‘#’ character, the default help style sheet was not loaded correctly, causing text in help popups to appear in black.

• TP 413796 - When Katana was fed with certain spurious data in one of the TCP sockets it listens to (typically 16000 and 16100), Katana potentially crashed.

• TP 413863 - When an invalid resolution table file was present, Katana would silently fail to parse it. Misleading division-by-zero errors could appear later on.

Known Issues

Hydra Viewer

• TP 394851 - The Monitor Layer feature in the Viewer (Hydra) tab does not work without a Monitor tab open in the main window layout as well.

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 410474 - In a NetworkMaterialCreate context, shading nodes will appear to shake during ViewState changes, if the node's width is adjusted.

• TP 402064 - In a ShadingGroup node graph, the connection between a Dot node and a shading node port can be wrongly colored in some cases.

• 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 410428 - When starting a debug output render by choosing the Debug > Open [renderer name] [file extension] Output in External Editor command in the context menu of a node, an exception is raised. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.2v1.)

• 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 70016 / BZ 36137 - Rendering repeatedly with a large number of AOVs consumes more and more memory, possibly leading to a crash when running out of memory.

• 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 405950 - If linking Python modules older than USD 19.11, errors will appear at startup, and the shipped USD node types may become unstable.

• 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.