Katana 3.1v5 Release Notes

Release Date

18 June 2019

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 to 3.1v4 to 3.1v5.

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

Feature Enhancements

• Support for collapsed event handlers, which receive events of the same type to be processed in batches in a single handler call, have been reinstated. This notably improves performance.

• TP 391983 - The Viewer API is now able to cook multiple Viewer Proxy Op chains per Viewer update (up to a fixed limit, currently set at 1024). Distinct, uncached proxies are therefore now produced at a much higher rate.

As part of this change, the asynchronous Geolib Runtime (used by the Katana UI) has been made more responsive to changes committed as transactions in the specific case that multiple Geolib Runtime Clients are scheduled to cook individual, costly scene graph locations.

Bug Fixes

• TP 129361 / BZ 51777 - Katana set the RenderMan RMAN_DSOPATH environment variable during application startup to an out-of-date value. Now, Katana no longer sets that environment variable.

• TP 386322 - When making a connection to a node's input port via the port's context menu, Katana crashed. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.)

• TP 387349 - When calling Interface.RenameChild() in an OpScript node's Lua script with the same source and destination scene graph location name, the location in question was wrongly deleted.

• TP 387484 - When undoing/redoing interactive transform edits in the Hydra Viewer, a Live Render using RenderMan did not update correctly. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.0v4.)

• TP 389671 - When right-clicking inside the Material Interface tree widget of an edited NetworkMaterial node and clicking away to dismiss the context menu, an additional context menu appeared. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.)

• TP 389706 - When choosing a version of a Look File with Enforce this Version being enabled in the parameter interface of a LookFileManager node, a Python exception was raised. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.)

• TP 390136 - When loading a Katana project that contained a non-contributing, dimmed node while launching Katana, e.g. by specifying an --asset to load from the command line, all nodes were incorrectly dimmed in the Node Graph tab after load. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.)

• TP 390883 - When loading a Katana project containing LiveGroup nodes whose disable parameter was controlled via Python-based parameter expressions, a Python exception was raised due to infinite recursion. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1. As part of a fix for this issue, calls of Utils.EventModule.ProcessAllEvents() and Utils.EventModule.ProcessEvents() while events are already processed are ignored now. This avoids overloading the Python stack unnecessarily.

• TP 392102 - When adding a light to a GafferThree node via the Parameters tab while Katana's 3D Update Mode was set to Pen-up, an exception was raised. In certain circumstances, new lights were then created every time the user triggered a 3D update or flushed caches. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v3.)

• TP 392701 - No warning dialog was displayed when saving a project with unpublished LiveGroups in Edit mode, potentially resulting in changes being accidentally discarded. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.)

• TP 393425 - When choosing the Search Entire Incoming Scene or Search Incoming Scene from Scene Graph Selection commands in the Action menu of an edited LookFileLightAndConstraintActivator node, an exception was raised. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.)

• TP 393461 - The bound attribute was wrongly documented as being of type float[6] instead of double[6] on the Attribute Conventions > Transformations and Bounds page of the Katana Developer Guide.

• TP 393692 - The getAssetDisplayName() function of a custom Asset API plug-in was called an unusually high number of times during Katana project load.

• TP 394042 - When attempting to bind custom actions against widgets using UI4.App.KeyboardShortcutManager.BindActions(), a Python exception was raised. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.)

• TP 394773 - When loading a Katana project containing thousands of nodes that are connected to a viewed node while the Dim Nodes Not Contributing to Viewed Node or Dim Nodes Unconnected to Viewed Node options in the Node Graph tab's Edit menu were turned on, loading took a lot longer than expected. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.).

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 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 381503 - The 3Delight Shading Nodes layered menu that's available in Katana environments with 3Delight for Katana loaded when pressing the S key with the pointer over a Node Graph tab does not currently support multiple Node Graph tabs: instead of placing created nodes in the Node Graph tab in which the layered menu was shown, the nodes may be created underneath the Group node that was entered in the largest available Node Graph tab.

  • 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 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.