Katana 3.1v7 Release Notes

Release Date

07 October 2019

Previous Releases

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 3.1v6 to 3.1v7.

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

Bug Fixes

Rendering

  • TP 393138 - Rendering with many AOVs slowed down UI performance, and a significant amount of memory got leaked. (The memory leak has existed since Katana 1.0v1, but was exacerbated with changes in Katana 3.1v1.)

    As part of the performance improvements, the KATANA_CATALOG_RECT_UPDATE_BUFFER_SIZE environment variable was substituted by a new environment variable named KATANA_CATALOG_REFRESH_RATE. The new environment variable sets up the frequency rate (in Hertz) in which the Monitor tab will display rectangle updates that have been received from the render plug-in. Previously, the number of refreshes was determined by the number of rectangles updates. Previously, by default, 128 rectangle updates would trigger a repaint, which could be too few in some cases, or too many in other cases. The default value for the new KATANA_CATALOG_REFRESH_RATE environment variable is 100 (Hertz).

    NOTE: A general catalog memory issue remains. See TP 70016 in the Known Issues section.

User Interface

  • TP 391727 - When attempting to edit Conditional Visibility Options or Conditional Locking Options for a user parameter for which more than one conditional option rule is defined, a TypeError exception was raised. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.)

Developer Guide

  • TP 405579 - The Katana version number in the Katana Developer Guide was hard to read due to insufficient contrast between the text and background colors.

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 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 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.