Katana 3.5v2 Release Notes

Release Date

07 February 2020

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 3.5

These release notes describe changes from Katana 3.5v1 to 3.5v2.

For a high-level overview of important changes in the Katana 3.5 line, please see the accompanying What's New in Katana 3.5 document.

Feature Enhancements

Network Materials

  • It is now possible to allow users to create instances of custom SuperTools in the context of NetworkMaterialCreate and ShadingGroup nodes, by adding the NodegraphAPI.Context.NetworkMaterial string as a node flavor to the SuperTool node type in question, e.g.

    NodegraphAPI.AddNodeFlavor('MyCustomSuperTool', NodegraphAPI.Context.NetworkMaterial)

    It is also now possible to hide shading node types from the Tab key node creation menu inside of NetworkMaterialCreate and ShadingGroup nodes, by removing the NodegraphAPI.Context.NetworkMaterial string as a node flavor from the renderer-specific shading node type, e.g.

    NodegraphAPI.RemoveNodeFlavor('DlShadingNode', NodegraphAPI.Context.NetworkMaterial)

Performance

  • In certain edge cases, the Op Tree Optimizer would incorrectly identify a chain of Ops that could be collapsed, effectively removing a part of the Op tree. This no longer happens, and the optimizer is much faster at manipulating the tree. Moreover, there are two additional optimization passes: one removes no-ops, and the other flattens hierarchies of Merge Ops into a single Merge Op, saving cook time and memory.

  • The Op Tree Optimizer of Geolib3-MT is now turned on by default. It can be turned off by unchecking sceneTraversal.opTreeOptimizations on a RenderSettings node.

  • TP 421213 - The summary report printed to the Render Log following a Preview Render with Profiling now shows Most costly Nodes and Most costly Ops in two separate tables.

Rendering

  • TP 86310 / BZ 41764 - Support for custom tile locations has been added.

    Previously, the "tile_x_y." prefix was always prepended to the file name of the tiles. Now, the tile path can be customized by defining the following environment variable:

    KATANA_TILE_FILENAME

    These are the wildcards that can be used:

    • @STEM@
    • @EXT@ (includes dot)
    • @COLUMN@
    • @ROW@
    • @COLUMNS@
    • @ROWS@
    • @DEFAULT@ (equivalent to tile_@COLUMN@_@ROW@.@STEM@@EXT@)

    For example, the following setup would append the tile column and row, as well as the total number of columns and rows, to the tile location:

    export KATANA_TILE_FILENAME="@STEM@_(@COLUMN@,@ROW@)_@COLUMNS@x@ROWS@@EXT@"

UI Improvements

  • TP 386749 - It is now possible to drag and drop a NetworkMaterialCreate node onto a MaterialAssign node. Doing so will set the materialAssign parameter of the MaterialAssign node to a Python-based parameter expression that evaluates to the path of the scene graph location that is created by the NetworkMaterialCreate node.

  • TP 415668 - It is now possible to use the Adopt Selected Node Graph Node command in the menu of the materialAssign parameter of a MaterialAssign node with a NetworkMaterialCreate node selected. Doing so will set the materialAssign parameter to a Python-based parameter expression that evaluates to the path of the scene graph location that is created by the NetworkMaterialCreate node.

Other Feature Enhancements

  • TP 370663 - The name of the temporary directory that is created by Katana can now be customized by setting the KATANA_TMPDIR environment variable. Previously, Katana would override the value of that variable with a path pointing to the system's temporary directory.

  • The NodegraphAPI.GetNodeContext() function, which was introduced in Katana 3.2v2, has been renamed to NodegraphAPI.GetNodeGraphContext().

Bug Fixes

Hydra Viewer

  • TP 411247 - Hydra warnings printed to the terminal could display paths relative to internal build environments, rather than absolute paths.

  • TP 418289 - When launching Katana with a layout which contains a Viewer (Hydra) tab that was saved with the Monitor Layer turned on, an invalid camera warning was printed to the terminal.

LiveGroups

  • TP 415990 - Katana would print a benign warning when re-publishing a LiveGroup node without changing the state.

  • TP 419652 - When converting an entered LiveGroup node to a Group node by choosing the Convert to Group command in the context menu of the LiveGroup node's node button, for example in the node path bar at the top of a Node Graph tab, Katana crashed. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.)

Network Materials

  • TP 417213 - Renaming ports on a VariableSwitch node would not update the node's associated patterns parameter.

Performance

  • TP 417237 - When running the scenewalker command-line tool with the --profile flag set, the summary report would not be written to the console.

  • TP 418314 - The UV Viewer tab could slow down Katana UI launch times when present in the layout.

  • TP 420218 - When attempting to access scene graph location delegates from multiple threads, Katana sometimes crashed due to a thead-unsafe data structure in FnScenegraphLocationDelegateCache.

  • TP 420641 - When cooking Op Trees with multiple paths between Ops (i.e. are not trees), the cache pre-population step would perform very poorly.

Rendering

  • TP 312618 - When tile-stitching on Windows, Python exceptions were raised.

  • TP 384121 - Support for overscanned EXR tiles has been added to Katana's exrtilestitch command-line tool. Previously, the tool would crash as it was expecting the data window's origin to be always at (0, 0).

  • TP 418940 - When pressing Ctrl+Shift+P or choosing the Render > Live Render View Node command from Katana's main menu in order to start a Live Render from the first node with the view flag, nothing happened. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.5v1.)

  • TP 419605 - When rendering using Geolib3 in Classic mode, the asynchronous version of the Runtime was used. As in previous releases of Katana, the synchronous version is now used.

  • TP 419908 - The exrtilestitch command-line tool is now used for tile-stitching files whose output type is set to color. Previously, the tool was only used with the raw output type.

UI

  • TP 112782 / BZ 49091 - The parameter drop-down triangle UI did not update correctly when parameters were set locally using Python scripting.

  • TP 249651 - When Katana panes are resized, a white overlay appears indicating the potential layout. This overlay was not behaving correctly on certain window managers.

  • TP 381977 - In Qt 4, Katana's QApplication instance was able to process KeyPress events before Shortcut events were triggered. This allowed Katana to handle UnfocusedKeyEvent events before Shortcut events. Since Qt 5, KeyPress events do not precede Shortcut events, therefore some tabs were not allowed to process events when a second tab had gained focus and such tab had registered actions. In order to maintain the same Qt 4 behavior, Katana now synthesizes a KeyPress event out of the Shortcut event as an attempt to process the event as an UnfocusedKeyEvent event.

  • 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 was raised. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.2v1.)

USD

  • TP 420783 - The KatanaUSDPlugins headers were not installed to allow for additional plugins to the KatanaUSDPlugins.

Other Bug Fixes

  • TP 415630 - (Windows only) The .katana file association was not set up properly, causing Katana to wrongly launch with an empty project when double-clicking a .katana project file in the File Explorer.

  • TP 415801 - When adding a parameter with multiple values to an OutputChannelDefine node, e.g. a filterwidth parameter to a PrmanOutputChannelDefine, the resulting parameter was wrongly created as a number parameter instead of a number array parameter. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.)

  • TP 418460 - When editing a promoted drop-down parameter that provides a string attribute, for some renderer plug-ins, Material nodes set to edit material downstream failed to reflect these edits.

  • TP 420667 - The FnKatImport.SetDebugBinaries() Python API function never had any effect in commercial Katana, and has now been marked as deprecated.

  • TP 421321 - (Windows only) The Windows install of Katana was missing the tbb.lib files.

Known Issues

Hydra Viewer

  • TP 420882 - Changing between the Viewer (Hydra) tab's multipane layout options quickly can cause a crash or many error messages to be written to the terminal/console.

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 appear to shake during view state 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 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.