Katana 3.5v4 Release Notes

Release Date

10 July 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 3.5v3 to 3.5v4.

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

Documentation

  • The license text of the KatanaUsdPlugins repository has been added to the Copyright Notices page in the Katana Developer Guide.

Bug Fixes

Catalog

  • ID 434639 - When duplicating an item in the Catalog tab, an exception was raised. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.5v1.)

Gaffer

  • ID 437321 - Light types in the Add PRMan Light and Add PRMan Light Filter submenus in the context menu of GafferThree were wrongly sorted alphabetically, not in the intended order that is suggested by their keyboard shortcuts, and that is shown in the RenderMan for Katana documentation.

Geolib

  • ID 431375 - Occasionally, when called concurrently from multiple threads, the AssetReferencedOp could cause a crash. Note that, in this case, the Op may still load the same DSOs from different threads, but does so in a thread-safe manner.

  • ID 433277 - When using the Geolib3-MT Runtime, any action that causes the Op execution root to be reset (e.g. calling Cook Interface resetRoot()) was ineffective for input-scene-derived locations below immediate children.

Hydra Viewer

  • ID 418273 - When a crop window was specified for the render, the Monitor Layer in the Viewer (Hydra) tab would cause GL errors, and the rendered image could appear with noise.

  • ID 432345 - When a Viewer (Hydra) tab was destroyed, its internal ViewerDelegate object was not correctly freed due to some circular dependencies in Python keeping the last reference alive.

  • ID 434897 - A small memory leak occurred in the Monitor Layer's internal code.

  • ID 435194 - When closing a Viewer (Hydra) tab with its Monitor Layer turned on, and then starting a Preview Render, an exception was raised.

Network Materials UI

  • ID 416235 - Nodes inside a NetworkMaterialCreate node that was itself contained within a LiveGroup node wrongly appeared at the same position until the LiveGroup contents were edited. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.2v2.)

  • ID 433292 - While creating a new connection between shading node ports and pointing at a target shading node, pressing a keyboard shortcut like Alt+3 to modify that node's view state wrongly modified a different, selected shading node instead.

Performance

  • ID 436820 - When modifying node graph containing nodes whose names are driven by Python-based parameter expressions, a large number of unnecessary events were being processed, leading to an increase in execution time. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.2v5.)

Python

  • ID 438864 - When copying or dragging a parameter or attribute representing an array of values, or a group containing such parameters or attributes, the corresponding MIME data of format 'policy/xml' was clamped to a hard-coded maximum of 16 values for each array. This limit was introduced in Katana 1.1v1 to avoid generating large amounts of XML text for very large arrays of values. This value can now be customized by setting the new environment variable KATANA_VALUEPOLICY_MIMEDATA_ARRAY_SIZELIMIT to a numeric value (default: 16).

Rendering

  • ID 435094 - When starting a Live Render after clearing Katana's Catalog tab by choosing its Clear Catalog command, Python exceptions were raised. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.2v3.)

Known Issues

Hydra Viewer

  • ID 431869 - When selecting a light or camera while the Center of Interest manipulator is selected, Katana stalls briefly before the manipulator's handles appear.

  • ID 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

  • ID 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).

  • ID 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.

  • ID 84020 / BZ 40598 - Reverting a LiveGroup node does not revert its user parameters.

  • ID 84019 / BZ 40599 - Parameters that are added to LiveGroup nodes are wrongly discarded when performing a reload from source, leading to loss of data.

  • ID 84018 / BZ 40600 - Undoing a revert of an unpublished LiveGroup node does not restore the LiveGroup's editable and modified state.

  • ID 83061 / BZ 40237 - Nodes can be dragged into the Group bubble of a non-editable LiveGroup node.

Materials

  • ID 438255 - When a filter is active in a NetworkMaterial sidebar, its pages cannot be expanded or collapsed.

  • ID 429206 - Parameter expressions when promoted from shading nodes in a NetworkMaterialCreate node are of a constant value, relative to the resolved expression at time of creation.

  • ID 410474 - In a NetworkMaterialCreate context, shading nodes appear to shake during view state changes if the node's width is adjusted.

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

  • ID 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.

  • ID 199304 - The namespace parameter on Material nodes wrongly allows the insertion of Unicode codepoints outside the ASCII range.

  • ID 191052 - Katana does not have any support for the texture reference object workflows of V-Ray for Maya.

Parameter Expressions

  • ID 188533 - Expressions linked to non-local parameters on not previously edited Material nodes can't be evaluated.

  • ID 105434 / BZ 47520 - Reference Expressions may not refer to dynamic parameters such as shader parameters.

  • ID 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.

Rendering

  • ID 435008 - When using Arnold or V-Ray, the pixel probe tool of Katana's Monitor tab will only work when the KATANA_CATALOG_ALLOCATE_ID_BUFFER_PER_AOV environment variable is set to 1.

  • ID 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.

  • ID 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.

  • ID 208802 - Closing the Histogram tab after use leaves the Monitor tab unable to display rendered images.

  • ID 176598 - Use of nodes that modify Graph State Variables in Interactive Render Filters is not currently supported.

  • ID 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.

  • ID 94052 / BZ 44199 - The Repeat Previous Render menu command only works on renders started from a 3D node's context menu.

  • ID 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.

  • ID 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.

  • ID 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

  • ID 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.

  • ID 123558 / BZ 50911 - When changing an array parameter's tuple count/size, any corresponding attributes are not properly updated in the Attributes tab.

  • ID 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

  • ID 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.

  • ID 337653 - Katana logs deprecation warnings when loading the PyMockAsset, PyMultiMockAsset and PyMockFileSeq shipping example Asset API plug-ins.

  • ID 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."

  • ID 112544 / BZ 49051 - The Viewer tab may lose sync with the Scene Graph tab when changes to expansion state are interrupted.

  • ID 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.

  • ID 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.

  • ID 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.

  • ID 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.

  • ID 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.

  • ID 70196 / BZ 36170 - Control keys (notably arrow keys) do not function as expected in shell mode.