Katana 3.6v5 Release Notes

Release Date

30 June 2021

Previous Releases

• Katana 3.6v4 Release Notes

What's New in Katana 3.6

These release notes describe changes from Katana 3.6v4 to 3.6v5.

For a high-level overview of important changes in the Katana 3.6 line, please see the accompanying What's New in Katana 3.6 document.

Feature Enhancements

API/SDK Changes

• Support for placement of multiple nodes created by Node Graph Layered Menu actions has been added:

  Where a Layered Menu action returns a sequence of top-level nodes to be placed in (and potentially connected to) the node graph, the nodes' relative positions and connections are now preserved, fixing Bug ID 443107 (see Bug Fixes below). The first and last nodes of the sequence are considered input and output nodes, respectively, with the input node's input ports being candidates for connection to the existing node graph.

  Auto-placement of created nodes (placement and connection based on the current node selection, controlled with the nodegraph/autoConnectOnCreate preference) is not currently supported in the Network Material node graph context (e.g. within a NetworkMaterialCreate node), and is no longer attempted.

Configuration

• ID 250552 - Support for loading layout files from directories whose paths are added to the KATANA_RESOURCES environment variable has been added.

  Layouts are loaded from files that are named KatanaLayout2.xml, or whose filenames end on .katanalayout.xml, which are placed in Layouts folders inside of those Katana resource directories. Layouts that are saved from the Layouts main menu in the Katana UI are still saved in the KatanaLayout2.xml file in the current user's Katana resource directory in their home directory (e.g. ~/.katana/KatanaLayout2.xml on Linux).

Katana Developer Guide

• Documentation of Terminal Op Delegates has been added to the Scripting in Katana > Cooking a Scene section of the Katana Developer Guide.

Node Graph

• ID 46936 / BZ 21714 - When creating a node while another node is selected that contains outgoing connections and while Auto-Connect New Nodes Based on Selection is turned on, the new node will now be inserted into all branches of outgoing connections of the selected node, instead of creating a new branch.

• ID 79117 / BZ 38478 - When creating a Backdrop node using a node creation menu in the Node Graph tab while nodes are selected, the new Backdrop node is now placed and sized to fit those selected nodes.

Bug Fixes

Catalog

• ID 56695 / BZ 28666 - When large render logs with hundreds of thousands of lines were being displayed in the Render Log tab as part of switching between items in the Catalog tab, a considerable delay could occur, freezing the UI.

Hydra Viewer

• ID 446435 - When the user attempted to apply a transform manipulation (by means of a viewer manipulator) in a TransformEdit node, exceptions were raised if the TransformEdit node's parameters had not been shown in the Parameters tab yet.

Network Materials

• ID 479435 - When numeric shader parameters of type int or double were overridden in NetworkMaterialEdit nodes, their number type was not retained, and the numeric parameter would then switch its type to float (the default when no type hint is provided). Renderers that were expecting int or double would then receive a float value, which was then generally ignored.

Node Graph

• ID 443107 - Where a Layered Menu action returns a sequence of top-level nodes to be placed in (and potentially connected to) the node graph, the nodes' relative positions and connections were not preserved.

OpWrite Node Type

• ID 473983 - When OpWrite nodes were cooked concurrently by both Katana and renderboot, a potential race condition could occur when the temporary dynamic library was written to the temporary directory.

Parameters

• ID 45979 / BZ 20846 - When clicking the Insert Image button in the Edit Help Text dialog while editing a parameter's help text, a legacy file browser dialog was opened, instead of a standard Qt file dialog.

• ID 471960 - When exporting an Args File for a shader that uses conditional locking options or conditional visibility options for one or more of its parameters, those options were not stored in <hintdict> elements with type, name, and value, e.g. <string name="conditionalLockPath" value="../anisotropicReflectivity"/>, but rather wrongly stored in <hintlist> elements with only a type and the name stored as a value, e.g. <string value="conditionalLockPath"/>. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.)

• ID 476201 - When clicking the Insert Image button in the Edit Help Text dialog while editing a parameter's help text, a Python exception was raised. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.1v1.)

Rendering

• ID 351640 - When renaming the node from which a Live Render was started, while an Interactive Render Filter (IRF) was active, a Python exception was raised.

• ID 392451 - When Live Renders were combined with Interactive Render Filters, the Live Rendering session could break if the nodes of the active Render Filters nodes had a Geolib3 Client observing the scene from their output ports. (This issue was a regression in Katana 2.6v1.)

• ID 472412 - When processing chains of Merge Ops containing adjacent single-input Merge Ops, the FlattenMergeHierarchies Op Tree optimization pass crashed, leading to render failure when using the Geolib-MT Runtime with Op Tree optimizations enabled. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.5v2.)

• ID 478818 - When starting a Live Render from the context menu of a node, while the 3D Update Mode was set to Manual or Pen-Up, the Live Render was wrongly only started when a change to the node graph was made, or when the node was right-clicked again. (This issue was a regression in Katana 3.6v1.)

Known Issues

Catalog

• 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. (This issue is a regression in Katana 2.0v1.)

Hydra Viewer

• ID 427252 - Locators created via PrimitiveCreate nodes can be snapped to in all modes, rather than just the Lights, Cameras, and Locators mode.

• 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.

• ID 380129 - Use of non-conformant GL anti-aliasing modes that employ supersampling reduces rendered point size by the supersampling scaling factor. Katana currently employs any reported anti-aliasing mode (up to a maximum sample count of 16): as a workaround, change the viewerHydra.antiAliasing preference to a lesser anti-aliasing mode.

• ID 352167 - Textures loaded from Hydra shaders are not cleared or reloaded from disk when flushing caches.

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 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 429775 - NetworkMaterialEdit nodes do not currently respect local Graph State changes, for example as performed by VariableSet nodes downstream.

• ID 429302 - When editing a locked node inside a NetworkMaterialEdit node graph, the parameters will be shown at their default state.

• 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 427408 - When entering a NetworkMaterialEdit node whose sceneGraphLocation parameter is empty, warnings are logged by the Geolib3 Runtime.

• ID 423341 - In a NetworkMaterialEdit node graph, connections can be displayed incorrectly if a node's name begins with a number.

• 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. (This issue is a regression in Katana 2.5v1.)

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

• 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 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 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.

UI

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

• 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 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 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 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.

Windows

• ID 475083 - (Windows only) When attempting to launch Katana on systems with 11th generation Intel processors, Katana crashes without any messages indicating what might have gone wrong.

  This issue appears to be caused by an issue in OpenSSL.

  As a workaround, the following variable can be set prior to launching Katana:

  set "OPENSSL_ia32cap=~0x200000200000000"

  Related KB article:

  • Q100573: Nuke can fail to launch with a 10th Generation Intel CPU

• 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. (This issue is a regression in Katana 3.1v1, possibly caused by QTBUG-52728 - Paint bug and palette errors after some events in Windows)

• 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 issue does not affect Linux, where a bundled 3Delight installation is tied to its corresponding Katana installation.

• 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."

Miscellaneous

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

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

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+ (see note below)

Note:  AMD-based graphics cards are currently not supported.

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.