Katana 8.0v6 Release Notes

Release Date

9 March 2026

Previous Releases

Feature Enhancements

Documentation

  • A Getting Started page was added to the Developer Guide for building the FnUsdShim against a custom USD.
    This can be found in the Developer Guide under Plugins/FnUsdShim.

Quality of Life

  • Clicking > Show User Parameters Above Node Parameters while editing the user parameters on a ShadingGroup node will show the user parameters above the Node Parameters and Material Interface tabs.
  • Timestamps are now visible for each undo entry in the Undo History tab.

Rendering

  • ID 507109 - A parameter has been added to RenderOutputDefine nodes to allow setting EXR compression level, when appropriate.
    The following bindings have been added to our OpenEXR Python module for getting and setting default compression levels:
    • OpenEXR.SetDefaultZipCompressionLevel
    • OpenEXR.GetDefaultZipCompressionLevel
    • OpenEXR.SetDefaultDwaCompressionLevel
    • OpenEXR.GetDefaultDwaCompressionLevel
    No upgrade scripts have been added for the new compression level parameters; existing nodes will need to be recreated.

UI

  • ID 80745 - When saving a custom layout, the option to save floating panes and docked widgets now default to true.
  • ID 612639 - GenericAssigned-based node types can now provide arbitrary hints in the hints attribute in the top-level <args>  tag in the XML document. For instance, it can be used to customize the helpURL hint.
  • Font size options under Preferences > application are now limited to a range from 4 to 48.
  • The Render Delegate Toolbar widget in the Viewer tab, which includes the Play/Pause and Stop buttons for controlling background rendering threads, is now hidden if the selected Hydra render delegate does not support the feature.

USD Conversion

  • Support has been added for the conversion of USD MeshLights into Katana's geolib equivalent.
  • UsdToKatana now has support for converting light filters from USD to Katana. If a USD light and an associated light filter do not have a parent-child hierarchy, then on conversion to Katana, a light filter reference location pointing to the converted light filter reference location is created under a light. USD light filters' filterLink collection members are converted to the equivalent linking attributes on the Katana side.
  • KatanaToUsd now has support for converting Katana light filters to USD. For a Katana light filter that is a child of a light, the equivalent USD light prim will have the USD light filter automatically added to its light:filters relationship. For light filter references, the referenced light filter is added to the parent light's light:filters relationship.
  • A new limitPopulationToModelHierarchy checkbox parameter has been introduced in the UsdIn and UsdToKatana node types. If the parameter (checked by default) is unchecked, the entire USD Stage will be traversed to populate the light and camera global lists on the /root/world scene graph location.
    The behavior matches the pre-existing KATANA_USD_GLOBALS_TRAVERSE_MODEL_HIERARCHY environment variable that affects all node instances globally; if the environment variable is set, it overrides the value set in the limitPopulationToModelHierarchy parameter in every node.

USD Native

  • ID 554928 - GroupStack and GroupMerge nodes are now rendered using the Native USD colors (i.e. blue sidebar) when adopting USD child nodes.
  • A new USD Shelf has been added to the Shelf Actions top-bar menu that includes two Shelf Items for launching usdview from Katana:
    • Load USD Stage in usdview
    • Load USD file in usdview
    This is mainly for diagnostic purposes.
  • usdview and usdrecord, which require PySide, are now bundled with Katana. PySide support was added with Katana 8.0.
  • USD-related log messages are prefixed with "FnUSD" instead of "HydraViewer".

Viewer Performance

  • Improved threaded performance of generating events in the Viewer tab when the USD stage was updated.
  • Improved interactive performance of changes to sub-hierarchies within the USD scene with respect to the Viewer Tab.

Viewer Tools

  • Native USD lights can now be looked through in the Viewer tab. This includes dragging and dropping USD lights from the Scene Explorer onto a viewport in a Viewer tab.
    In addition to this, the Look Through Selected Object button (K keyboard shortcut) in the Viewer tab now supports USD cameras and lights.
  • When multiple USD native objects (including a mix of locators and solid geometry) where manipulated using the manipulators in the Viewer tab, only one of the objects would interactively update its position while the manipulation was ongoing; the rest would only move to their final position on pen-up.
    When USD objects with concatenated pivot translates in their own xform and in their ancestors were manipulated using the manipulators in the Viewer tab, the interactive position during manipulation would be misplaced; objects would only snap to the correct position on pen-up.
  • Center of Interest manipulator in the Viewer tab now supports USD cameras and USD lights that are generated with UsdCamera and UsdLight nodes respectively.
  • Lighting Tools manipulators in the Viewer tab now support USD lights that are generated with UsdLight nodes.
    Other components in the Lighting Tools (such as light creation or light material changes) do not yet support USD lights.

Bug Fixes

Documentation

  • ID 604126 - The Katana Developer Guide has been updated to remove mentions of the method getLogicalSource, and replace with the correct method getInputSource.
  • ID 605910 - In the Katana Developer Guide, function arguments that had a default value but did not have type annotations in the function signature would lose the type information that was available in docstrings.

Miscellaneous

  • ID 585036 - Creating a locator type within the primitiveCreate node would throw an error. 
  • ID 607830 - When Nodes3DAPI.GetGeometryProducer() was invoked with a non-default port index, the wrong GeometryProducer was returned as the port index was wrongly discarded.

Network Materials

  • ID 584613 - When Soloing a material during a live render, its file path was not being resolved.
  • ID 610350 - When renaming material connected to the append input port of a NetworkMaterialSplice node, the Refresh button in the material.nodes section did not update the material name.
  • ID 611759 - When converting material connections via the KatanaToUsd node, component type port connections would not be retained.
  • ID 611883 - When effecting a Material Solo on an Arnold shader, the appended conversion network would cause albedo materials to render with diffuse light.

Python

  • ID 583403 - In the Python tab, using the OCIO functionality for the CDLTransform would cause an error.
  • ID 605886 - The import for the submodule import of Katana.Callbackswould cause "__spec__" no attribute error.
  • ID 607271 - When plug-in types were reloaded with  Utils.Plugins.Load(..., reloadCached=True, ...), an exception would be raised due to uses of removed Python 2 built-in functions.

Rendering

  • ID 612121 - The Foresight+ Services tab did not respond to session selection; Session Overview, Op Tree and Scene Graph tabs were not populated.
  • ID 613746 - When the Katana Queue log files were inaccessible (e.g. if they were removed from the filesystem), an exception could be raised from the Katana Queue tab when the log files were opened using an external editor.

UI

  • ID 80419 - Updating array policies did not trigger child policies to update. 
  • ID 85855 - When making number type FnAttributes, if an incorrect value type is used, the error message would not give sufficient information.
  • ID 168258 - In the Monitor tab, changing AOV would not update the currently targeted pixel probe values.
  • ID 192233 - When keys were moved in the Dope Sheet, it would remove animation keys. 
  • ID 219747 - Parameters editor tabs are now detached from the window hierarchy before close to prevent callbacks from referencing deleted widgets.
  • ID 527890 - Framing on a Dot node while zoomed out would cause the border to be the incorrect thickness.
  • ID 605990 - When utilising color parameters with USD native nodes, the widget would not show the number boxes, making it difficult to input exact values.
  • ID 612729 - Since Katana 8.0, when the editor of a node with many GenericAssign-based parameter was shown in the Parameters tab, Katana could take longer to load the parameters compared to Katana 7.5.
    The issue was a consequence of the migration from PyQt (until Katana 7.5) to PySide (since Katana 8.0). See PYSIDE-3279 for extra details.
  • ID 614706 - When viewing the Parameters tab, expansion triangles and lock icons were recalculated for every parameter even when nothing had changed, slowing the UI when many parameters were present.

USD Conversion

  • ID 608368 - When RenderMan lights were converted through the UsdIn or UsdToKatana, nodesNames for Renderman attributes prmanLightfilterShader and prmanLightfilterParams were incorrectly capitalised as prmanLightFilterShader and prmanLightFilterParams.
  • ID 608373 - Some attributes from RenderMan lights were not converted to USD by KatanaToUsd, such as shaping and shadow properties.
  • ID 609503 - When RenderMan Light filters were converted through the UsdIn or UsdToKatana nodes and edited in a GafferThree node, the light filter parameters were not populated and a Python exception were raised.
  • ID 609856 - When a light location was converted from Katana to USD via a KatanaToUsd node, the includeRoot property in the lightLink and shadowLink collections for the converted light prim was not set to the correct value that matched the equivalent enabled and geoShadowEnabled attributes in Katana side.
  • ID 610644 - When lightLink or shadowLink collection's includeRoot attribute was set to False, and the membershipExpression and includes/excludes properties were set, includes/excludes values were not converted to corresponding lightLinkingonCEL/offCEL attributes.

USD Native

  • ID 588193 - When only the primPath property was set without setting the asset in UsdPayloadSet, an empty over prim was created.
  • ID 606907 - When UsdCollection nodes in edit mode would target a collection in a prim that had authored values, the state badges shown in the parameters with incoming values were inaccurate.
  • ID 606997 - When parameters in UsdCollection nodes were set to Force Default, an incorrect value could be inserted in the USD Layer depending on whether the value had had a previous authored value.
  • ID 607625 - When an upstream collection with the membershipExpression property set to empty was targeted by a downstream UsdCollection node in edit mode, a flood of error messages could appear in the terminal as the empty expression was ill-formed.
  • ID 608245 - Add LIB_PREFIX build option to specify a prefix for KatanaUsdPlugins library file names.
  • ID 608412 - When a USD native scene was loaded in the Viewer tab, light filters in lights were ignored. See https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenUSD/issues/3849 (#USD-11539).
  • ID 608897 - Engines, for example the TransformSetEngine in edit mode, which loaded the incoming stage, sometimes tried to load prims which did not exist yet.
  • ID 609430 - UsdSchemaSet, UsdLight and UsdPrimCreate failed to write relationship properties.

  • ID 609918 - In the UsdCollection node, the excludes parameter would invalidate an existing entry when appending from a scene graph selection or adding a new path.

  • ID 611078 - The help text for the includeRoot parameter in the UsdCollection node type has been extended to describe the potentially misleading default value (false) when the node targets a collection whose fallback value for the includeRoot property has been overridden to true (e.g. the case with the lightLink and shadowLink collections in the LightAPI schema).

Viewer

  • ID 528112 - Switching the Viewer tab to use a render delegate which doesn't support multiple viewports while the Viewer tab already had multiple viewports would fail with a Python error in the terminal.
  • ID 569598 - When both the Render Delegate Toolbar and the Lighting Tools were disabled, areas of the Viewer tab would not respond to mouse events.
  • ID 606757 - Framing USD geometry in the Viewer tab wouldn't work when upstream prims had their purpose set to anything other than default.
  • ID 607430 - When switching to the AVP Render Delegate in the Viewer tab, Katana would crash. This was a regression in Katana 7.0v7 that only affected this product line.
  • ID 613246 - When Edge or Face Snapping strategies were used in the Viewer tab, the line width in the global GL state would be modified and not restored after drawing, leading to line drawings from other components (e.g. camera and light locators) to use a thicker line width.

Known Issues

Hydra Viewer

  • ID 580249 - When manipulating transformations for both Geolib and USD locations/prims at the same time, the manipulator handle will ping to the center of the USD mesh.

USD Native

  • ID 579376 - Currently, Pattern-Based Collections does not support the use of the  include  and  exclude  widgets in conjunction with the  membershipExpression  widget on the UsdCollection node. This is due to a known issue with USD
    NOTE: More info can be found on the USD thread:  https://forum.aousd.org/t/problems-with-pattern-based-collections/1197/7. Katana's Pattern-Based Collection widget computes collection membership using membership expressions, therefore it does not currently handle relationship-mode collections correctly.
  • ID 586965 - USD's stitch method for stitching layers doesn't retain blocked attributes.
  • ID 587515 - The Centre of Interest manipulator is currently not supported in conjunction with USD prims. 
  • ID 588881 - The pivotTranslate parameter on the UsdTransformEdit node currently have no effect.

System Requirements

Officially Supported Operating Systems

  • Windows 11
  • Linux 64-bit operating system (Rocky Linux 9)

Hardware Requirements

Minimum Recommended
CPU Dual-core processor
Storage 2.5+ 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 4.5+ (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 RTX 4000

  • NVIDIA Quadro RTX A4000

  • NVIDIA Quadro RTX A3000

  • NVIDIA Quadro P4000

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.