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# Katana 6.5v4 Release Notes

Contents

- Feature Enhancements
- Bug Fixes
- Known Issues
- System Requirements

# Release Date

23 August 2024

# Previous Releases

- Katana 6.5v3 Release Notes

# What's New in Katana 6.5

These release notes describe changes from Katana 6.5v3 to 6.5v4. For a high-level overview of important changes in the Katana 6.5 line, please see the accompanying What's New in Katana 6.5 document.

# Feature Enhancements

## Network Materials

- ID 578834 - A new category was created in the Preferences menu for preferences relating to the material's Node Graph context, in nodeGraph > networkMaterialNodegraph. The following preferences have been moved to this location:

  - defaultShadingNodeViewState
  - showPagesConnectedOnly
  - useColorFromInputPortForConnections

  Within this category exists a new connectionStyle preference, that allows changing the connections' drawing style in the material's Node Graph context. This contains the following options:

  - Bezier Curve (default)
  - Line
  - Short curve

- A new NetworkMaterialLayoutFilter node has been added to enable material-specific filtering of layout information provided by NetworkMaterialCreate and NetworkMaterialEdit nodes. This is particularly useful in improving NetworkMaterialEdit UI performance when editing a material authored in a multi-material NetworkMaterialCreate context that contains many nodes that are not relevant to the edited material. By default, this behaviour will follow connections to the resulting material and remove any unconnected nodes.

  Additionally, this nodes includes a pruneNonContributingBranches option in the Parameters tab. When enabled, this will also remove nodes that aren't contributing to the material, for example if they are fed through a VariableSwitch node.

- A new MaterialInterfaceResolve node has been added to enable changes made on a Material node's Material Interface to be reflected in a NetworkMaterialEdit node downstream. The MaterialInterfaceResolve node will apply parameter interface changes made in a Material node, directly to the parameters in the contained material, which allows the NetworkMaterialEdit node to pick up these changes downstream and to further modify them.

- A new NetworkMaterialMultiSplice node has been added, as an extension from the NetworkMaterialSplice node. It allows CEL expressions to splice in a material created in a NetworkMaterialCreate (as well as shaders) across multiple materials. This spliced material can then further be edited in a downstream NetworkMaterialEdit node. In order to effectively splice across multiple materials, the NetworkMaterialMultiSplice provides the ability to connect nodes and ports using wildcarded node names using asterisk symbol (*). The edit > referenceMaterial parameter will indicate the material to appear in the node pop-up window, and the edit > location parameter will allow for further materials to receive the spliced information.

## Node Graph

- When searching for a node using Node Graph tab menu, searches will now match against any part of a node's name unless prefixWildcardToTabMenuSearch is disabled in the nodegraph Preferences menu.

## Performance

- ID 552725 - Added the ability to filter timing results in the Performance tab's Scene Statistics. This is done through a new Filter menu in the tab, and includes the ability to specify result count, inclusion expression, and/or exclusion expression. The inclusion and exclusion expressions are implemented with and follow the rules set out by Python's fnmatch library.

  Pattern | Meaning
  --- | ---
  * | Matches everything
  ? | Matches any single character
  [seq.] | Matches any single character in `seq`
  [!seq] | Matches any character not in `seq`

- ID 576358 - Cook profiling results presented in the Performance tab's Scene Statistics page may now be aggregated by Op, rather than by Node.

  Within the Performance tab, a new dropdown option has been introduced under Node Graph called Show Results By,that can be switched between:

  - Node (default)
  - Op

  Selecting 'Op', will provide additional Op Type and Op Name columns within the Cook profiling results, displaying a further breakdown of the scene's statistics.

## Scene Explorer and Scene Graph

- ID 556981 - In Katana 6.5 and forward, the width between the scene tree hierarchy and location was notably different in the Scene Explorer tab in comparison to the Scene Graph tab. Additionally, when the application font size was changed, that width in both tabs was not adjusted to match the new font size.

- With the introduction of native USD in Katana 6.5v1 / 7.0v1, the "Render Only Selected Objects" functionality was reworked and made more strict: only selected Scene Graph locations and their descendants were included in the render, disregarding all other locations. The behavior until Katana 6.0 was based on scene isolation, where portions of the scene were still implicitly preserved in the render, even when not under a explicit selection. The behavior change in Katana 6.5v1 / 7.0v1 implied that the user would have to explicitly select lights.

  In Katana 6.5v4 / 7.0v4, the behavior has been revised:

  - Lights in the light list (as defined by the `lightList` attribute in `/root/world`) are implicitly included in the render.
    - If a light in the light list is under a explicit selection, the rest of the lights are explicitly excluded from the render.
  - Direct children of `/root/world` (excluding `cam` and `lgt`), and the Katana-to-USD deferred location (usually `/root/world/_usd` if not changed) are implicitly included in the render, provided none of them are under a explicit selection.

- Unlike the Render Working Set, the "Render Only Selected Objects" mode could not be turned on or off during a Live Render: its enable state was frozen at the start of a Live Render. The mode can now be turned off and on midway through a Live Render; when the mode is turned on, the currently selected locations will become the target selections.

## USD Native

- A syntax highlighter for ASCII-encoded USD files has been added. It is in use in UsdLayerWrite nodes.

- ID 556896 - UsdSchemaSet nodes no longer create UI elements for opaque attributes, since they do not have authored values by definition.

## Viewer

- ID 386467 - The Viewer tab now supports scaling transform manipulators using "=" and "-" keyboard shortcuts. This will temporarily size the manipulators up (=) or down (-).

  Additionally, a new option in the Viewer dropdown has been created under Manipulators > Use Global Preferences. This allows users to easily change the scaling of manipulators within the Preferences in Edit > Preferences > viewer > manipulators > scale, interactively in the Viewer. This will scale the manipulators across all Viewer tabs and allow any further changes to persist in future sessions.

# Bug Fixes

## Catalog

- ID 555566 - In the Catalog tab, image memory associated with the most recently generated thumbnail was not released after it was deleted.

## Miscellaneous

- ID 527333 - (Windows only) When closing a laptop lid in dual-screen setups, Katana crashed.

- ID 563019 - In Katana 7.0, when attempting to select within the Dope Sheet tab and moving the cursor outside of its bounds, an exception was raised. This caused the tab to be left in an inconsistent state, which was typically characterized by indefinite scrolling. In Katana 6.0 and 6.5, only deprecation warnings were reported, without affecting the normal functionality.

- ID 565669 - In Linux, clicking on the Viewer tab after using the Super/Windows/Meta key would cause Katana to crash.

## Network Materials

- ID 545846 - Connections inside LiveGroup nodes could be lost on import when the input and output ports of the LiveGroup node have the same name.

- ID 573000 - In Katana 7.0 and above, when attempting to rename an output port in a ShadingGroup node, an exception was raised, preventing the renaming. This was due to deprecated implicit float-to-integer conversions. In versions 6.0 and 6.5, this operation triggered only deprecation warnings without hindering functionality.

- ID 573575 - When an output port inside a ShadingGroup node had its namespace renamed, Katana would crash if further ports were placed under that new page.

- ID 574814 - In a ShadingGroup node, connections made to the INPUT or OUTPUT columns would not display connection ports and could not be further changed. This was a regression in Katana 6.0v2.

- ID 578823 - In the Parameters tab, material interface parameters for NetworkMaterialCreate or NetworkMaterialEdit nodes were expanded by default. This led to longer wait times for generating the interface, in the case where a large number of parameters had been promoted. The Material Interface is now collapsed by default.

## Node Graph

- ID 565295 - A few nodes that were not meant to be listed in the Node Graph tab's right click menu were missing the 'hide' flavor, and were being displayed.

## Rendering

- ID 558110 - When EXR files without the name field available were given to exrtilestitch, the following error would be produced:

      Cannot find image attribute "name".

  This was a regression in 6.0v1.

- ID 579823 - When the Render Only Select Objects mode was enabled with native USD geometry present in the scene, the resulting render in a Live Render would wrongly include the USD geometry even when not selected. The issue did not manifest in Preview Renders.

- ID 579850 - When the Render Only Select Objects mode and the Render Working Set were enabled, the Render Working Set took priority over the Render Only Selected Objects. This was a behavior change in Katana 6.5v1. The mode and the Working Set can now be used together again (i.e. if both are enabled, both can prune the scene).

- ID 579876 - When the Render Only Select Objects mode was enabled with no selection, nothing would be included in the render, as opposed to including the entire scene. This was a regression in Katana 6.5v1.

## Scene Explorer

- ID 567951 - Within the Scene Explorer tab, selecting between both the Katana (Geolib) and USD graphs would not clear the selections made in the other context.

- ID 579551 - When the Scene Graph tab (or the Scene Explorer tab since Katana 6.5) was created after the Render Only Selected Objects mode had been enabled, the state of the tab-local tool bar button was not synced with the global state.

## USD

- ID 565975 - Target renderers explicitly or implicitly specified in USD shader nodes were not always respected when importing the shader nodes through a UsdIn node.

- ID 569853 - Some attributes from Arnold's ramp_rbg shaders were not exported correctly from the UsdMaterialBake node.

- ID 574279 - Attributes of type `uint` were not imported into Katana via KatanaUsdPlugins. Lossy conversion has been added to import `uint` Attributes as IntAttributes via static casting.

## USD Native

- ID 559279 - Using the TimeOffset node with native USD nodes didn't apply the desired time offset.

## Viewer

- ID 515101 - In the Viewer tab, setting face selection using Python would crash the Katana session. This was a regression in Katana 4.0v1.

# Known Issues

## 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 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 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.

## 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.

## 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.

## Python

- ID 496659 - When loading a website into a `PyQt5.QtWebEngineWidgets.QWebEngineView` widget, warning and error messages may be issued by the underling Qt WebEngine classes, leading to certain websites not being displayed correctly, or not being displayed at all. (This issue is a regression in Katana 4.5v1 / Katana 5.0v1.)

## Rendering

- ID 523574 - Sourcing an aces v1.3 colour profile can cause Katana to crash when rendering with renderer plugins that don't currently support aces v1.3

- 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 70016 / BZ 36137 - Rendering repeatedly with a large number of AOVs consumes more and more memory in the Catalog tab, possibly leading to a crash when running out of memory.

## UI

- ID 553608 - Certain OCIO transforms (defined by a custom OCIO Config) can introduce significant color banding artefacts when images are processed for display purposes (e.g. in the Monitor tab or the Monitor Layer of the Viewer tab). Such artefacts are a product of the OCIO 2.x GPU processor applying certain transforms. CPU processors, which are used in Katana's final frame rendering pipelines, are not affected.

- 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.

## USD

- ID 468287 - UsdIn is not retaining expanded view state information for shading nodes in a Network Material context.

# System Requirements

## Officially Supported Operating Systems

- Windows 10 64-bit or higher
- Linux 64-bit operating system (CentOS/RHEL 7)

## 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.