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# Katana 8.0v7 Release Notes

# Release Date

5 August 2026

# Previous Releases

- Katana 8.0v6 Release Notes

# Feature Enhancements

## Documentation

- ID 613912 - A new Parameter Policy page is added in the Customizing the User Interface section of the developer guide.

## Katana <> Nuke

- ID 495384 - In Interactive Comps, newly created KatanaReader or KatanaWriter nodes in Nuke will appear automatically in the Nuke Bridge tab in Katana, without having to save the Nuke Script and reload it.
- ID 506461 - A new `KATANA_NUKE_EXTRA_ARGUMENTS` environment variable has been introduced that allows the user to define extra command-line arguments that are forwarded to the Nuke executable when it is launched from Katana's Nuke Bridge. See Environment Variables page in the Katana Developer Guide for details.
- ID 546756 - Preferences for adjusting the refresh internal in Live and Interactive Comps have been added to the Nuke Bridge under a new nukeBridge section in the Preferences dialog:
  - nukeBridge.refreshInterval: The interval (in seconds) at which render updates in Katana are sent to Nuke in Live and Interactive Comps. Lower values mean more frequent updates, at the expense of potentially saturating the system. Default is `0.5` seconds.
  - nukeBridge.interactiveRefreshInterval: In Interactive Comps, the interval (in seconds) at which compositing updates in Nuke are sent to Katana. Lower values mean more frequent updates, at the expense of potentially saturating the system. Default is `0.5` seconds.
- ID 612181 - Support for Nuke 16.1 and Nuke 17.0 has been added to the Nuke Bridge.
- ID 614516 - A thumbnail of the mapped Catalog Item is now shown next to the KatanaReader input points in the Nuke Bridge tab.
- ID 619074 - Support for Nuke 15.2 has been added to the Nuke Bridge.
  This is a belated addition, as Nuke 15.2v1 was released in February 2025.

## Network Materials

- ID 624316 - Show User Parameters At Top Level and Show User Parameters Above Node Parameters options are both now available for LiveShadingGroups as well as ShadingGroups.

## 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 614514 - Preferences in the Preferences dialog are no longer sorted alphabetically. Instead, their logical, declaration order is preserved.

# Bug Fixes

## Catalog

- ID 589392 - When a Katana layout that has had the thumbnail column in a Catalog tab resized was loaded in Katana, thumbnails would fail to use a matching resolution that would fit the column's width, leading to pixelated thumbnails until the user would resize the thumbnail column.

## Documentation

- ID 528265 - When using Windows operating system with the Nuke Bridge, the `@echo off`, documented in the launcher template example, will prevent Katana from running executables that are not binary files. To resolve this, documentation for the `KATANA_NUKE_EXECUTABLE` environment variable has been extended with examples on how to define a launcher script that can define extra command-line arguments or extra environment variables.

## Katana <> Nuke

- ID 589100 - When a KatanaReader node with a long name (16 characters or longer) was used in the Nuke Bridge in Katana with Nuke 15 (or newer), the comp would not succeed, and a message about a corrupt string would be seen in the Render Log tab.
- ID 614515 - When a Catalog Item was assigned to a KatanaReader input point in the Nuke Bridge tab, the representative text used for the Catalog Item could show a spurious newline character that would result in the text in the widget being clipped.

## Node Graph

- ID 621815 - When the rename editor (select node and press `F2`) was used to rename a node in the Node Graph tab, attempts to dismiss the rename action by pressing `Esc` were ignored.
  This was a manifestation of a broader regression introduced in Katana 7.5v1 where global application keyboard shortcuts would prevent key press events from reaching to correct widget.

## Performance

- ID 248961 - When a worker sends a "done working" message result which is waiting to be drained on the main thread, a second message can be sent to that same worker during the draining. When that worker is queried to check if it is working it can give a false negative result that the worker is no longer working - when it is. When this happens things like wrong frames can be drawn to the catalogue, or scene in the viewer.
- ID 474266 - When a client is reused it can sometimes receive old messages from jobs that had not finished being completed by workers that have been mislabelled as finished working, this client would have no notice of them causing unexpected results.
- ID 616424 - When using Linux systems with recent NVIDIA drivers (e.g. 580.95.05 or 590.48.01), NVIDIA could end up reducing the processor affinity in Katana on startup, from all available cores to a subset of the available cores. The altered processor affinity would end up leaking to the render process when it is spawned from Katana, which would affect performance of the scene graph traversal and posterior rendering.

## Python tab

- ID 610725 - When the autocompleter in the Python tab was present, attempts to dismiss the popup by pressing `Esc` were ignored.
  This was a manifestation of a broader regression introduced in Katana 7.5v1 where global application keyboard shortcuts would prevent key press events from reaching to correct widget.

## Quality of Life

- ID 615295 - When registering a SuperTool with the `'nativeusd'` node flavor, now the correct native USD node styling (a blue chip and dark blue coloring) will be shown, instead of the default gray style.

## UI

- ID 623278 - When knots were inserted in a float ramp widget that had been configured with Catmull-Rom interpolation and no initial knot, a crash could be produced.

## USD Import

- ID 614903 - When converting Half types, UsdIn would ignore single values and treat arrays as Vec3.
- ID 618732 - When a USD attribute with an unsupported primvar type was converted with UsdIn, an arbitrary group attribute corresponding to that value was being created.

# Known Issues

## Hydra 2.0 Viewer

- ID 623397 - When switching delegates within the Viewer (Hydra 2.0) the scene may not update. A workaround is to flush caches.

## 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.
- ID 619875 - When disabling USD Native shaders within an existing material network has no affect on the rendered material via Hydra due to an OpenUSD Issue 3397

## Qt5

- ID 620197 - When disconnecting from an x11vnc session started with the -multiptr extension, virtual pointer devices are removed on the remote host causing Katana to crash in QXcbConnection::xi2SetupDevices(). For reference, QTBUG-146876.

## USD Native

- ID 579376 - When using Pattern-Based Collections with the include and exclude widgets in conjunction with the membershipExpression widget on the UsdCollection node; will not correctly update and is currently not supported. 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 - When using USD's stitch method for stitching layers, will not retain blocked attributes.
- ID 588881 - When using the pivotTranslate parameter on the UsdTransformEdit node, it currently have no effect.
- ID 618268 - When setting a transformation for a light within the UsdGaffer, the option Disable Interactive Transforms becomes unavailable from the treeview's right-click context menu. A workaround is to disable transforms within the Transform subtab by setting the makeInteractive property to No.

## UsdSuperLayer

- ID 623532 - When importing references in the UsdSuperLayer node, references will fail to load if the usd dociment does not have a defaultPrim established.

# 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.