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# Release Notes for Katana 2.5v5

# Release Date

07 February 2017

# System Requirements

## Qualified Operating Systems

- Windows 7 64-bit
- Linux CentOS/RHEL 6

## Hardware Requirements

- A graphics card which supports OpenGL shader model 4.0

# Feature Enhancements

- TP 232515 - Item rows in the Scene Graph tab and in the GafferThree table of objects in a Parameters tab now span the entire width of the respective tab.

  - The selection of items can be changed with the pointer over the area to the right of the last column in the Scene Graph tab or GafferThree table of objects.
  - The context menu of items can be opened by right-clicking into the area to the right of the last column, as if the pointer were over the Name column.
  - Locations in the Scene Graph tab can be expanded or collapsed by double-clicking on items in the area to the right of the last column.
  - GafferThree packages can be renamed by double-clicking into the area to the right of the last column.

- TP 235486 - Moving the pointer over a shading node connection now highlights the head or tail of the connection, as it does over connections between non-shading nodes.

  Pressing the / (forward slash) key with the pointer over a shading node connection now selects and frames the node at the other end of the connection.

- TP 82009 / BZ 39886 - Numeric parameter values can now be stepped through using the keyboard arrow keys. Field values can be incremented or decremented by hundreds, tens, tenths hundredths, and so on. The magnitude of change depends on the initial position of the text cursor. For example to increment the initial value of 20.51 by ones, the cursor should be inserted before the 0. This replicates Nuke's behavior.

- TP 95856 / BZ 44730 - Nodes can now be renamed in the Node Graph tab:

  - A node under the pointer can be renamed by pressing the Return or Enter key.
  - A single selected node can be renamed by pressing the N or F2 key.

  If the name of a node is controlled through a parameter on the node, the value of the parameter will be edited. If the parameter is an expression, or the node is displayed inside a group bubble, the edit is performed using a dialog, rather than inline.

- TP 245224 - A Share Light Filters command has been added to the context menu of packages of GafferThree nodes that are edited in the Parameters tab. When choosing the Share Light Filters command, all selected light filters are shared between all selected lights by creating light filter references to the selected light filters underneath each of the selected lights.

  Two new APIs have been added to access this functionality, namely LightFilterPackage.shareWithLightPackages() and LightFilterReferencePackage.shareWithLightPackages(). Both functions will share a given light filter (reference) package with a list of light packages.

  To avoid confusion with existing commands, the Create Shared Light Filter command has been renamed to Promote to Top Level.

  The existing API LightFilterPackage.createSharedLightFilter() has been deprecated in favor of LightFilterPackage.promoteToTopLevel().

- TP 245893 - Added support for 'constant' interpolator to core ramp widgets. Note that while both float and color ramp widgets allow the use of 'constant' as the interpolator type, the color ramp preview is not affected by interpolator selection.

- TP 246939 - User-defined columns in the Scene Graph tab can now be configured to interpret an attribute's value as a color and display a swatch.

# Bug Fixes

- TP 129294 / BZ 51773 - GafferThree: Undoing the removal of an adopted package caused an error, resetting the Undo History and the corrupting the package's transform parameters.

- TP 173467 - Katana's default GLSL shaders have been made more conformant.

- TP 196501 - Light filter references could not be adopted for editing in GafferThree nodes.

- TP 197691 - During a Live Render newly added locations whose ancestors are set to be "included with children" would not be transmitted to the render plug-in unless they were explicitly included.

- TP 198136 - CEL expressions including a '@myAttr == 0' component erroneously matched locations where myAttr is not present.

- TP 234330 - The File Browser's Favorite edit and remove buttons are now enabled only for editable Favorites.

  Additionally, Favorites are now activated on selection, rather than only after clicking an individual item.

- TP 235205 - A use-after-free issue in the AttributeModifier Op could cause Katana to crash.

- TP 235310 - The previewColor parameter of LightCreate nodes had no effect, as the geometry.previewColor attribute on light locations was ignored. The attribute is now respected by the default light Viewer Modifier Plug-in (VMP) in the drawing of light icons. As part of this change of behavior, the default color of the previewColor parameter has changed from white to yellow, to account for the fact that light icons by default have been drawn in yellow in recent versions of Katana.

- TP 235341 - The Katana Online Help now correctly describes the use case of viewer manipulator pinning.

- TP 235455 - The Scene Graph tab's Lights column header was missing its down-arrow icon.

- TP 238660 - Attribute History incorrectly processed NodeTypeBuilder-based nodes that modify graph state. This affected only custom nodes performing the advanced action of making an explicit input request with a modified graph state.

- TP 239284 - When calling the sort() instance function on a UI4.Widgets.SortableListWidget instance, an exception was raised.

- TP 239319 - Two potential causes of crashes have been fixed:

  - When constructing a GroupAttribute in Python, name and attribute pairs can be given as a list of 2-tuples in the children keyword argument. Katana crashed when one of those tuples did not provide two or more values.
  - When calling setLocationPaths() or setCEL() on an OpArgsBuilders.AttributeSet object in Lua, Katana crashed when the build argument was not a string.

- TP 239437 - Number parameters and attributes approximating integers were displayed with inconsistent formatting, and numbers very close to but slightly greater than a negative integer were displayed incorrectly as rounded upwards, rather than downwards (for example, -1.99999 was displayed as -1).

- TP 239523 - When attempting to open the attribute-based shading node network pop-up for networks with array connections, Katana could crash.

- TP 239655 - Numerical Attribute History entries are now displayed with the same compact formatting as number parameters, and each entry is truncated to 16 values, rather than 4.

- TP 241373 - The Shading Node parameter exposure dialog can now automatically expose additional sibling parameters upon which the main parameter's hinted widget depends, the notable case being shader parameters manipulated using a Ramp Widget.

- TP 241685 - The Sending ID pass data to Katana section in the Katana Developer Guide contained two errors in its C++ example code.

- TP 242265 - When attempting to interact with connections to or from send or return ports inside of a Group node, exceptions were raised.

- TP 243359 - By popular demand, the default keyboard shortcut of the Cancel Renders command in Katana's Render main menu has been reverted from Ctrl+. to Esc. It's now possible to change the keyboard shortcut to Ctrl+. by setting the new environment variable KATANA_CTRL_PERIOD_TO_CANCEL_RENDERS to 1 before launching Katana.

- TP 244781 - Katana failed to open an external editor if the externalTools > editor preference contained a space character.

- TP 244824 - When resolving look files with multiple root locations keyed on the lookfile.rootId attribute, the corresponding attribute on target locations was ignored when matching hierarchies. See Creating a Look File Using LookFileBake in the Katana Online Help for details of the rootId workflow.

- TP 244846 - The Python logging inside Katana was not converting exception objects, passed in by the user, to their respective string representation, which led to an unexpected Python error.

- TP 244853 - During a Live Render, if a location is deleted from the scene graph and then re-added without any changes, it would not be sent to the render plug-in.

- TP 244983 - When selecting an item in the Scene Graph tab using the right mouse button, the horizontal scrolling position was unexpectedly reset.

- TP 246038 - When right-clicking the port connectors on shading nodes, the port connection popup was opened on top of the node context menu.

- TP 248538 - Exceptions were being raised when calling LiveRenderAPI.InsertTerminalOp() or LiveRenderAPI.AppendTerminalOp() from Python.

- TP 250919 - Windows: Katana would invoke an executable referenced by a render output command with malformed command line arguments if the path to the command contained a space character.

- TP 251115 - In certain cases, failed batch renders crashed Katana or caused it to exit with an exit status of 0.

# Known Issues

- TP 221545 - When importing an image sequence with missing frames or differing frame number padding, the Catalog tab adds erroneous entries for missing frames, rather than only importing the first contiguous sequence.

- TP 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."

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

- TP 207623 - When entering a single number only in a Backdrop node, that number is not preserved when saving a Katana project or when copying and pasting that node.

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

- TP 191052 - Katana does not have any support for the texture reference object work-flows of V-Ray for Maya.

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

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

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

- TP 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.

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

- TP 107038 / BZ 47853 - Indication of attribute source nodes (such as the yellow 'glow' in the Node Graph tab) is not yet implemented in Katana 2.

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

- TP 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).

- TP 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.

- TP 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.

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

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

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

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

- TP 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.

- TP 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.

  For a workaround, the UpdatePrmanSettingNodes shelf script can be used. The script, available in the PRMan17 shelf, creates an AttributeScript node that converts display options, set using string attributes, to group attributes.

- TP 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.

- TP 71954 / BZ 36663 - It is not currently possible to sort notifications in the Notifications popup window.

- TP 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.

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

- TP 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.

- TP 65242 / BZ 34870 - Katana doesn't support render output directory creation for shadow, merge and script output types.

- TP 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.

- TP 56545 / BZ 28549 - Main menu commands that create nodes, notably File > Import..., File > Import LiveGroup..., and Help > I want a pony, do not create the nodes in a Group or LiveGroup node that has been entered in a Node Graph tab, instead they create the nodes in the root level of the node graph document.

- TP 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.

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