Search Tips

Search is based on keyword.

`Ex: "Procedures"`

Do not search with natural language

`Ex: "How do I write a new procedure?"`

Give Feedback Support Portal

# Katana 6.5v7 Release Notes

# Release Date

17 June 2025

# Previous Releases

- Katana 6.5v6 Release Notes

# What's New in Katana 6.5

These release notes describe changes from Katana 6.5v6 to 6.5v7.

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.

# New Features

## Documentation

- The Supertools section in the Katana Developer Guide, has been reorganized and enhanced with extra example projects and context. This is the first-step towards improving the learning content. Any feedback on the Katana Developer Guide, is encouraged and can be forwarded to the release email.

# Feature Enhancements

## Miscellaneous

- Memory is now being freed sooner in the render process by purging jemalloc's memory arenas after scene graph traversal completion is signalled by the render plug-in.

- ID 595017 - Setting the `KATANA_RESOURCES_EXCLUDE_LIBS` environment variable to a list of library paths excludes them from loading at startup.

- The AttributeWedge Example SuperTool, as seen in the Katana for Technical Artists | SuperTools tutorial, now ships with Katana.

## Python tab

- Various fixes for the help tool tips that are shown in the Python tab when the mouse is over a local variable or function:

  - Python type annotations in functions are now shown in help tool tips in the Python tab.
  - When a Python function that does not have a docstring was evaluated before showing their value in the help tool tip, the tool tip was wrongly discarded; now the function's signature and function's address is shown.
  - When a Python object that is considered falsy was evaluated before showing their value in the help tool tip, the tool tip was wrongly discarded.

  Notice that help tool tips are disabled by default; they can be enabled by checking the python.showHelpTooltips preference in the Preferences dialog.

- Auto-completion behavior in the Python tab is now set to `IDE` by default. This is a more conventional auto-completion mode that brings a popup when the Tab character is pressed.

- The Ruff formatter has been added as an optional formatter for Python code in the Python tab. To enable it, set python.formatter preference in the Preferences dialog to `Ruff`.

# Bug Fixes

## Coding and Debugging Improvements

- ID 581860 - When a widget used the `QtWidgets.QFrame.NoFrame` window flag, the line numbers in the target widget that use the `LineNumberAreaWidget` could be off by one pixel.

- ID 581877 - When the text in a code editor widget was updated programmatically, its line numbers (except for the current line's number) could be missing.

## Hydra Viewer

- ID 595080 - When collapsing a location which contained multiple volume fields underneath a volume type location, Katana would crash.

## Miscellaneous

- ID 596791 - When reloading a scene with a GroupStack node that has a node in its stack with the label set to a color, an error message about the wrong value type being used would be logged.

- ID 597362 - When `NodegraphAPI.Util.GetAllConnectedInputs()` encountered a direct internal connection of a Group node's send and return ports with the same name, Katana would crash. This would occur, for example, when evaluating a NetworkMaterial containing a ShadingGroup node with a passthrough connection.

- ID 599908 - When converting from USD to Katana, material binding information on USD volumes was lost.

## Network Materials

- ID 597870 - When utilising the NetworkMaterialMultiSplice node to combine materials together, this operation did not work with child materials.

- ID 598385 - When pasting nodes in a NetworkMaterialCreate or NetworkMaterialEdit node, clicking over an existing connection between nodes would disconnect them and finalize the position of the selected nodes.

## UI

- ID 266707 - When parameters don't have numeric values, they would become enumerated with scroll events from either the scroll wheel or up and down arrow keys.

- ID 596050 - When using certain NVIDIA drivers, graphical glitches were displayed in the Viewer tab and on ports while in the Network Material context.

- ID 599371 - When the Parameters tab was generated when loading a scene with an Isolate node containing an expression, an error was thrown.

- ID 600406 - When scrolling over widgets in the Attributes tab, the events triggered by scrolling or the up and down arrow keys whilst focused on the widgets could temporarily change its values.

## Viewer

- ID 400031 - When a geometry with Facesets contained `geometry.arbitrary.displayColor` values, the resulting colour would not be visible on the Faceset when seen in the Viewer tab.

- ID 583208 - When using the "F" shortcut in the Viewer tab to frame scene elements, prims that weren't xformable could not be framed.

- ID 584274 - When checking the schema type against supported types we were unable to resolve to the hydra light type to a dome light. The schema type provided can contain options separated by `|`. This has now been adjusted to support these OR options for all schema light types.

- ID 597884 - When using the "F" shortcut in the Viewer tab to frame scene elements, prims not part of the model hierarchy could not be framed. Additionally, the extentsHint property on prims without loaded geometry would not frame accordingly.

# 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.

## Rendering

- ID 587519 - When opening a new scene while the Parameters tab's Included Outputs floating menu is still active for a render node, errors are printed to the terminal.

## USD Native

- ID 588881 - The pivotTranslate parameter on the UsdTransformEdit node currently have no effect.

- ID 587515 - The Centre of Interest manipulator is currently not supported in conjunction with USD prims.

- ID 586965 - USD's stitch method for stitching layers doesn't retain blocked attributes.

- 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 24.05. 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 (statement true for USD 24.05).

# 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.