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# Katana 3.1v3 Release Notes

# Release Date

28 February 2019

# Previous Releases

Katana 3.1v2 Release Notes

# System Requirements

## Officially Supported Operating Systems

- Windows 7 64-bit or higher
- Linux 64-bit operating system (CentOS/RHEL 6)

## Hardware Requirements

| Minimum | Recommended
--- | --- | ---
CPU | Dual-core processor
Storage | 1+ 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 4.3+

'Recommended' does not guarantee that it meets your particular needs

## 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 M4000

- NVIDIA Quadro P4000

- NVIDIA Quadro K4000

- NVIDIA Quadro K6000

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.

# What's New in Katana 3.1

These release notes describe changes from Katana 3.1v2 to 3.1v3.

For a high-level overview of all changes in the Katana 3.1 line, please see What's New in Katana 3.1.

# Feature Enhancements

- TP 381635 - Katana's example projects were upgraded for Katana 3.1.

- TP 379098 - The default value of the KATANA_CATALOG_RECT_UPDATE_BUFFER_SIZE environment variable has been increased from 32 to 128.

- TP 376004 - The Center of Interest annotation of the Center of Interest manipulator has been removed from the Hydra Viewer, as it could easily get in the way of manipulator handles, making it hard to interact with them.

  We have plans to add editable value fields to manipulator handles in the Hydra Viewer in a future release, and will revisit the Center of Interest manipulator's annotation as part of that work.

- A new Nodes3DAPI.PortOpClient API has been introduced to provide improved functionality in monitoring Op Graph generated by the node graph document, similar to the current facility of Nodes3DAPI.ActivatePort(). Reference documentation is provided in the Scripting in Katana > Cooking a Scene > Monitoring Ops generated by the Node Graph section of the Katana Developer Guide.

- TP 363728 - It is now possible to make changes to the Render Working Set in the Scene Graph tab during a Live Render, and have those changes affect the rendered image. To support this feature, renderer vendors can opt in by setting the attribute liveRenderSettings.allowFollowRenderWorkingSet to 1.

- TP 357919 - When cycling through Hydra Viewer manipulators that are configured to use the same keyboard shortcut, the cycling now happens across all manipulator groups, enforcing that only a single manipulator be active.

- TP 343404 - The new LookFileBakeAPI Python module has been added to allow developers to implement and register custom output formats for use with LookFileBake nodes, allowing users to write Look Files in custom data formats other than the built-in .klf formats.

  Registered LookFileBake output formats are listed as options for the option.outputFormat parameter of LookFileBake nodes.

  Katana ships with two built-in output formats: as archive (classic .klf files) and as directory (directory containing pairs of .klf and .attrs files, one pair per pass). These output formats make use of the LookFileBakeAPI internally.

  A third output format, as USD, is available as part of the Examples plug-ins (source code also available, see UsdLookFileBake.py). To make this format available for users to choose in LookFileBake nodes, add the path of the Examples folder to the KATANA_RESOURCES environment variable. The USD output format is a basic example that writes .usda files.

- TP 339548 - The Using the attr:xxx and globalattr:xxx Syntax for Shader Parameters page in the Katana User Guide now includes information about the {globalattr: ...} syntax.

# Bug Fixes

## GafferThree and Local Graph State

- TP 378490 - Evaluation of contributing nodes in the node graph did not include multiple paths upstream of a convergence and subsequent split based on Graph State.

- TP 378325 - Evaluation of contributing nodes in the node graph could produce unexpected and variable results where multiple input paths converge and then split based on Graph State.

- TP 336080 - PackageSuperToolAPI-based SuperTools, including GafferThree, did not respect local Graph State modifications from the viewed node when displaying and editing packages from an incoming scene.

  GenericAssign-based types of nodes (excepting Material, NetworkMaterialParameterEdit and RenderSettings) did not respect local Graph State modifications from the viewed node.

  The checkDynamicParameters() methods of GenericAssign-based node types did not respect local Graph State modifications from the viewed node. This also applies to the Material node's findOverrideParameter() method.

  NOTE: Custom types of nodes that implement checkDynamicParameters() should respect local Graph State when cooking incoming scene: this can be achieved by replacing the use of NodegraphAPI.GetCurrentGraphState() with self.getGraphState().

## Hydra Viewer

- TP 380652 - Turning the Viewer Visibility Working Set on while locations were selected did not result in the correct manipulators being enabled in the Hydra Viewer for those locations.

- TP 377213 - Errors were produced by callbacks still registered to Hydra Viewer tabs when those tabs were destroyed.

- TP 375545 - In the Viewer (Hydra) tab, the grid would draw over objects on top of it in space when ambient occlusion was enabled and the scene was viewed through some of the default orthographic cameras.

- TP 374122 - Annotations would be incorrectly displayed in the Hydra Viewer for locations if their parent location was annotated.

- TP 370672 - Using the Translate manipulator to move geometry out and back into the view of the Hydra Viewer sometimes resulted the geometry jumping ahead of the desired position. Translation now results in smooth and predictable motion of the manipulated geometry.

## Viewer API

- TP 375220 - Annotations would remain in place rather than following the defined location when its parent was transformed.

- TP 370356 - A minor memory leak in the Viewer API on Windows was fixed: the viewport requested a device context via GetDC(), but ReleaseDC() was not being called.

- TP 355496 - The framing functionality of the CameraControlLayer of Katana's Viewer API did not work correctly when attempting to frame geometry with immensely large or empty bounds, leaving the active camera with an invalid view matrix populated with NaN values.

## UI Bug Fixes

- TP 381960 - When copying the XML representation of a right-clicked entry from the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, the current shortcut wrongly contained the textual representation of a QKeySequence object, rather than the keyboard shortcut text.

- TP 381291 - When pressing the Tab key to switch a Monitor tab to its Catalog view, the integrated catalog widgets were wrongly shown with a large empty space above them.

- TP 380070 - When attempting to show the PrmanShaders custom layered menu by pressing the Alt+P keyboard shortcut without PRMan being available in the Katana environment, an exception was raised. Now, the availability of the PRMan renderer plug-in is tested during Katana startup, with the custom layered menu only being registered if the dependency is satisfied.

- TP 379595 - The PonyStack example SuperTool code used the out-of-date FormItem system for its parameter interface rather than the newer FormWidget system. It has been updated to using the FormWidget system. The FormItem system should no longer be used in custom code, and will be removed in a future release.

- TP 379221 - When attempting to use the Quick Editor sidebar of the legacy Viewer tab, Python exceptions were raised.

  When attempting to edit the parameters of a pony in a PonyStack node in the Parameters tab, Python exceptions were raised.

- TP 376336 - It was no longer possible to resize the Interactive Render Filters popup.

- TP 376270 - Large menus that did not fit on the current screen were in some cases relocated to the wrong screen due to QTBUG-57689.

- TP 375907 - When pressing Shift+Enter in the script editor of an edited OpScript node in the Parameters tab, a soft newline was inserted, leading to issues with indentation. Now, when pressing Shift+Enter, a regular newline is inserted.

- TP 375759 - When making a change to a Katana project during a Live Render on Windows, updates took effect significantly slower on Windows than on Linux.

  In order to improve the user experience during Live Rendering, the Monitor tab's pixel bucket update latency has been decreased.

- TP 374145 - When more than one annotation was drawn in the OpenSceneGraph-powered legacy Viewer tab, only the first one was drawn correctly, with others seemingly losing their alpha channel.

- TP 372682 - The deletion of an AttributeEditor node that had been populated with an attribute to be edited resulted in an exception being raised.

- TP 368779 - When clicking various tool buttons that open menus or popups, and then closing those menus or popups, the tool buttons remained highlighted, as if the menus or popups were still open, possibly due to QTBUG-73954.

- TP 357928 - Tab key events were not passed to the tab under the pointer first when a widget had focus. Tabs such as the Node Graph tab will now handle Tab key events more reliably.

## Other Bug Fixes

- TP 381137 - ImageRead nodes featured parameters relating to dcraw which commercial Katana never supported.

- TP 376010 - When using an Alembic_In node with its advanced.useOnlyShutterOpenCloseTimes parameter set to Yes, and using the same values for shutterOpen and shutterClose, the AlembicIn Op failed to generate geometry attributes.

- TP 374504 - Resolving constraints on multisampled attributes produced output with a sample at [frame-relative] time 0.0, in addition to the samples necessitated by the input attributes.

- TP 373354 - When attempting to perform an interactive render, such as Preview Render or Live Render, without a camera, no error feedback was printed to the Render Log.

- TP 368880 - When baking a Look File using the as directory output format from a LookFileBake node, a .klf file extension was misleadingly appended to the name of the folder to which the files were written.

  As part of a fix for this bug based on the new LookFileBakeAPI, the new LookFileBakeAPI.BaseLookFileBakeOutputFormat class supports a class variable named PassFileExtension to control the file extension of the filenames provided to the writeSinglePass() method. The FileExtension class variable on LookFileBakeAPI.BaseLookFileBakeOutputFormat now only concerns the top-level path, as written in the saveTo filename, so for directories, this should be an empty string, with PassFileExtension being the required extension for the pass files.

- TP 360017 - The previewTexture parameter of PrimitiveCreate nodes for primitives of type coordinate system sphere and coordinate system plane had no effect in the legacy Viewer tab, and the orientation of the coordinate system plane was incorrect.

- TP 85718 / BZ 41439 - When launching Katana while certain required ports were already in use, Katana failed to launch, with an error, eg. "Could not bind to 16000". Now, Katana will try other port numbers for establishing an interprocess communication link between itself and render plug-ins.

## Documentation

- TP 378517 - The Writing Plug-ins > Renderer Plug-ins > Overview > Generating a render debug output section in the Katana Developer Guide contained several typos.

  For consistency with the Debug submenu in the context menu of nodes in the Node Graph tab, the Debugging submenu in the context menu of scene graph locations in the Scene Graph tab has also been renamed to Debug.

- TP 372867 - The locally-installed copy of the Katana User Guide would take a significant time to display when viewing on a workstation with no internet connection.

- TP 309788 - The versionUp field in the dictionary that is expected to be returned by the getExtraOptions() function as described on the Configuring the Asset Browser page in the Katana User Guide was wrongly given as versionup (with a lower-case u).

# 3Delight

3Delight has been upgraded from version 13.4.9 to 1.3.6. Some shaders have been upgraded, which could lead to differences in appearance when using them. For more information, refer to the 3Delight Cloud Changelog.

# Known Issues

## Live Groups

- 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 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.

## Materials

- TP 269449 - Choosing Edit Shader Parameters from the main wrench menu of Material nodes does not show wrench buttons next to shader parameters. This can be worked around by toggling the edit flag on the 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 workflows of V-Ray for Maya.

## Node Graph

- TP 382639 - The Fit Backdrop Node to Selected Nodes command in the Edit menu of the Node Graph tab has not been updated to work in the new NetworkMaterialGroup context.

## Parameter Expressions

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

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

- 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.

## Qt 5

- TP 356345 - Partially covering the Hydra Viewport with a floating tab will cause it to repaint continuously.

## Rendering

- TP 344118 - (Windows only) When installing Katana and opting to install the bundled version of 3Delight, the installation of 3Delight is made by modifying system-wide environment variables such as KATANA_RESOURCES. Thereafter, launching any version of Katana will pick up this installation of 3Delight, which may be incompatible with the version of Katana being launched.

  NOTE: This does not affect Linux, where a bundled 3Delight installation is tied to its corresponding Katana installation.

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

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

- 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 94052 / BZ 44199 - The Repeat Previous Render menu command only works on renders started from a 3D node's context menu.

- 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.

- 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.

## Widgets

- TP 373702 - Clicking in the Viewport and pressing a shortcut whilst the mouse is hovered in another widget will still send the event back to the 'focused' Viewport widget, for shortcuts where the widget hovered over does not handle the shortcut.

- 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 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.

## Miscellaneous

- TP 381503 - The 3Delight Shading Nodes layered menu that's available in Katana environments with 3Delight for Katana loaded when pressing the S key with the pointer over a Node Graph tab does not currently support multiple Node Graph tabs: instead of placing created nodes in the Node Graph tab in which the layered menu was shown, the nodes may be created underneath the Group node that was entered in the largest available Node Graph tab.

- TP 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.

- TP 337653 - Katana logs deprecation warnings when loading the PyMockAsset, PyMultiMockAsset and PyMockFileSeq shipping example Asset API plug-ins.

- 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 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 unavailable as of Katana 2.0v1.

- 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 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 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 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.