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# Katana 8.0v4 Release Notes

# Release Date

20 August 2025

# Previous Releases

- Katana 8.0v3 Release Notes

# What's New in Katana 8.0

These release notes describe changes from Katana 8.0v3 to 8.0v4.

For a high-level overview of important changes in the Katana 8.0 line, please see the accompanying What's New in Katana 8.0 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

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

## Network Materials

- ID 592909 - Pressing and holding the 'X' key on a collapsed Shader node in the Node graph will temporarily expand the node. It will return to it's original state when 'X' is released.

## 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.

  Additionally, the help tool tips are now enabled by default, whereas it was previously disabled. This can still be disabled by unchecking the python.showHelpTooltips 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`.

## USD Bounding Box

- USD Prim events will now be produced in the Viewer API for the root prim of an unloaded subtree. This allows for representation of these 'incomplete' prims based on information available before loading payloads, such as extent hints. FnUsdBaseLocator-based plug-ins can opt-in to these events by overriding the new `canMatchUnloaded()` virtual method. If the method returns true, the locator implementation is given an opportunity to match unloaded USD Prims in the `matches()` method.

  Additionally, USD Prim events in the Viewer API now have access to whether descendants of the prim may be visible or are hidden. This is the new `descendantsHidden` member in the `ViewerAPI::ViewerUsdPrimEvent` structure.

- Bounding boxes are now displayed in the Viewer tab for USD prims that are authored with an extentHints attribute. This feature may be customized (or disabled) using the `KATANA_VIEWER_PRIM_BBOX` environment variable, as detailed in the Environment Variables section of the Developer Guide.

  As part of this, `ViewerDelegatePluginBase::areBoundingBoxesEnabled()` and `ViewerDelegatePluginBase::isProxyGeometryEnabled()` have been added to the Viewer API.

## USD Import

- ID 600172 - When loading in point instancer scene locations through the UsdIn node, the ids attribute are now being converted and can be found in the Attributes tab.

## USD Native

- UsdAttributes can now be dragged and dropped into the UsdAttributeSet node directly from the Attributes tab to auto-fill the name, type, and value of the attribute.

# Bug Fixes

## Dope Sheet

- ID 602172 - When working in the Dope Sheet tab,, keyboard shortcuts did not work.

## KatanaUsdPlugins

- ID 599717 - The `ReadMe.md` for building a custom FnUsdShim has been updated. Additionally, when building the FnUsdShim, it would not define the `Root` for the plug-in in the configured `plugInfo.json` file.

- ID 599908 - When converting from USD to Katana through the UsdIn or UsdToKatana node, material binding information on USD volumes was lost.

## Miscellaneous

- ID 598531 - When expanding the LookFileManager passes, an error would be logged.

- ID 598961 - When a contributing merge node had empty inputs mixed with valid Geolib3 inputs, Katana could crash on Windows.

- ID 600459 - When using a system with an AMD graphics card, shading nodes in NetworkMaterialCreate or NetworkMaterialEdit contexts were not drawn properly.

  AMD graphics cards are not officially supported for use with Katana.

- ID 602665 - Scene graph location and USD prim path parameters could not be pasted as expressions onto other parameters.

## Network Materials

- ID 592908 - When in the Network Material context and hovering over a connection noodle, middle mouse pan action would not work.

- 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.

## Rendering

- ID 601075 - When a Live Render (Foresight+) was started with the Region of Interest (ROI) enabled, a null region could be delivered to the render plug-in if the creation of the associated Catalog Item was slightly delayed for any reason, leading to a render that does not show any pixels until the ROI is tweaked by the user.

  The issue was first seen when RenderMan's interactive denoiser was set up.

- ID 602034 - Monolithic materials would not display in the Viewer tab when using the Arnold viewer delegate.

- ID 602766 - New 'External Render' Catalog items could be created for individual render outputs when Katana received image data for a render output that is not currently enabled. For example, this would occur when adding AOV passes through InteractiveRenderFilters during a live render.

## 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 588831 - When the View Fullscreen option was combined with the Swap Screens functionality, Katana's main window could end up behind an empty window.

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

- ID 599701 - When doing a right click action in a Supertool's Parameters tab, the menu would be misaligned with the cursor.

- 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.

- ID 603752 - When the user attempted to drop a Katana collection on a parameter in a CollectionCreate node, the collection could not be added to the node and an exception could be raised.

## USD Native

- ID 586746 - When deleting the proxyPrim property in a UsdPrimCreate node or other USD native nodes, the last path entered to that property was not cleared.

- ID 595593 - When adding or removing locations from a UsdCollection node, the membershipExpression attribute would be removed.

- ID 598468 - When using left mouse double click expansion on USD locations in the Scene Explorer tab, all locations would be expanded ignoring stop types, such as assembly, component and subcomponent.

- ID 599831 - When parameters in USD-native nodes were updated in the Parameters tab, the stage could be invalidated by other node graph traversal processes.

- ID 601084 - When creating a UsdCollection node, disabling the collectionName parameter didn't prevent the creation of collections or API assignments.

- ID 604960 - When the user attempted to drop a Katana collection on a parameter in a UsdCollection node (which only accepts USD Collections), exceptions could be raised.

## 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 or part of the model hierarchy could not be framed. Additionally, unloaded prims or animated prims with the extentsHint property would not frame accordingly.

- ID 584274 - When a schema type contained an `|` (or) option against supported types, the bridge for lights was unable to resolve the hydra light type to a matching light.

- ID 603230 - The Viewer tab erroneously logged debug level messages suggesting that 'group' locations are not supported.

# 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).

## Miscellaneous

- ID 605164 - There are data size limitations when using the `policy/xml` MIME data format in UsdAttributeSet. The limit can be changed using the `KATANA_VALUEPOLICY_MIMEDATA_ARRAY_SIZELIMIT` environment variable, but increasing that value could cause performance issues when large Array attributes are copied.

# 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.