09 March 2016
Pixar’s RenderMan, Solid Angle’s Arnold and Chaos Group’s V-Ray are each supported by plug-ins directly from those companies.
For Pixar’s RenderMan, please contact Pixar to get RenderMan Studio for Katana (also called RfK). You also need to install the relevant version of the RenderMan renderer (RenderMan Pro Server)
For Arnold, please contact Solid Angle to get KtoA. This includes both the Arnold renderer as well as the Katana plug-in.
For V-Ray, please contact Chaos Group to get V-Ray for Katana. This includes the V-Ray renderer as well as the Katana plug-in.
All queries regarding third-party plug-ins should be directed to the relevant provider.
The Katana installation includes legacy plug-ins for PRMan 17.0 and Arnold 4.2, which should be mainly considered as reference to show how a render plug-ins can be implemented. For support of the latest renderer versions and features it is recommended to use the plug-ins provided directly by the relevant vendor company.
Katana 2.1v2 has dependencies on the following third-party libraries:
These libraries are provided in the Katana distribution, in separate directories under $KATANA_ROOT/bin.
An ABI-compatible copy of these libraries needs to reside on your LD_LIBRARY_PATH in order for many of Katana’s plug-ins to run. The Katana application itself uses RPATHs to locate the required libraries.
NOTE: Katana’s wrapper script $KATANA_ROOT/katana appends LD_LIBRARY_PATH to ensure these libraries are visible to Katana plug-ins.
If you manage your own LD_LIBRARY_PATH
or wish to expose these libraries to
plug-ins by some other means, you can call the Katana binary directly using:
$KATANA_ROOT/bin/katanaBin
TP 94525 / BZ 44373 - A keyboard shortcut (V) has been added to the Viewer tab to look through a selected object.
TP 96234 / BZ 44873 - The user experience for working with manipulators in the Viewer tab has been improved:
TP 100791 / BZ 46739 - Added basic support for changing frame during a Live render without restarting the render session. This workflow is designed only to support simple changes between frames, such as transform attributes.
TP 106447 / BZ 47734 - When closing a Katana project or when quitting a Katana session, editable, but otherwise unmodified LiveGroup nodes are no longer reverted, meaning that their contents are no longer reloaded from disk in those cases.
TP 108345 / BZ 48105 - The caching of LiveGroup contents in Katana project files, as well as in source files of LiveGroups that contain nested LiveGroups, can now be disabled by setting the new KATANA_DISABLE_LIVEGROUP_CACHING environment variable to 1.
The following two functions have been added to the NodegraphAPI.LiveGroup module to query and toggle the state of the caching of LiveGroup contents:
TP 108739 / BZ 48143 - The number of recently-opened projects listed in the File > Open Recent menu may now be configured using the application > numberOfRecentProjects preference.
TP 127967 / BZ 51574 - Viewer Visibility and Render Working Set columns can be shown or hidden using the scenegraph > showRenderColumn and showViewerVisibilityColumn preferences.
TP 174098 - The UI of AttributeEditor nodes in the Parameters tab has been refined to make the table of existing edits resizable. Futhermore, attributes can now be dragged from the Attributes tab directly onto the table of existing edits in the Parameters tab, rather than onto a label below it.
TP 178009 - Improved UI performance where 'disable' parameters on nodes (for example, on LiveGroups) were driven by slower expressions.
TP 108471 / BZ 48119 - Updates to parameters following a change in the Katana project - for example, a change in shader assignment - could cause an error.
TP 110659 / BZ 48650 - The Viewer Modifier Plug-in setup() method was sometimes called within the wrong OpenGL context. It is now called within the correct shared context.
TP 116236 / BZ 49625 - Shading node output ports with names other than 'out' were duplicated on flushing caches.
TP 117386 / BZ 49870 - The contents of external edit sessions (Edit in X...) were sometimes truncated when read back into Katana.
TP 120662 / BZ 50436 - The Material node's "override materials" action did not work for material locations of types other than "material". In Katana 1.6, the overrides were applied at locations of type "material" and "shading network material", in addition to other legacy types. This behavior has been restored.
TP 123260 / BZ 50821 - Accessing the widget options for Popup Menu and Mapping Popup Menu widgets raised an exception.
TP 123867 / BZ 50977 - When the TMPDIR environment variable was set to a path that does not exist, Katana attempted to create it. It now exits with an error.
TP 124145 / BZ 51027 - Consecutive Viewer interactions could produce a lot of snapping back and forth of the manipulated locations. This is now alleviated as the viewer does not update during a user manipulation, nor while the runtime is still cooking following that manipulation.
TP 124618 / BZ 51085 - In GafferThree, local mutes on adopted rigs behaved as if the mute had been set upstream.
TP 124764 / BZ 51099 - Modifying of the visibility of a scene graph column in a custom SceneGraphView widget, or via Python scripting, would result in incorrect display of the column set.
TP 125498 / BZ 51207 - Transform rotations of GafferThree adopted packages were displayed as values that did not necessarily match those set upstream. The DecomposeTransform Op now attempts to read transform component vectors directly from the XForm, thereby providing matching component values, not just an equivalent rotation.
TP 125619 / BZ 51216 - After modifying a project recipe while the Geolib3 runtime is cooking, Op chain evaluation by scripts or custom tools (via Nodes3D.GetOp()) might return out of date results (and hence an out of date scene data). The NodegraphAPI.SynchronousContext, which is now used by the Python tab and in script mode, and may be used by custom tools, now ensures that the evaluated Op chain is up to date in all cases.
TP 125993 / BZ 51267 - Katana could crash when evaluating a CEL expression containing more than 30,000 paths.
TP 126255 / BZ 51337 - Channels name defined in RenderOutputDefine nodes were ignored when generating exr images for 'color' outputs.
TP 127428 / BZ 51519 - When calling the setLookFileMaterial() function on a light package of a GafferThree node that uses an expression for its asset parameter, and setting assetAsExpression to False, the expression on the asset parameter was not disabled.
TP 127788 / BZ 51550 - Modifying of the visibility of a scene graph column in a custom SceneGraphView widget, or via Python scripting, would result in incorrect display of the column set.
TP 127793 / BZ 51548 - Column preset keyboard shortcuts in custom SceneGraphView widgets did not work.
TP 127931 / BZ 51567 - Katana could freeze when attempting to run LookFileResolve on something other than a look file.
TP 128113 / BZ 51593 - The Node Graph tab's Find pop-up was slow in large projects.
TP 128817 / BZ 51708 - Setting the KATANA_DISABLE_WORKING_SETS_UI environment variable to '0' incorrectly disabled the working sets UI.
TP 166336 / BZ 51882 - In Pen-Up mode some actions did not yield expected results. This was most noticeable when interacting with Gaffer SuperTools.
TP 166765 / BZ 51899 - LiveGroup nodes whose disable parameter is set as an expression would not change if the node is locked.
TP 168089 - Materials constructed using nested chains of Look File Material attribute references were not correctly merged, resulting in an incomplete material interface.
TP 168339 - When loading a project containing LiveGroup nodes with their disabled states being set through Python expressions on their 'disable' parameters referencing environment variables, the contents of the LiveGroup nodes were still loaded from their respective sources even though the nodes were disabled.
TP 169703 - If different panes in a multi-pane Viewer were resized, manipulator interactions would use incorrect mouse sensitivity.
TP 171048 - Clicking in the Viewer while loading scene data could cause exceptions to be raised.
TP 172031 - When an exception was raised during the creation of a SuperTool or Macro node in the Node Graph tab, a further exception was raised due to an uninitialized variable, which resulted in a corrupted Undo History.
TP 173313 - Publishing a disabled LiveGroup could result in an empty .livegroup file.
TP 175759 - A LiveGroup with its 'disable' parameter set to True (disabled) when the scene is saved, loaded its contents twice at scene load if the 'disable' parameter was set to False by an environment variable.
TP 176142 - When clicking a link in a help pop-up, the target web page was opened inside of the help pop-up itself, instead of in a separate web browser application, as configured in Katana's preferences.
TP 176249 - Images in help pop-ups in the Parameters tab were not shown if their source did not start with a scheme such as file:// or http://.
TP 176390 - The computational cost of performing a undo-able operation (one that alters the current project, such as changing a node parameter) would increase significantly as the total number of undo entries increased.
TP 187277 - The About Katana dialog wrongly stayed on top of all other windows.
TP 191052 - Katana does not have any support for the texture reference object work-flows of V-Ray for Maya.
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 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 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 - User parameters of non-editable LiveGroup nodes can incorrectly be edited.
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.