Q100445: Light locations are not displayed in the Viewer tab in Katana 3
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SYMPTOMS
In Katana 3.0 upwards, lights from renderers other than 3Delight (for example RenderMan or Arnold) may not appear in the legacy Viewer tab, although they are displayed in the Viewer (Hydra) tab.
CAUSE
This behaviour is a known limitation of Viewer Modifier Plug-ins (VMPs), which are used in the Viewer tab to display specific scene graph location types such as lights. As only one VMP can be registered for any particular location type at a time, the plug-ins provided by any additional renderer plug-in loaded by Katana may now be overridden by the 3Delight VMPs if the software is initialised with 3Delight loaded.
The Viewer (Hydra) tab uses a different method to display lights and other locations (Viewer Delegate Components or VDCs) and has no such limitation.
RESOLUTION
Our advice for this case is to use the Viewer (Hydra) tab to work with lights, or to initialise the software with only one rendering plug-in loaded at a time if using the legacy Viewer tab.
FURTHER READING
Developer documentation for legacy Viewer Modifier Plug-ins and new Viewer Delegate Components can be found in the Katana Developer Guide.
Please see the following article for more information about the 3Delight renderer plug-in: Q100246: 3Delight for Katana