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Welcome to RenderMan 22.5 for Katana
RenderMan for Katana (RfK) capitalizes on the changes made for newer versions of Katana and continues full support of the latest RenderMan ProServer 22.5.
We're excited to have improved Live Rendering. All manner of changes and edits can be made during a Live Rendering session. Waits are minimal and results are stunning, the renderer will continue to refine your image continuously should you take a coffee break and pick up where you left off on your return. We've worked hard to avoid making the artist restart the render to see updates and stability is improved.
This current release offers support for:
- Katana 2.6
- Katana 3.0
- Katana 3.1
- RenderMan ProServer 22.5
Please see the release notes below for all the new capabilities and known issues!
What's Changed
Miscellaneous Changes
- Live edits of the visible attribute are now supported except for instance array locations
- The visible attribute is now ignored on instance source locations so that it can vary per instance
- The float ramp parameters of PxrRampLightFilter are now reflected in the Hydra Viewer representation
- The file browser in PrmanVolume now filters for VDB files by default
- Removed an error message from the Viewer Plugins in the Hydra Viewer that would occur when a Hydra Viewer was present but never visible in a Katana layout
- Cryptomatte sample filters now only run on Disk Renders. This is to prevent overwriting the final images during an interactive render
- RenderOutputDefine nodes now contain more display driver options for raw outputs
- There is a new global option that tells RfK to respect the inherited material on a mesh light's geometry location - prmanGlobalStatements.plugin.honorInheritedMeshLightMaterial
- The vector2 output type is now supported for geometry.arbitrary primvars
The smoothtriangles tag for subdmesh locations is now supported via the "geometry.triangleSubdivisionRule" attribute
Fixes
- The combineMode options are now available for PxrRampLightFIlter and PxrIntMultLightFilter
- RfK now correctly outputs OSL struct references as type "struct" rather than "string"
- Portal lights with a mute attribute inherited from a rig are now correctly muted
- Light filters with a mute attribute inherited from a rig are now correctly muted when they are referenced by a light filter reference under a dome light with portals
Known Limitations
Known Limitations
Live Rendering
Creating a mesh light from existing geometry will duplicate the geometry in-render. Restart the render to remove the duplicate.
- Cannot change a geometry primitive type during live rendering (e.g. from NURBS to polymesh)
When assigning a material to a Scene Graph location, that location must be enabled in the live render working set
- Live render edits to the visible attribute need group locations to be "included with children" in the Live Render Working Set
Katana Limitation
Instanced lights with filters using the "Light Filter" coordsys have an incorrect transform. The workaround is to promote the light filter to a shared light filter using a light filter reference.
When rendering to "it" from Katana, do not stop the render from "it", abort the render from Katana. Your Katana session may freeze for a time if you abort from "it". If you make this mistake you can restore Katana to operation by terminating the prman render process manually. This will be fixed in a future version. You can also avoid this entirely by rendering to the Katana Monitor.
- We do not receive live render edits from Katana for nodes added at the end of the node graph, right above the Render node. If a no-op node (e.g. Merge) is inserted above the Render node and the node is added above that then the edit is received.
- Any live updates will cause interactive motion blur to be disabled. The render must be restarted.
- There are a few live render limitations in Katana 2.6 that have been resolved in Katana 3.0+ based on the improvements to 3.0, typically limitations with live working sets and adding/deleting locations in 2.6