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Welcome to RenderMan 22.0 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 22.0.

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 (New!)
RenderMan ProServer 22.0

Please see the release notes below for all the new capabilities and known issues!

What's New

Katana 22 > RenderMan For Katana 22.0 > katana_presetBrowser.png

The New Preset Browser

Preset Browser for Materials and Environments
Multi-threaded Katana Scenegraph traversal (faster time-to-first-pixel)
Multi-threaded Alembic_In_Prman (improves speed when reading multiple alembics)
Live add, delete and transform for geometry
Live updates for light-linking
Live light deleting
Instanced lights
Light array support
PxrMeshLight can be assigned to geometry with a MaterialAssign node
Cone angle now visualized on Viewer Modifiers
64-bit object IDs, consistent across disk/live/preview renders

Additional Changes

Miscellaneous Changes

Materials set at instance source locations are ignored
Dicing cameras are now specified as a camera's scenegraph location. The "worldcamera" and "framecamera" options are no longer supported. This also removes the need to add the dicing camera to a RenderOutputDefine to use the full camera path.
PxrSphereLights with cone angles are now facing the correct direction
Instance primvars are no longer supported. Use user attributes instead.
Leaf level instancing now requires that locations with the instance.ID attribute have no children. RfK will not traverse past a location with instance.ID set.
RIB Include has been removed
Integrator settings are now configured with a new node called PrmanIntegratorSettings. This node automatically picks up any integrators with Args files on RMAN_RIXPLUGINPATH.
"insertWhen" directives for config.xml are removed pending new configuration
Parameter Layout has been removed from PrmanGlobalStatements and PrmanObjectStatements
Attributes in PrmanObjectStatements are now split into either an "attributes" or "primvars" group depending on whether the attribute can vary per instance.
There have been a few changes related to cameras and PrmanGlobalStatements: -
- dofAspect was a hider setting, but is now found under prmanGlobalStatements.camera.depthOfField.dofAspect.
- Projection plugins can be created as materials assigned to /root. They are no longer available through PGS.
- backgroundColor can be created as a "PxrBackgroundDisplayFilter" assigned to /root. It is no longer available in PGS.
- The settings in the camera motionBlur section have changed and could not be automatically remapped.
- It is no longer necessary to create a camera with frameBeginCameraPath. All cameras in the scene will be created.
No longer supported:
- "prmanGlobalSettings.plugin.instanceSourceMode"
- "prmanGlobalSettings.commandArguments.numThreadModeProcs"
- "textures" attribute group
- The PrmanLightFilterCreate macro has been removed in favor of light filters in GafferThree
- camera fov motion blur

Improvements since RenderMan 22.04b

Katana 3.0 Hydra Viewer light plugins functional in Linux, UI work ongoing
Various performance improvements and bug fixes
Added extensibility to RfK's procedural argument parsing. Now RfK will look for an attribute "argsConversionFunc" which is the name of a attribute function for custom argument conversion.
Add support for prman command line options "woff", "logfile", and "loglevel"
"Refresh Texture" button now works for PxrCookieLightFilter and PxrGoboLightFilter.

Improvements since RenderMan 22.03b

ID passes should now output correctly
Updated PxrColorRamp
Baking should now work
Fixed an issue with invalid cameras in RIB
Some UI tweaks for clarity

Improvements since RenderMan 22.02b

Light filter linking is supported. It should work the same as in 21.
Crop windows during live rendering work as expected
RfK will now use the basis from the alembic file unless overriden by the curve.basis setting in PrmanObjectStatements (NOTE: only supported with AlembicInPrman until a Katana/Foundry bug is addressed)
Added deformation motion blur support for blobbies.
Corrected missing Primvar processing
Fixed a possible crash with mishandled primvars and textures
Shadow linking in GafferThree's linking tab is now supported
Various UI fixes and simplifications

Improvements since RenderMan 22.01b

The renderer now obeys the set number of CPU threads.
Substitute whitespace with '_' for names and labels
The default type in PrmanOutputChannelDefine is now "color"
Added support for live rendering from the selected Viewer camera
The Quality Preset parameter on PrmanGlobalStatements no longer errors.
Removed the known limitation about parallel traveral edits to live material not working.
Live render edits to ROI / cropWindow now use the intersection of the two attributes
Added live render support for crop windows
Alembic cameras now use the camera settings from prmanGlobalStatements.
OSL parameters now have connection type checking for the inputs and ouputs of PrmanShadingNode.
OSL parameters support a "tag" hint in the metadata to allow users to specify a connection type for the parameter. For multiple types on outputs, use a "|" to delimit the options (eg "struct|manifold").
RfK now supports connections between any color, normal, point, and vector parameters.
Attribute "trace.displacements" are now automatically upgraded to the current "boolean" type. Previous values of '2' are now reset to '1'.
Unknown scenegraph location types no longer emit warning "Location type not recognized". These unknown location types still default internally to a group location.

Known Limitations

Live Rendering

Updates to attributes will cause interactive motion blur to fail to render. The render must be restarted.
Creating a mesh light from existing geometry will duplicate the geometry in-render. Restart the render to remove the duplicate.
Adding a portal light to a dome light doesn't delete the dome light
Cannot change a geometry primitive type during live rendering (e.g. from NURBS to polymesh)
When traversal is parallel, edits to a live material will affect only a subset of assigned geometry unless all of the assigned geometry starts out live or is made live at least once during the live render session
Edits to mesh light parameters require that the geometry location is enabled in the live render working set
When assigning a material to a Scene Graph location, that location must be enabled in the live render working set

Beta limitations

XML stats do not function in RfK
Scenes with locations with a ":" in the name (imported from Maya with namespaces) will crash in the Hydra Viewer available in Katana 3.0
Some parameters in PrmanGlobalStatements and PrmanObjectStatements are read-only. These parameters are not yet supported.
If the environment variable RMAN_SHADERPATH or RMAN_RIXPLUGINPATH is set and doesn't include the default paths from RMANTREE then the default prman shaders are not found.
User defined attribute identifier id are not respected
Prman's errorHandlers are not supported
NURBS trim curves don't render
Texture Projections do not render correctly
You can only render from the RenderSettings camera.
Holdouts not available
Clipping planes not available
Integer AOVs are not available in RenderOutputDefine
Material assignment to archives may not function correctly
Alembic pass-through via AlembicIn_prman and Alembic proxy support in Viewer
Env var for DSO Procedurals
Instanced lights with parented filters using the "Light Filter" coordsys have incorrect transform
Material matrix parameters of type double are not supported
Material matrix array parameters are not supported
Attribute "geometry.flip_t" is not currently supported
Katana 3.0 only: Hydra Viewer light plugins not yet functional in Windows (Linux operation has been added to 22.0b5)

Katana Limitation

When a Prune node is added at the end of the node graph, right above the Render node, we do not receive an edit from Katana. If a no-op node (e.g. Merge) is inserted above the Render node and the Prune is added above that then the delete edit is received and the Prune works properly.
There are a few live render limitations in Katana 2.6 that have been resolved in Katana 3.0.