Welcome to RenderMan for Katana (RfK) 21.6!
This release introduces improvements and some fixes to the previous release.
New Features
You can now export materials under /root/material as in-line archives before WorldBegin. Enable this feature by setting the plugin.exportTaggedMaterials in PrmanGlobalStatements. Then, tag any materials that you want to export as archives \with the attribute "material.prmanExportMaterial". The material archives can be referenced via ReadArchive by the material's name (e.g. /root/materials/Material_Name would be referenced with ReadArchive "Material_Name").
- As above, Golaem is now supported.
Miscellaneous Changes
- String array parameters are no longer output as reference. Now the ":" character can be used in string array shader parameters.
- You can now set $RMAN_DSOPATH on Windows with the “;” path separator.
Known Limitations
Live Rendering
- Light linking edits are not currently supported.
- Lights can be added during live rendering however, due to a bug in Katana 2.1, a newly-added light is not automatically 'live' and does not inherit its live state from the parent. When adding a light you will need to manually activate that light in the Scene Graph. Newly added lights work correctly in Katana 2.0 and Katana 2.5v5+.
- Adding mesh lights during live rendering creates duplicate geometry, upon re-render this is solved.
- Changes to light filters are not processed unless the associated lights are also marked 'live'.
- Alembic geometry mesh light transform edits (i.e. Transform3D changes) are not updated correctly during live rendering.
- "Disable Local Assignment" does not work during live rendering with parameters of OSL shaders (e.g. PxrLayer and PxrLayerMixer).
- Disabling and re-enabling layers in PxrLayerMixer can cause instability in Live Rendering.
Other limitations
- If an object is assigned a material that has been disabled or does not exist the geometry will not render at all.
- If you are rendering to 'it' the Monitor tab must be open for the Render Log tab to receive output from Katana and prman.
- Although direct non-identity scaling has been removed from the PxrDomeLight and PxrDistantLight it is still possible to get an indirect scale via a constrained or inherited location. If the indirect scale is negative the Pxr light will flip to a reverse orientation.
- Bake renders only work as Disk Renders. The render will fail for Live and Preview Renders.