Once you have RenderMan for Katana (RfK) installed there is minimal setup that you need in order to start generating renders!  Before running Katana itself you'll need to set up your environment correctly after which Katana will automatically load the RfK plugin.  Once in Katana you'll need to set up your scene with a camera and geometry, add RenderMan (PRMan) lights and materials then you're reading to render.  

If multiple are renderers installed, to render with RenderMan, please set your DEFAULT_RENDERER environment variable to "prman"

Set Up Environment

In order to use RenderMan for Katana the path to the RfK plugin must be added to your KATANA_RESOURCES search path:

setenv KATANA_RESOURCES ${KATANA_RESOURCES}:${RFKTREE}/plugins/katana5.0

where RFKTREE is the install location for the package, and the katana version suffix is set to the major.minor string of one of the supported Katana versions.  This tells Katana where to find the RfK plugin as well as the supporting modules needed for rendering and managing scenes.

RenderMan Nodes and Macros

The purpose of any Katana renderer plugin is to enable an artist to generate images using the full power of the given renderer. In order to start taking advantage of the RenderMan capabilities with the RenderMan plugin for Katana we need to start with a discussion of the PRMan-specific nodes and parameters:


PrmanGlobalStatements This node contains most of the PRMan world state options. This is where you'll find settings such as pixelVariancemaxsamples.
PrmanObjectStatements This is where object-specific PRMan attributes are set. Look here for visibility and trace attributes among others.
PrmanIntegratorSettings This node controls settings relevant to each integrator. The separation of these controls allows for easier integration of your own custom integrator.
PrmanCameraSettings This node controls per camera settings, such as depth of field and field of view.
PrmanDenoiseChannelDefine This macro creates all the DisplayChannels required for the denoise utility.
PrmanDenoiseRenderOutputDefine This macro is used for defining the outputs required by the multichannel OpenEXR that is used by the denoiser.
PrmanHoldoutCreate This macro automates the process of setting up the AOVs and Sample Filters required for holdouts.
PrmanOutputChannelDefine This node is used for defining arbitrary output variables (AOVs) used for outputting extra data from the shader or renderer during render calculations.
PrmanShadingNode This shading node is used to add PRMan shaders (Bxdfs and Patters) to a wider shading network (along with the NetworkMaterial node).
PrmanVolume

This node provides a simple interface to create either a volume box or import a vdb file.

PrmanOpDebugThis node provides a way to inspect the affect of certain Ops on the attribute state
PrmanSignalVisualizerThis macro lets you isolate and visualize shading pattern outputs
PRMan-specific Nodes