SUMMARY
This comprehensive troubleshooting guide helps artists and pipeline TDs quickly identify and resolve common Katana issues. Find step-by-step solutions for startup failures and crashes, rendering errors, slow multi-core CPU performance on Linux, and autosave recovery.
MORE INFORMATION
Katana fails to launch or crashes on startup:
Startup problems can have several causes. As a first step, please confirm that your operating system is supported by the version of Katana you are using:
Q100713: Supported operating system compatibility list for Katana
Katana crashed and you need to recover your work:
Katana automatically saves your work in progress, so if it quits unexpectedly or is closed before you save, you can usually recover your project. The following article explains how to do so:
Q100450: How to Find and Recover an Autosaved File After a Crash
Renders fail, come out black, or the renderer plug-in doesn't load:
Most rendering issues are caused by a missing camera, material, light, or renderer license. The following article explains how to troubleshoot them:
Q100391: Troubleshooting rendering issues in Katana
If the renderer plug-in does not appear in Katana or fails to load, ensure the required environment variables, such as KATANA_RESOURCES and DEFAULT_RENDERER, are set before Katana starts. The following articles explain how to set them:
Q100242: How to Launch Katana With Third-party Renderer Plugins Using a Launcher Script For Windows
Q100272: How to Launch Katana With Third-party Renderer Plugins Using a Launcher Script For Linux
If your render completes but fails when merging multiple Arbitrary Output Variables (AOVs) into a single multichannel OpenEXR file, the following article explains the cause and available workarounds:
Q100384: Render fails when merging channels / AOVs in Katana via ExrCombine
Renders are slow or don't use all CPU cores:
On Linux, certain NVIDIA drivers can restrict Katana to a subset of the available CPU cores, and any launched render process inherits this restriction. The drivers that cause this issue are 580.95.05 and 590.48.01. However, the bug has been fixed in Katana 8.5v2 and 9.0v2. These Katana versions can be downloaded here:
https://downloads.foundry.com/katana
The following article explains how to resolve it in other versions:
Q100739: Katana renders slowly and does not use all CPU cores on Linux with certain NVIDIA drivers
Crashes on launch with Intel CPUs in some cases:
On Windows, Katana can also fail to launch on machines with 10th-generation (Ice Lake) or newer Intel Central Processing Units (CPUs), or on machines with both Intel integrated graphics and a dedicated graphics card. The following articles explain how to work around each issue:
Q100578: Intel integrated graphics drivers causes Foundry software to crash on launch
FURTHER READING
If you are still seeing any issues after performing the steps outlined in this article, then please open a Support ticket and let us know the issue you are encountering and the troubleshooting steps you have taken so far.
For more information on how to open a support request, please refer to this article: Q100064: How to raise a support ticket
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