User guide

1 Preface
The aim of this guide is to provide an understanding of what Katana is, how it works, and how it can be used to solve
real-world production problems. It is aimed at users who are familiar with technical content, such as plug-in writers,
R&D TDs, pipeline engineers, and effects uber-artists.
Terminology
To avoid confusion certain terminology conventions are used in this document. These naming conventions are also
those used in Katana itself.
Nodes: these are the units used in the Katana interface to build the 'recipe' for a Katana project.
Parameters: these are the values on each node in Katana's node graph. The parameter values on any node can be
set interactively in the graphical user interface, or can be set using animation curves or expressions
Scene Graph: this is a hierarchical set of data that can be presented to a renderer or any output process. Examples
of data that can be held in the scene graph can include geometry, particle data, lights, instances of shaders and
global option settings for renderers.
Locations: the units that make up the scene graph hierarchy. Many other 3D applications refer to these as nodes,
but we will refer to them as locations to avoid confusion with the nodes used in the node graph.