Hi

what are your thoughts about USD as an interchange format in use with Houdini.

I just tried to import USD from different packages into Houdini and there has been always missing something.

I only could correctly import
USD built in Houdini itseöf.

What are yozr experiennces?

I guess I have to go with alembic again.

What was missing exactly? If alembic is an alternative it's presumably something geometry related?

antc
What was missing exactly? If alembic is an alternative it's presumably something geometry related?

Could you ever import an USD File with correctly applied geo, material and animation?
I think USD has to mature.

Or what s your experience?

tomtm

antc
What was missing exactly? If alembic is an alternative it's presumably something geometry related?

Could you ever import an USD File with correctly applied geo, material and animation?
I think USD has to mature.

Or what s your experience?

Yes USD has supported those three areas pretty well for quite a while and is very mature. Most likely any bumps you're hitting are related to USD import/export limitations in specific DCC's so I think it'll depend very much on the tools you use.

antc

tomtm

antc
What was missing exactly? If alembic is an alternative it's presumably something geometry related?

Could you ever import an USD File with correctly applied geo, material and animation?
I think USD has to mature.

Or what s your experience?

Yes USD has supported those three areas pretty well for quite a while and is very mature. Most likely any bumps you're hitting are related to USD import/export limitations in specific DCC's so I think it'll depend very much on the tools you use.

ok, what package are saving out USD properly for you use?

tomtm

antc

tomtm

antc
What was missing exactly? If alembic is an alternative it's presumably something geometry related?

Could you ever import an USD File with correctly applied geo, material and animation?
I think USD has to mature.

Or what s your experience?

Yes USD has supported those three areas pretty well for quite a while and is very mature. Most likely any bumps you're hitting are related to USD import/export limitations in specific DCC's so I think it'll depend very much on the tools you use.

ok, what package are saving out USD properly for you use?

Maya, Houdini and Katana primarily, along with a bunch of internal tools. We don't export animation or shading from Maya though and so wouldn't hit limitations in those areas for example.

If you use vanilla MatX and not the Karma side of thing sharing shading networks should work just fine between Houdini and Maya. Basically, almost everything works fine nowadays that Maya USD is more mature. However, you can still run into issues if you use Maya vanilla USD, if you go through the Bifrsot Graph and author there you can pretty much accomplish the same thing as Solaris, and is procedural, so keep both DCCs running procedurally if you need to.

ok, but if I download the sample file "UsdSkel Examples" from pixar itself, it seems to load everything but with Z-Axis up?

https://openusd.org/release/dl_downloads.html#assets [openusd.org]

Are there some loading preferences?

Interesting. Maya and Houdini import it sideways, Gaffer and usdview do it correctly, and Blender is Z up by default, so... checkmate. :P

and interesting, if I import a character I shaded in Houdini with mtlx standard shader, if I import it
back to stage using sublayer and use Edit Material Network there will be used a Generic Shader instead
of the mtlx Standard Shader.

tomtm
ok, but if I download the sample file "UsdSkel Examples" from pixar itself, it seems to load everything but with Z-Axis up?

Internally Pixar works z-up, so all their examples are likely to be authored z-up. Usd supports both y-up and z-up however Houdini doesn't automatically rotate the scene for you. You can either rotate the scene 90 degrees using a transform lop, or switch Houdini to be z-up in the preferences (3D Viewports->Orientation).