Hi!

I created a Rock asset with 3 geo variants. In the Layout Asset Gallery, I added the usd asset. When I drag it into a Layout node and scatter the rock with Fill, it only chooses the first variant.

Is it a problem with how I add the Rock asset to the Layout Asset Gallery or am I not setting up my Layout node correctly? Should each variant be somehow imported individually?

I chose "Ramdom" on every setting I could find in the Layout node.

You need a separate asset definition in the asset gallery database for each variant. Then you explicitly pick which variants the Layout LOP should be using with the current brush. I believe the Component Builder has options to create per-variant entries in the asset gallery. The reason for this arrangement is that point instancers in LOPs can't pick a prototype variant on a per-instance basis. Each variant selection must be presented as a separate prototype. So we adopted a similar arrangement for assets in the gallery. This approach also has the advantage that it is easy to see the difference between the variants (from their thumbnails) and when using assets with variants, it isn't an all-or-nothing choice. You get to include/exclude each variant explicitly.

Ah! I created my asset using the ComponentGeometryVariants right before the ComponentOutput. The main problem is I forgot to tick the Variant Layers checkbox before saving the .usd from the ComponentOutput. When I do, it saves each variants in separate .usd in a "variant" folder.

Now, the problem I have is when I try to generate thumbnails. It only saves one .png of the first variant. Is there a way to automatically generate one for each?

If you set the thumbnail mode to "render", and toggle on "Save Thumbnail to Disk", then it should render out a thumbnails for each geometry variant.

There seems to be a bug causing "Generate Thumbnail" to on re-render the main thumbnail, rather than the variant thumbnails.

Hi!

I had exactly both those settings like you described. It only overwrites the thumbnail directly in the asset folder but adds nothing in the "variant" sub-folder. I also noticed it creates a "Thumbnail.usda" file.... not sure what that's for.

I tried deleting the thumbnail and re-generating it but I always get a single thumbnail.

Are you on Windows by any chance? There is a bug (that we just fixed today) where thumbnail generation on Windows in general wasn't working, but it should be fixed in tomorrow's builds. If you're not on Windows, what version of Houdini are you running? Both @goldleaf and I have been able to write out per-variant thumbnails without issue (excepting the Windows bug mentioned above).

Attaching my super simple hip file in case that might be helpful. Just hit "Save to Disk" on torus_asset.