filmfritze Are there any new possibilities for the animation workflow from Maya to Houdini. there have been some changes in the Maya USD plugin.
Tried in Maya 2024. Regular Maya plugin is same shit.
It can't even export image plane data for cameras. What is the point of the plugin than. We just finished project with 150+ cg shots with some aircraft, ships, crowd characters. Wanted to extend USD pipeline to Maya so we can have some finer character work, but no.
I was trying to find solution for similar workflow but seems like that is still not possible. What I imagined is having USD asset in houdini of an character with materials and all, and then juts adding animation from Maya as sub layer to that. But as I understood that is not doable at the moment?
heh still trying to wrap my mind around all this USD thing. My understanding of it have so many holes in there hahaha. Followed some tutorials from Maya but they are a bit messy as well. Guess will start from 101 USD and go from there again to see how it could work
So here is my workflow. Import model into Solaris component builder, lookdev and publish. Import usd into maya as maya geo, rig, animate. Export only the geo you imported as usd but do not export any material data. Back in Solaris, merge the two together, or sub layer them. Now here is the thing. Maya is notvso good at exporting usd. But usd multiverse is a great plugin. This year why we are doing is only exporting the fbx skeleton and doing the bind in houdini as you can do things like strip uv data from anim data etc. Best
The default Maya USD plugin has many limitations, but it's getting more and more useful in recent versions. It's also possible to export USD geometry without UVs with it.
Figured it out, dirty and probably not so by the book but it works. I reference in character that I'm gonna animate in maya and export meshes only to 1 usd file. Name_GEO.usd for example. After that exporting animated character also referenced in maya, mesh only again as animated use, for example Name_shot001.usd, adn other shots or animations. In my case I export all characters and camera in single .usd for each shot. Back in Houdini, importing _GEO.usd, creating all mateirals and look dev and export all that with USD rop as new usd file, like Name_LDV.usd SO that containts mesh and materials created and assigned. Have to do that only once.
Finaly in Houdini, importing Name_LDV.usd, attaching it to Name_sh001.usd and there it is, got animated mesh with assigned materials. Just have to make sure that in all usd files organisation is same and same mesh paths.
Now there is probably more elegant way to do all this, but I'm glad I made it this far for now hahahaha
