I'm having an issue with exporting crowds as USD for rendering in Katana.
Skeleton animations/deformations are missing, and I get giant collision geometry displayed in the viewer.
At first, I thought this might just be a limitation of Katana's USD implementation, but the same behavior is seen if the USD is imported into SOPs using the usdImport node.
This behavior is also seen in Maya when importing using the AL USD plugin.
If I import the same USD into Solaris(i.e., LOPs), the crowd animations and deformations display correctly.
It also displays correctly when viewed in the standalone USDView app that comes with the Multiverse USD Maya plugin.
So, it works in Houdini LOPs and the standalone USDViewer. Doesn't work in Houdini SOPs, Katana, or Maya(ALUSD plugin).
I'm starting to suspect that this may be a limitation with the way that Maya, Katana, and Houdini SOPs handle skinned instances...
My end goal is to avoid giant alembic caches when transporting crowds to Katana for rendering.
If anyone could shed some light on the issue (or better yet, offer a workaround) it'd really be appreciated.
I've attached a USD and a .hip file with the SOP and LOP import setup to demonstrate (place files in the same folder).
