Is it possible to export a Houdini HDA to USD procedural controllers?

Ex:
1- Have an Houdini HDA with controllers for hair curves
2- Export that into USD.
3- Then, open USD in other DCC (Maya, Multiverse for ex) and have the controllers there?


thanks

Link back to the github issue that was opened on this topic (but continuing the discussion here): https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/USD/issues/1541 [github.com]

As mentioned on github, the HDA dynamic file format plugin provides some capabilities like this. On github you then say:

Would this work like Unreal Engine then, which requires a Houdini plugin and its limited to viewport, not "runtime/playtime"?

My goal is to take an HDA to Xcode and build it on iOS with procedural controllers

This is nothing like unreal engine I may not be understanding your question, but this plugin will never _run_ on iOS (not unless we port Houdini Engine to iOS, which seems pretty unlikely to me). An alternative might involve running Houdini Engine on the cloud controlled by an iOS device, but in such a scenario I wouldn't try to embed the "procedure" in USD, I'd suggest a custom application to communicate with machines in the cloud that would deliver fully formed and resolved USD data to the remote device (as USDZ, presumably).

Or maybe I've completely misunderstood your intent...

Thanks again for the info Mark.

Sorry if I didn't explain myself clear...

The goal is to export a USD with procedural controllers.

For example, I can export a USD file with Morph targets, then open on there DCCs (Xcode included) and access those morph target controllers on iOS.

I wanted to do the same with procedural controllers. Export as USD, and then be able to have those controllers on iOS.


Looks like this is not possible on a Solaris -> USD pipeline?

alelordelo
I wanted to do the same with procedural controllers. Export as USD, and then be able to have those controllers on iOS.


Looks like this is not possible on a Solaris -> USD pipeline?

No, it's not possible unless the environment evaluating the USD has access to run the procedural within Houdini. USD does not define a generic procedural execution framework. The HDA procedural file plugin is a way for a usd graph to request data generated by Houdini with arguments encoded as USD.