tomtm
Maybe it‘s really well integrated and I don‘t understand the unique concept of USD.
The old Concept for rendering a scene was like this:3D Scene Setup -> Render Engine Converte Scene in Native Format -> Render Engine Rendering -> Image FileMantra has
ifd files that it understand how rendering a scene.
Renderman version used
rib Redshift uses rs
Octane uses
ocs or obrx in other words every render Engine has it's own Scene Description File Format.With USD it looks like this when the Render Engine is USD Based:3D Scene Setup -> USD Files -> Render Engine Rendering -> Image FileKarma uses USD for Rendering the Scene Native
Renderman XPU also uses USD Native
Other Render Engines uses Converters or are in the process to make it Native.
When there is one Format every 3D Tool can understand the Scene (Import / Export) and every Render Engine can render the Scene.
There is also MaterialX that should be the native Shader Format that should bring more portability.
USD as it says is the Universal Scene Description File Formattomtm
This is very confusing, what is the best way with the best performance?
At least it would be cool, if for Example A the Karma viewport would be accesible from the main Houdini viewport, it‘s very strange integration with a separate viewport panel.
It could be that there is a update or a change, what we know is that there will be a new Viewport based on Vulcan. it could be that the new Viewport will support all Contexts (sop, lop, cop, mat). (just a guess)
The main reason i would say was development Integration as with Solaris there was also Hydra for the viewport and when you want to mix it with other viewport OpenGL it is surly in the background not a simple task. When you know that you need to develop anyway a new Viewport you invest more time in to the new code.