USDs options for visibility are "Inherited" and "Invisible"... Is there a way to force a prim to just be "visible"?

Yes and no

I'll start with "no". USD treats invisibility as a pruning operation, so if /root/world/truckis flagged as invisible, then it won't even look at anything under it (i.e., /root/world/truck/geo/alwaysShowMePrettyPleasemight as well not even exist). So as far as attributes go, it really is only "invisible" or "inherit".

But now "yes". Let's say you have this:

The invisibility can be shuffled downwards like this:

This functionality is provided in UsdGeomImageable::MakeVisible()(https://graphics.pixar.com/usd/docs/api/class_usd_geom_imageable.html#af47f609f24c8023ddacc6d216eaef0f3)

I don't currently have strong opinions on if/how this could/should be exposed to users (other than I do think it's a bit strange as a new user that you can't flag a primitive as visible), but you can definitely run this via a Python LOP.

Thanks, Rob. I'll check that out.

In my case I'm dealing with the possibility that an upstream department may be animating visiblity (e.g. as animated vis in an alembic file for instance, whose animation gets layered onto the object in the stage), and for whatever reason we may need to override this downstream.

In my case, it's more like I have this:


I'll take a look at UsdGeomImageable::MakeVisible(). That sounds simple enough.

Let's make sure there's no misunderstanding about "inherited" in this context. It doesn't relate to layering but, rather, scene hierarchy. So as long as /root/worldisn't invisible, then you just need to ensure the strongest visibility opinion on /root/world/truckis set to "inherited" and not "invisible".

Yeah that was my understanding, I am just not sure about the opinion strength of the anim being layered in, and since I may not have control over that strength, I was wondering if there was way to override it.