Yes! That may have taken longer than it should have, but got it working! 💪 Cull Points based on Camera Frustum in vanilla Maya 2020, Bifrost 2.2.0.1!
Its much easier in Maya 2023 and Bifrost 2.6+ but here we are!

#maya #bifrost #camerafrustum #pipelinetd #pipelinejournal

Just added a feature to our USD asset turntable. It now has a helix camera move that gives a closeup render of the asset from bottom to top.

#houdini #solaris #techart #pipelinejournal #openusd #animation

Really enjoying the fact that a #matx file can be sublayered right into a #USD file. This is really making me rethink some of our processes.

#pipeline #pipelinejournal #animation

So with the release of #QuiltiX I have renewed my interest in #MatX. Actually just really keen to do a deep dive into material libraries, storing, reusing and accessing materials across DCCs.

#pipeline #mtlx #pipelinejournal

I'm probably the only person fully testing the user experience of our pipeline. (between projects, so no artists on pipe). It saddens me when I find new obvious bugs coz the dev didnt test. I get it one change can introduce a multitude of issues... but some devs are very good at checking thier work vs others who code and forget.

#pipeline #pipelinejournal #dev #animation

Been writing a new tool to help artists log thier time based on assigned assets/shots. Hoping to gain more insight into how long specific tasks and shot work takes.

#python #pyside #pipeline #pipelinejournal #qt #dev

Okay I have found a way to rename prims and the primpath as required... Its a brute force technique but thankfully having this working opens up so many options for our workflow.
Sadly this due to #Blender not allowing objects at different locations in the scene graph tree to have identical names, like #maya and #houdini

#OpenUSD #Python #PipelineTD #PipelineJournal #dag

#OpenUSD has a prim.GetName() but no prim.SetName()! I know how to edit primpaths via an sdf.layer but having a .SetName() would have meant i could be solving another problem right now instead of bashing my head against moving stage data to a sdf.layer and back!

#Pipeline #PipelineJournal #Houdini

Super happy to find that #Blender has an equivalent to a UUID.

# Assuming 'obj' is your object
uuid = obj.as_pointer()

Busy working on our Pipeline Asset Validator and need to make sure all names are unique yet conform to our naming standards.

#Pipeline #PipelineJournal

I do also need to do a deep dive into a python tool that was written two years ago for #Maya, that now needs implementing in #Blender Its gonna get wild as the dev who wrote it has since left the company.

#Pipeline #PipelineJournal

This weeks main goal, to create some FX (fire/smoke/pyro) and confirm that these assets travel down the new USD pipe correctly. Confirm that lookdev receives & can use all attributes required, etc.

This probably & largely involves prepping my asset build tool to accept different formats correctly, and accessing primvars.

#Houdini #Pipeline #OpenUSD #Solaris #PipelineJournal

Pretty chuffed! Delivered our first project created fully in #USD just in time for the #AnnecyFilmFestival
Starting in March we had no #OpenUSD in our pipeline and 3.5months later we have MVP support for all departments.
We also integrated #Blender for Modelling and Set Assembly. Its been a busy month not gonna lie!

#Pipeline #PipelineJournal #Animation #Solaris #Python #Houdini

So this week I cloned down the #blender repo and for the first time in my life successfully built a c project! I honestly did not expect it to work so smoothly. Props to the blender devs who put that all together.

Now to go do some #USD digging in the code ^_^

#Pipeline #PipelineJournal #Animation

Just to add insult to injury, #Maya uses 'map1' as its default, but auto renames to st on #USD export. So whilst exporting alembics from #Blender we then had two UV maps in Maya 'UVMap' and 'map1' when those files ultimately made it to rigging and then down to #Houdini #Solaris we now have 'st' and 'st1'.
Spent friday debugging why mtl.usd wasn't being applied correctly to anim.usd and well it came down to UV names.

#Pipeline #PipelineJournal #Animation

Okay primitive matching patterns are pretty freaking cool! I can see myself using these a lot.

#Houdini #USD #OpenUSD #PipelineJournal #Solaris

Decided to do a write up on creating a simple asset with the geo & mtl layers as referenced layers via payload.

https://maglit.me/usdassetbuildpayload

#USD #OpenUSD #Houdini #Solaris #PipelineJournal #Pipeline

The roll out of my new Asset Builder has gone amazingly smoothly. 💪 The #lookdev team really prefer its workflow, cleaner and simpler for the artist. This is always my goal, 'Let Artists be Artists' they dont care about all this tech ^_^

#USD #OpenUSD #Pipeline #PipelineJournal # Houdini

Creating a payload feels oddly complicated in #Houdini but once you have it setup its pretty straight forward!

Here I am creating two reference usd layers, one for _geo.usdc and one for _mtl.usdc (off top screen) that are combined into a single payload layer _payload.usd.

The 'root_component_prim' is simply creating '/asset_name' of kind 'Component'.

#USD #OpenUSD #Pipeline #PipelineJournal

Its been interesting working with USD and seeing how it can all be layered. The #Houdini component builder was not letting me store arnold render settings in the _mtl.usdc so we used the _extras.usdc. Having switched to my own builder we can now store those details in the _mtl.usdc meaning one less file to keep track of when applying materials to animation. 💪

#USD #OpenUSD #Pipeline #PipelineJournal

Flexing the new #Vex functions to build a #USD Asset Review Turntable for #Houdini

https://maglit.me/solarisassetturntable

#Pipeline #PipelineJournal #OpenUSD