When I first tried the USD workflow myself I couldn't believe it actually worked. Cross-software file formats retaining all the data, crazy! If you want to learn more about USD, see what Omniverse has to offer for you, or join the GTC talks on USD in March; make sure to use the links below! Learn more during OpenUSD Day at GTC 2024: nvda.ws/492kEqN Download NVIDIA Omniverse for free: nvda.ws/3u8aZQ4 Register for GTC 2024: nvda.ws/42wrBO0
It's the other way around. Files can't be compatible with your software, the software has to be compatible with your file. The software is doing the reading and writing of your file, no matter of what kind of file is is. As long as you can make out the file structure you absolutely can make your software read it and write it. The file can't do jack ish.
What the file CAN do however, is have all the bits and bobs saved in a generic enough way that it makes it easier for the software developers to write an import-export function. Seriously, just the fact that it's *ment* to be used by everyone means that there's no pesky obfuscation or stupid shit making it hell to port over.
Yeah you're right. But to any regular artist, who's not necessarily tech-savy or privy on becoming that, it's kinda potato potatoe. USD is trying to simplify (understatement) the process of using multiple tools in your pipeline and that's the message im trying to send!
Technically yes, practically, not so much. Case in point: Just about nothing can read .Blend files from Blender, and the things that _can_ do it badly, usually just some small subset of basic information. It's not impossible to do. But it is incredibly difficult. Why? Because .blend files are internally actually a representation of nearly Blender's entire memory layout as it's running. That means that .blend is incredibly tightly linked to Blender's source code and the way that blender works. So reading a .blend file flawlessly? It's not quite re-implementing _all_ of blender... but it's not far off. Reading and writing the whole blend file in a meaningful way is basically remaking all of Blender itself from scratch. I would argue that .blend files are an example of a filetype being technologically incompatible with software, it only truly works with Blender itself. This is not an uncommon thing in 3D software. I'll provide another sticking point - sometimes, things are lost in translation. It's very common for there not to be a one to one mapping between concepts in different software, and for it to actually be impossible to transfer from one to the other because there really just isn't a corresponding feature. Here's some examples: Material nodes in Blender mean something totally different from what material nodes mean in Unreal Engine. Even if UE5 could read a .Blend file, it couldn't use the materials in it, since they just don't work the way that unreal engine's materials work (unless both UE5 and Blender agree to stick to a standard, like PBR materials). They are legitimately incompatible, for real technical reasons. Another example, animation drivers and rigs that use them are complete nonsense anywhere outside of Blender, since they literally grab data from addresses based on Blender's internal structure. File formats can very much be incompatible with your software and it's very possible for it to be utterly impractical to write software that can read and write them. All that needs to happen is that your file format needs to reach a certain level of complexity, and then it becomes nearly inevitable.
OH! I thought of another one - _LISP._ This is pretty common in CAD software, especially the really old ones that have been around for a few decades. See, what LISP is - it's an entire programming language, AND a file format. The big thing with Lisp is that they treat code itself as data, and can store data as programming code. If your file format is lisp based, that's a real pickle. Because that means that reading it is going to involve re-implementing an _entire programming language_ from scratch. Usually one that's totally proprietary and completely undocumented. (AutoCAD does this)
@@MustacheMerlin You wrote a lot and usually I just tldr, but wanted to let you know I appreciate it because it was insightful. It reminded me how when I open a file I'm working on in Blender, the viewport is exactly where I left it. This is only to better my experience in Blender itself and has no bearing on the next program. From my experience with Blend to Unity and Godot, their importers are not bad if you're not expecting anything advanced. I could be wrong, I don't do this professionally, it almost seems equivalent to an fbx. It seems like a chicken or the egg challenge, where a standard format needs to exist like USD to ensure file formats can be interoperable. What would really impress me is data that is USD exportable is tagged that way, in a way that another program can take the .blend file and retrieve the USD tagged data.
I'm not even a 3D artist, but this is truly great. Interoperabity is a key thing in every sector that uses any type of software in their workflow. Amazing. Great video and explanation.
usd is absolutely awesome I can approve, but it's still not practical in many cases because of the file size recently I created rigged fireworks, the glTF file size on average was 6MB while the usdc turned out to be 72MB
Hmm.. it is a lot smaller than alembic though. Maybe it isn't optimized for rigged stuff yet? But that's what I like about USD, it's still very much growing and expanding, being worked on by these major tech companies!
True, it's smaller than alembic. and yes isn't optimized for armature animation, in fact the animation is exported as mesh cache and not armature @@KaizenTutorials
I hope so... but as of now even for shapekeys animations, usdc files are still 30 to 40% larger in size compared to glTF. but the reason why glTF will be mainstream for a while is that it's supported by many web and VR software. I do get a lot of requests for format conversion to glTF for that reason @KaizenTutorials
@@KaizenTutorials it is more and more integrated in pipelines, very efficient, and it supports every data formats you can think of, it's like having FBX, Alembic and OpenVDB put all together but on steroids!
@@KaizenTutorials Houdini has USD since version 18, which came out in 2019, it is not new, a lot of peoples are actually switching to Houdini for scene building and rendering because of Houdini having such a great USD integration, which includes Hydra, MaterialX, and two brand-new Hydra render Engines, Karma CPU, and Karma XPU(GPU).
Well they started doing it 8 years ago. But AOUSD is only 6 months old and is now the major driving force for this tech to make it mainstream across all software’s! That sounds new enough to me :-)
@@KaizenTutorials OpenUSD is 8 years old, most DCC have started to integrate it years ago, including Blender, there is nothing new here, AOUSD is just an organization aiming at creating a standard for OpenUSD, nothing more!
This video feels less like it's about USD and more like it's an ad for Omniverse and Nvidia as a whole. While I don't mind sponsored segments (money is always nice to have) and NVIDIA isn't exactly an irrelevant sponsor, the integration here just felt hamfisted and coarse. Like specifically stating that Omniverse is *NVIDIA's* Omniverse, even when not stating *Adobe's* Substance Painter or *Autodesk's* Maya, the random out of place close up shot of a 4090 FE with the only real visible detail being the GeForce RTX branding, and constantly showing the Omniverse logo, more often even than the Blender logo. This isn't me trying to be a hater, just wanted to share my thoughts on the sponsor integration in hopes that future videos might have a clearer demarcation between sponsored and unsponsored content, preferably one that's easily skippable for people like me who have no interest whatsoever in any of NVIDIA's products.
Thanks for the honest feedback. NVIDIA plays a major part in the current USD development and so happens to be the sponsor. With the exception of the link mentions in the video the video itself wouldn't have been very different if NVIDIA wasn't the sponsor. I agree that it might not be equal if I don't say Adobe or Autodesk before their product names, but that's just because everyone knows what those are. It feels redundant. Not everyone knows Omniverse! Hope that makes sense :-) I'll take your feedback into consideration for future vids.
Tbh I’m going to have to disagree with you… I think he blended in his sponsorship and the video really well where he gets the job done of not only informing me but entertaining me with a side of a cool program that could be useful without rubbing it in to much
Love this community. Quality content, honest feedback, human response. I didn't get the feel of a shady advertisement, but I'm in a good mood currently.
@butterscothpanda right in the first part of the video he literally states that this video is sponsored by NVIDIA! Are you just ranting because you own an AMD Graphics card??? 😂😂😂 Only joking chill and if you don't want to watch then it's simple, pick a different video but keep in mind that is how these guys make a living by views and sponsorship. Couldn't Imagine you turning down an Rtx 4090 from NVIDIA to make a video promoting NVIDIA, not saying he got a free graphics card just using this as an example. Have fun and keep blendering man. Great USD info BTW so thanks for the video 🤟
How is Omniverse useful to port to UE5? Aren’t you doing an extra step by also going through Omniverse then? Btw Omniverse has his own real time rendering right? Any reason to not render it there? Curious about this :)
@@IvoKlerk I use Omni's Blender USD branch to export assets and animations with proper materials to .usd files, then I import those into UE5 with Omni's Connector plugin. honestly speaking, I've tried rendering in Composer (previously named Create) but the quality sucks in comparison, and there is a lot of visual glitches.
I've only seen something like this in the ModTools from Call of Duty where the Asset property editor (APE) is directly linked to the level editor. Every change made in APE will be automaticlly updated in the editor in realtime which is pretty neat. It just needs an auto update feature
Does that mean that in the future artists can choose the tool of choice to work with rather than having to conform to software that they might not want to use for example working in a company? Can Maya, Cinema 4D, 3Ds Max, Blender and Houdini users all work together now without worrying about what software they're using?
@@KaizenTutorials That would be absolutely amazing, I hope they reach that goal quickly. I can't think of anything more annoying than when you really enjoy using one program only be told to use another because it's an industry preference.
I only have a noob understanding of Blender, always got to frustrated with it the few times I tried to learn it. I've seen the file time when looking for assets to do animation in UnReal. So it's really cool that I just randomly found out how cool it is. Also means I'm going to have to get some basic understanding of Blender to do some custom assets.
Try following Blender Guru video playlist titled "Blender 4.0 Beginner Donut Tutorial". After completing it, you should have pretty good idea how to effectively work with Blender.
For anything outside the team workflow, if you are an individual who won't be sharing data with departments.. USDs are pain in the ass. loads of extra work to set the scene for them. Specially in autodesk tools where important features like light linking doesn't work with USDs.
It might not be for every pipeline no, but in my example pipeline Blender > Substance > USD Composer for example it's awesome. For a solo-artist it really is a gamechanger.
That's great and all, but why am I being ignored when I request quotes for enterprise? I assume it's because I'm asking for a small pilot program but still... You don't want our money? If the pilot is successful it could lead to a huge buy, but right now I need to convince management it's worth the extreme price.
"Traditional pipeline": model/UV > export > import to substance > texture > export textures > import to blender > setup textures "USD Pipeline": model/UV > install NVIDIA omniverse > export > import to omniverse > link to substance painter > texture > link back to omniverse > doesn't even show textures working in blender I am not surprised because this is a sponsored video... But how is this faster? Or better? So far all I've seen is having yet another middle-man thrown in the pipeline, it doesn't look like it actually reduced the amount of steps you have to take. Is this just because blender support isn't quite there yet? Don't get me wrong I am hopeful for USD, but as someone who primarily uses blender I haven't seen a compelling reason to use it yet, probably because blender doesn't support it super well natively yet?
You're right that in it's current state USD in Blender isn't optimal. The main advantage now is not having to re-import and export in apps like Substance, Unreal or USD Composer. Blender's USD support is lagging behind and doesn't work natively, which is why it's not perfect yet. You can get the textures to work as well in Blender, but you have to set them up after Substance manually AND everytime you change stuff in Substance you'll have to reload the textures in Blender since Blender doesn't support auto texture reloads currently. Still it really beats the old workflow for me, since it's so easy to make changes in Blender, auto-update that in e.g. USD Composer and Unreal, Substance and then be able to texture it right away and have those textures reflect in USD composer or Unreal as well! NVIDIA is working, through Omniverse, to get a complete live-link going with Blender, since Blender themselves have a lower prio on this, and once they have that up and running doing everything in all the apps simultaneously should be no issue anymore!
Just??!! USD been there for more than a decade now and released to everyone atleast 6 - 7 years ago. and the big studio Pipeline has already matured on USD
You're right that USD isn't new. What is new however is the AOUSD organization which is now giving a huge stimulus of development to USD as a platform with all these major tech companies putting their effort behind it. That's what the big change is and this change was again initiated by Pixar! :-)
How is that different from Collada? That format failed, because it tried to include the kitchen sink and every program could only read the stuff that it supported itself. This also made it so complicated to implement that most software developers stopped bothering after being able to load a colored cube.
Collada put the burden on the apps to support specific feature subsets. It supported a lot, but few apps committed to support it fully and it became a fragmented mess of half-assed importers and exporters. Another big difference is nobody was reading Collada "live"... it was an interim format to load from or export to. USD, by comparison, is meant to be written out, iterated on, but sourced "live" and fed directly to the renderer and bypassing your DCC for most of its data. Also, USD's "core" is a Pixar-written C++ library that every USD plugin and standalone software sources and uses, so Pixar is responsible for making and delivering all the core functionality. The plugins are merely integrations of API calls to this "core" bit. Nvidia sources it, Blender sources it, Maya sources it. It's all calling the same core. Also, unlike Collada, USD supports extensive layering and composing of various components of an object at runtime, plus nested referencing. Think Photoshop layers, but for 3D scene data. You can thus go crazy and "compose" a USD of USDs that's referencing the topology from one, the unfolded UVs from another, the material definitions from another file, and the vertex deformation cache from another. (And let's not forget USD can store lights and cameras, too.) There is also a "variant" system so an object can have different variations, which is handy for doing subtle things like swapping a character's clothing or props. (Super handy for doing crowds, especially. Oh, did I mention USD has a notion of instancing?) Not only this but USD allows declaring custom IO / datatypes, and has a plugins API to register code to your custom datatypes. (For example, this plugin system is used to be able to make sense of Alembic .abc cache filepaths as topology and vertex animation used inside a USD file.) It also has a curious concept known as "custom path resolvers", which are ways to associate a USD layer's "filepath" with callback code to resolve at runtime. So, for example, you can make a custom resolver that says the text "mysecretserver?asset=bleepbloop&version=latest" will query some private database for the latest filepath of bleepbloop and at runtime it will get queried, resolve to a specific path to be passed on and used to read more data. Pretty neat! TLDR; Collada is old and USD is cool ya'll. Apple has also been pushing "usdz" as a format. It is basically a zipfile of packaged USD data with secondary files (like texture images) included within the same file. It's still just USD under the hood, and they too source Pixar's original C++ library.
@@AlanFregtmanYour never going to fix interpolarity by introducing more file types to support. Parsability is not really the issue. There are many text based formats that have nice features sets. FBX (has the ascii version, for example). Not that parsing a binary format is exactly a problem for a experienced developer. This is a poorly planned idea that seems to ignore the history of this.
2:08 universal scene description, USD for interoperability between software for non-destructive file exchange. Compatibility is enhanced by using a USD composer editor. 13:36 AOUSD opensource governance (Adobe, Apple, etc)
In Toronto a couple years ago, 400 people were let go at Tangent Animation because Blender cannot handle pipeline workflow, it was a mistake switching from industry type Maya pipeline work flow to free blender open source
Damn that sucks. But a lot has changed these last few years and this same thing might not be necessary anymore these days. Blender is really becoming an industry standard quickly!
I’m trying to land a job in the industry and I had quit Autodesk Maya for 8 months and transitioned to Blender, looking into the industry and which roles I prefer, they want someone to be proficient in Autodesk 3ds max, with USD I can make everything in blender and also have same file in Autodesk software since they’re still holding strong on being the industry standard, now I need to convince future employers to hire me :’)
Honestly, for 3d modelling, if you are good using one of the 3 softwares (maya, 3DS Max & Blender), you can use pretty much any of the three, you'll just need 2-3 weeks of acclimatization when starting out. After all an exrtude is an extrude, a bevel is a bevel (hemm, chamfer 3ds max ?) a spline is a spline, a bend is a bend, etc. You'll need to get used to the UI but the different tools are usually very similar, they might just have different names. If they don't want to hire you because you've used Maya AND Blender but not 3ds...there might be something else going on.
So what you're saying is artists should be using USD now? Is this already the standard we should be using, or are there some reasons we should hold off?
Just specific software support for USD features you anticipate using. I use USD in production, but since I'm a fanatic I want to use the latest MAYA USD package at all times because they're rapidly adding more and more USD features. Things you couldn't even imagine doing with formats like FBX. However being on the cutting edge has its disadvantages. I need to wait for my renderer VRAY to offer support for the latest version, or things start to break down, and Unitys support has been painfully slow. That being said, I think the time is here for everyone to start using it as an exchange file format (even though it's so much more) and to start figuring out which features of USD you're interested in, and if all your applications support those on a stable software branch.
Its like Michael said (probably a lot better than I could), but yeah USD is the way forward. But not yet for every project/pipeline. If in it's current state your workflow works with USD I can't recommend it more, but if it's still a bit buggy then doing it the old skool way might be better still.
sounds like an incredibly usefull feature in the future for artist teams, less for solo arrtists i suppose specially if you have to have 3 programms runnin at the same time instead of 1. never the less, this the beginning of USD and perhaps in a few years s gonna be as integrated as a gear in a giant machine. what i wonder tho is simple: when i paint with substance painter and export it as an usd instead of a texture file, how does blender know that this is the base color, and thats the emission map, and this other texture is the normal map? i recon we wont get around savin the image textures themselfes for a while still, be it as a backup to reinstert upon data loss or to plug it into any other software that doesnt support usd. but i apprechiate the effort to makin our lifes easier and am excited to see how itll develop.
The USD file still comes with attached folders that contain relevant data like textures. By using proper naming conventions it can tell Blender to look for those textures. Now this doesn't work perfectly yet as you'll still need to setup the textures in Blender manually. But after that it works and if you change stuff in Substance you can reload the textures in Blender (sadly not automatically... sigh Blender) and the textures will update. Setting it up in blender is just a matter of CTRL+SHIFT+T for the principled setup and selecting the textures that are in the folder where your USD file is also saved and you're good to go from that point on!
The fact that Sybren implemented this early on shows how dedicated Blender is to giving us all the the best options before other software; even if they don't have all the new relevant information of a single variant of USD as there have been a few before the alliance was confirmed. This is the main reason Blender hasn't been updated fully as there was no specific agreements of which variant was going to be standardised! so it not fair on Blender when people hark on it's difference in applied USD, it's like when people complain about Blender FBX or OBJ import/export, they do not control it, they have to go with the information they can glean from the source which has been closed source or obscured or out of date.
That's true, it's not always easy to adapt with these things as info can be sparse! Either way this is promising tech and it's great that Blender is open to it.
Your video title is misleading. They didn't "just" change it forever. Working as a pipeline TD I have to say that USD doesn't work so well out of the box. Maya has MayaUSD, Houdini has Solaris and they all have their own implementations of USD. If it comes to details it's not USD as advertised.
I understand your point, however the first iPhone was a pretty shitty phone and the 1st smartphones even worse. That doesn't mean that these products weren't a point of no return for development. USD, although almost 8 years old, is still very much in it's early days. With AOUSD they've 'just' (august 2023) taken a major step in unifying tech giants to build an interoperable file format. We're a long ways from it, but the first step has been taken for sure. That's why I feel the title is correct!
Nice video, but I think the title might be a bit misleading. OpenUSD already exist for a long time internally in Pixar. Has been open sourced for more than 6 years. Houdini stage is based on usd for more than 4 year. So it is not new. A lot of work is getting done on OpenUSD. Adobe, Houdini, Blender, Nvidia Omniverse, Maya, ... are all contributing to OpenUSD. Together with MaterialX (created by Autodesk) is makes everything much easier.
USD isn't new no. But the AOUSD is and the efforts that these major tech companies are putting in is also new imo! It's a testimony to how useful usd is and that these big players are investing in it since recently.
With my own pipeline Blender -> Substance -> Unreal Engine there is no problem with FBX. I can still update files just with "reimport" or "update" button (both in Substance and Unreal) and it will update the object right in the scene... No problem here. I'm rather interested in USD be able to transfer some curves, particles, simulations and procedural things from blender or houdini
This reminds me that Resolve recently added very rudimentary USD support for Fusion. And I mean VERY rudimentary. It is basically just a previz renderer with no modern bells and whistles. Hmmm. NAB is right around the corner. I do hope they make it much more powerful for v19 or whatever they will show off in April.
Yep Resolve is joining the gang. A lot of software's are still in the early days of USD adoption. But it's coming! A few more years and this will be the main way of doing things. I'm sure of it!
Hm did they update the USD import/export function in Blender recently? I remember trying it a few months ago and it was not able to transfer all material parameters/values properly. Things like specular values would just be set to a default value for som reason
If you use the Omniverse branch version you’re miles ahead of the main blender branch. So using their nucleus exporter (part of the omniverse branch) it works!
Very curious about this but your game asset example missed a vital aspect of the process. You didn't address baking normal maps or handling the highpoly/cage. Additionally for something like the cone how does usd compare to fbx in regards to performance and filesize when working with something like unreal engine/Perforce?
A USD crate file will be smaller but comparable in size to a binary FBX. USD reduces file size by making assumptions about missing data instead of writing out default values to the file. However the USD file will carry PBR textures with it while FBX will not.
It kind of depends on what tool you use. Not every tool supports USD obviously and most who do don't support it in two directions YET. Having said that if you want to do your baking in Blender, Marmoset or Substance it's no problem. The process would remain exactly the same and all that data can be transferred using USD.
They invented a problem by making things incompatible in the first place. And now they're inventing a solution - presumably to make more money in the long run. Nothing is just a goodwill project, but I really appreciate this nonetheless.
I have to say I disagree. 'they' are just companies working on their own solutions for problems they saw in a market. These problems are unique and so require unique solutions, which tend to not work on other problems (unique = non-compatible). USD was initially also not there to fix this. It was there to fix Pixar's own problems. But since it grew and was released as open-source, other programmes started including it. This lead to the formation of AOUSD, which is a NON-PROFIT organization aiming to now take this unique solution and adapt it to fix everyone's problems.
In this case, universal scene description is open source so it's free, but it's not really an immediate magical fix to anything as much as it's a way to describe the structure of a whole scene. It came out in 2016, and a lot of studios had a very difficult time implementing it. Some packages like Unreal don't even fully support it, and it's really mostly used in linear content pipelines like film and animation.
It's probably just me, but the first time I tested USD it didn't work at all. Missing animations, textures and even objects that weren't loaded. But in principle I'm excited about the concept and hope that it will be ready for production at some point :) GO PIXAR!
True, though I doubt I'll be using it anytime soon, since my journey in 3D has begun recently, and I am still learning different principles in Blender only :) @@KaizenTutorials
With Autodesk saying it's getting rid of its FBX team, I'd say it's not a bad idea to start using USD in production as a file format. USD is way more than that, but getting your team to use USD as a transfer protocol will get them familiar with the tech for when composition systems are more fleshed out.
yup' it's already good enough in my opinion, but i'm more excited to see how it evolves and how many more indie and solo creators will start using it.@@michaeleaster8354
There are Omniverse plugins for both game engines. Unity is unidirectional in beta. However more importantly if you don't have an infinite money glitch to afford OV for your team, both engines have native import as of the latest Unity 2023 update. Unreal has better native support with Unity struggling behind (probably because they keep firing everyone) although at Siggraph 23 Unreal admitted their support was early but not updated. They intend to make USD a priority this year.
@@michaeleaster8354 Thanks for the additional info. Still it stands that Unreal indeed has a USD importer and in time hopefully every dcc application will integrate a proper usd workflow. As of now sadly the workflow is not that great for every part of 3d production :(
even as an animator I think I'm def going to start using usd for a future personal project that I've been developing. But I'm curious , do you know if rigs are able to get transfered with usds (from maya to blender) or is it best to do that still in just one software ? (with the whole skinning weight stuff)
I haven’t tried myself but I know it handles animation well and plays back cached animation really well too. Rigs work, but afaik the filesize still increases a lot from it. Some people say gltf is better for rigs, but I expect that to change with AOUSD taking the lead on development now!
Correct me if I was wrong but... Isn't this just gltf at this point? 🤔🤔🤔 like gltf has all the data as well, no? And btw you can't just give an example that the workflow is now non destructive, that is in no way true... It's still the same workflow and has the same flaws. It's cool to have real time changes without having to export and reimport all the time yes, but any changes to the model and then you gotta retexture again for example. I don't believe in a non-destructive workflow using different softwares or even using the same software unless everything is kinda proceduarly generated and linked in a magical way...
It is very similar to gltf yes, but more compatible with different softwares. Currently the workflow isn’t 100% non destructive no, but NVIDIA and Blender are working on fixing that. So in the not too distant future it should all work non-destructive for real! That’s why it’s so exciting. Plus this way now alone already saves a ton of time, which is important if you do this a lot and make a living with it 💪🏻
USD currently supports declaring skeletons and basic skinning weights. You wouldn't use it to export out an editable rig, but it can be helpful for doing a bunch of instanced data for say writing out a big crowd simulation as a bunch of animated skeleton animations.
Yes! But recently the AOUSD has been founded and it's a combined effort to really start implementing and growing USD as an open-source tech for the future!
I come from Maya and moving to Blender. The thing is, everything will be made in Maya and move it to blender for rendering, how do you update the usd inside blender? if animators have a retake and then they export it again, how can this be reflected in blender?? I don't wan to import it agains because Im doing texturing and lighting the USD inside blender, I just need it to be constantly updated
It depends. At some point just saving the file should be enough. But USD isn’t there yet. Instead you’ll have to rely on links to do it. These are available in Omniverse. Omniverse is now basically the automatic converter.
@@KaizenTutorials I’m really trying to understand omniverse but I can’t even create my local host and since we are a big team, I suggested to do everything inside Maya. The advantage of blender was to be free but I won’t take risks by figuring out how to work efficiently. We were considering alembics but the size will be too big and the extra step of re assigning materials… noup, too much work. I hope in the future I can implement blender for the team work. Awesome video btw!
@@KaizenTutorials oh I forgot to mention that I made tests, I moved a maya scene to blender with usd but once I animate the camera in maya or something that was not animated at the first place, it won’t update to blender that’s why I was asking
I'm running an RTX 4090 with 24GB of VRAM, so it can handle basically anything I throw at it. But I think my 3070 would've handled it too, especially with tricks like layering the render or using viewport simplification to have it work in the viewport.
But isn’t it what fbx, obj and gltf does? While it’s a great concept, do you think it’s worth that much effort to put in for small studios? Firstly you’d have to make a scene or a stage as they say, then save each model as usd stage, then merge all the stages into one. Rather just go ahead and make a scene and it ain’t destructible tbh?
I think for a small studio it can be useful, but at the same time it's still early days. USD is being developed fast and in the not too distant future will probably be a lot easier to use for smaller studios!
So far sooo good👍 But could u make a detailed video on NVIDIA OMNIVERSE and to exactly how it can be used in the content pipeline.... u see...the pros n cons and its overall functions 🙂
So what youre saying is, with the usd format. iit keeps all my data like materials and so on? I can just import that file into my game engine and it retain all data ? i dont have to bake my textures anymore, etc? Or am i missing something
Well you'll still need to bake, but as in my example baking is sort of automatic in Substance. If you're using basic materials from Blender for example, they will automatically transfer through USD. It's still in development but at some point everything should work almost automatically in every software!
Good cuz i just leanred about baking textures . So id be upset if this came along and made all that time a waste. Eventually it will tho which is cool. toook me a solid 2 dyas to figure it out after watching tutorials and such @@KaizenTutorials
What about USD file updating? If I edit just a single mesh in a huge scene saved in USD file my software will look into the file and overwrite just what it needs or load whole usd file and save everything again? Or is it just software dependant?
@@KaizenTutorials I'd love for ORA to get more features. It's a great idea. I could use Photoshop, Clip Paint, GIMP or whatever. I don't know if it's productive to have USD tackle 2D. Do one thing well is the best. But if USD and ORA had similar features that allow for easy transfer that'd be great. For example, when ORA adds support for guides and proper text (I remain hopeful), I don't know if it would make sense for USD to support that.
Could a picture made in AI like Dall-e or ideogram also be layered in multiple prims (to use the jargon) and then be imported in Blender? I saw an .OBJ file could I import any USD file to Blender export it as an OBJ and 3D-print it? I think the first question is harder, the second one maybe but you'ld have to check the files for inconcistencies in layers Amirite?
You could definitely import usd and export as obj to print. Youd have to check the model ofcourse, but it would work for sure. The other question I don’t know yet! It might be possible but it basically depends on if dall-e supports usd and layering.
It’s still relatively ‘new’ yes! The formation of AOUSD by Pixar last year will propel development however. Give it 1-2 years and it’ll take over everything in my opinion!
@@KaizenTutorials that would be great. We've tried to use it in production a bu ch but just like all the others before it, it comes with limitations and you end up having to develop ontop if it. I agree with you though, it's. Great start though.
I don't get it. Nvidia Omniverse has been out for like 2 years now and I don't ever see anyone using it or talking about it. I wonder if it actually would help me with my workflow. If it's free, open source and solves a problem everyone using more than one 3D softeare has then how come it hasn't been widely adopted yet?
That’s not Omniverse, that’s USD. Omniverse isn’t open source but free to use nonetheless. USD is the overarching tech that will enable cross-platform, boundless, creation. Omniverse is a current solution to create a great workflow portal for companies and individuals that works around current USD issues and provides valuable solutions to use USD more easily.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 88 | คู่เอก "ป้อมเพชร vs อัสลามจอน"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1ZqTVVbMgbo/mqdefault.jpg)
When I first tried the USD workflow myself I couldn't believe it actually worked. Cross-software file formats retaining all the data, crazy! If you want to learn more about USD, see what Omniverse has to offer for you, or join the GTC talks on USD in March; make sure to use the links below!
Learn more during OpenUSD Day at GTC 2024: nvda.ws/492kEqN
Download NVIDIA Omniverse for free: nvda.ws/3u8aZQ4
Register for GTC 2024: nvda.ws/42wrBO0
Hi sub to you
Wow... Thanks for showing that something as amazing as USD exists
Its awesome for sure!
It's the other way around. Files can't be compatible with your software, the software has to be compatible with your file. The software is doing the reading and writing of your file, no matter of what kind of file is is. As long as you can make out the file structure you absolutely can make your software read it and write it. The file can't do jack ish.
What the file CAN do however, is have all the bits and bobs saved in a generic enough way that it makes it easier for the software developers to write an import-export function.
Seriously, just the fact that it's *ment* to be used by everyone means that there's no pesky obfuscation or stupid shit making it hell to port over.
Yeah you're right. But to any regular artist, who's not necessarily tech-savy or privy on becoming that, it's kinda potato potatoe. USD is trying to simplify (understatement) the process of using multiple tools in your pipeline and that's the message im trying to send!
Technically yes, practically, not so much. Case in point: Just about nothing can read .Blend files from Blender, and the things that _can_ do it badly, usually just some small subset of basic information. It's not impossible to do. But it is incredibly difficult. Why?
Because .blend files are internally actually a representation of nearly Blender's entire memory layout as it's running. That means that .blend is incredibly tightly linked to Blender's source code and the way that blender works. So reading a .blend file flawlessly? It's not quite re-implementing _all_ of blender... but it's not far off. Reading and writing the whole blend file in a meaningful way is basically remaking all of Blender itself from scratch.
I would argue that .blend files are an example of a filetype being technologically incompatible with software, it only truly works with Blender itself. This is not an uncommon thing in 3D software.
I'll provide another sticking point - sometimes, things are lost in translation. It's very common for there not to be a one to one mapping between concepts in different software, and for it to actually be impossible to transfer from one to the other because there really just isn't a corresponding feature. Here's some examples: Material nodes in Blender mean something totally different from what material nodes mean in Unreal Engine. Even if UE5 could read a .Blend file, it couldn't use the materials in it, since they just don't work the way that unreal engine's materials work (unless both UE5 and Blender agree to stick to a standard, like PBR materials). They are legitimately incompatible, for real technical reasons. Another example, animation drivers and rigs that use them are complete nonsense anywhere outside of Blender, since they literally grab data from addresses based on Blender's internal structure.
File formats can very much be incompatible with your software and it's very possible for it to be utterly impractical to write software that can read and write them. All that needs to happen is that your file format needs to reach a certain level of complexity, and then it becomes nearly inevitable.
OH! I thought of another one - _LISP._ This is pretty common in CAD software, especially the really old ones that have been around for a few decades. See, what LISP is - it's an entire programming language, AND a file format. The big thing with Lisp is that they treat code itself as data, and can store data as programming code.
If your file format is lisp based, that's a real pickle. Because that means that reading it is going to involve re-implementing an _entire programming language_ from scratch. Usually one that's totally proprietary and completely undocumented. (AutoCAD does this)
@@MustacheMerlin You wrote a lot and usually I just tldr, but wanted to let you know I appreciate it because it was insightful. It reminded me how when I open a file I'm working on in Blender, the viewport is exactly where I left it. This is only to better my experience in Blender itself and has no bearing on the next program. From my experience with Blend to Unity and Godot, their importers are not bad if you're not expecting anything advanced. I could be wrong, I don't do this professionally, it almost seems equivalent to an fbx.
It seems like a chicken or the egg challenge, where a standard format needs to exist like USD to ensure file formats can be interoperable. What would really impress me is data that is USD exportable is tagged that way, in a way that another program can take the .blend file and retrieve the USD tagged data.
This is like a gift to us artists.
Absolutely!
Nvdia is more like poisoned gift
uhm... no. It's not. This is a really old format and it is not as they said in the video.
you have no idea how helpful USD is to me after this video. i realized how much easier i could get my blender models to unity!
Glad to hear it!
I'm not even a 3D artist, but this is truly great. Interoperabity is a key thing in every sector that uses any type of software in their workflow. Amazing. Great video and explanation.
Thanks a lot and yes interoperability in any sector is amazing!
usd is absolutely awesome I can approve, but it's still not practical in many cases because of the file size
recently I created rigged fireworks, the glTF file size on average was 6MB while the usdc turned out to be 72MB
I'd be interested in how much of that is redundancy for different systems vs how much of that data is actually used in memory
Hmm.. it is a lot smaller than alembic though. Maybe it isn't optimized for rigged stuff yet? But that's what I like about USD, it's still very much growing and expanding, being worked on by these major tech companies!
True, it's smaller than alembic. and yes isn't optimized for armature animation, in fact the animation is exported as mesh cache and not armature @@KaizenTutorials
Ah ok! Tey'll probably add that int he future too though 😀@@IZ.3d
I hope so... but as of now even for shapekeys animations, usdc files are still 30 to 40% larger in size compared to glTF. but the reason why glTF will be mainstream for a while is that it's supported by many web and VR software. I do get a lot of requests for format conversion to glTF for that reason @KaizenTutorials
Ive been working in usd and solaris pipelines for the past couple years and can confirm, it is amazing.
Same here, SideFX keeps making it better and better!
Awesome! Glad to hear so many people already use USD!
@@KaizenTutorials it is more and more integrated in pipelines, very efficient, and it supports every data formats you can think of, it's like having FBX, Alembic and OpenVDB put all together but on steroids!
@@KaizenTutorials Houdini has USD since version 18, which came out in 2019, it is not new, a lot of peoples are actually switching to Houdini for scene building and rendering because of Houdini having such a great USD integration, which includes Hydra, MaterialX, and two brand-new Hydra render Engines, Karma CPU, and Karma XPU(GPU).
Did Pixar JUST change 3D forever? …8 years ago…
Well they started doing it 8 years ago. But AOUSD is only 6 months old and is now the major driving force for this tech to make it mainstream across all software’s! That sounds new enough to me :-)
@@KaizenTutorials OpenUSD is 8 years old, most DCC have started to integrate it years ago, including Blender, there is nothing new here, AOUSD is just an organization aiming at creating a standard for OpenUSD, nothing more!
This video feels less like it's about USD and more like it's an ad for Omniverse and Nvidia as a whole. While I don't mind sponsored segments (money is always nice to have) and NVIDIA isn't exactly an irrelevant sponsor, the integration here just felt hamfisted and coarse. Like specifically stating that Omniverse is *NVIDIA's* Omniverse, even when not stating *Adobe's* Substance Painter or *Autodesk's* Maya, the random out of place close up shot of a 4090 FE with the only real visible detail being the GeForce RTX branding, and constantly showing the Omniverse logo, more often even than the Blender logo. This isn't me trying to be a hater, just wanted to share my thoughts on the sponsor integration in hopes that future videos might have a clearer demarcation between sponsored and unsponsored content, preferably one that's easily skippable for people like me who have no interest whatsoever in any of NVIDIA's products.
Thanks for the honest feedback. NVIDIA plays a major part in the current USD development and so happens to be the sponsor. With the exception of the link mentions in the video the video itself wouldn't have been very different if NVIDIA wasn't the sponsor.
I agree that it might not be equal if I don't say Adobe or Autodesk before their product names, but that's just because everyone knows what those are. It feels redundant. Not everyone knows Omniverse! Hope that makes sense :-)
I'll take your feedback into consideration for future vids.
Tbh I’m going to have to disagree with you… I think he blended in his sponsorship and the video really well where he gets the job done of not only informing me but entertaining me with a side of a cool program that could be useful without rubbing it in to much
Love this community. Quality content, honest feedback, human response. I didn't get the feel of a shady advertisement, but I'm in a good mood currently.
Yeah i dont agree here. I never got the feeling i was being oushed towards nvidea omniverse. It was a very valuable video tbh
@butterscothpanda right in the first part of the video he literally states that this video is sponsored by NVIDIA! Are you just ranting because you own an AMD Graphics card??? 😂😂😂
Only joking chill and if you don't want to watch then it's simple, pick a different video but keep in mind that is how these guys make a living by views and sponsorship.
Couldn't Imagine you turning down an Rtx 4090 from NVIDIA to make a video promoting NVIDIA, not saying he got a free graphics card just using this as an example.
Have fun and keep blendering man.
Great USD info BTW so thanks for the video 🤟
Well explained. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this work flow. More tutorials please. Especially on the Omniverse usage.
Thank you! Glad you like it and maybe I'll do more Omniverse vids in the future
Omniverse is awesome! I'm using it to render my Blender animations in UE5
That’s awesome! Good job 🙏🏻
How is Omniverse useful to port to UE5? Aren’t you doing an extra step by also going through Omniverse then? Btw Omniverse has his own real time rendering right? Any reason to not render it there? Curious about this :)
@@IvoKlerk I use Omni's Blender USD branch to export assets and animations with proper materials to .usd files, then I import those into UE5 with Omni's Connector plugin. honestly speaking, I've tried rendering in Composer (previously named Create) but the quality sucks in comparison, and there is a lot of visual glitches.
I've only seen something like this in the ModTools from Call of Duty where the Asset property editor (APE) is directly linked to the level editor. Every change made in APE will be automaticlly updated in the editor in realtime which is pretty neat. It just needs an auto update feature
Cool! Any form of increased interoperability is a big win in my book. It just feels satisfying not having to think about tedious stuff like that.
Does that mean that in the future artists can choose the tool of choice to work with rather than having to conform to software that they might not want to use for example working in a company? Can Maya, Cinema 4D, 3Ds Max, Blender and Houdini users all work together now without worrying about what software they're using?
That’s the goal with USD basically yes! Were far from it. But seamless and interoperable workflows are definitely the goal!
@@KaizenTutorials That would be absolutely amazing, I hope they reach that goal quickly. I can't think of anything more annoying than when you really enjoy using one program only be told to use another because it's an industry preference.
I only have a noob understanding of Blender, always got to frustrated with it the few times I tried to learn it. I've seen the file time when looking for assets to do animation in UnReal. So it's really cool that I just randomly found out how cool it is. Also means I'm going to have to get some basic understanding of Blender to do some custom assets.
Awesome! Yeah it’s really intriguing. It’s not 100% thre yet, but it does work really nicely already.
Try following Blender Guru video playlist titled "Blender 4.0 Beginner Donut Tutorial". After completing it, you should have pretty good idea how to effectively work with Blender.
For anything outside the team workflow, if you are an individual who won't be sharing data with departments.. USDs are pain in the ass. loads of extra work to set the scene for them. Specially in autodesk tools where important features like light linking doesn't work with USDs.
It might not be for every pipeline no, but in my example pipeline Blender > Substance > USD Composer for example it's awesome. For a solo-artist it really is a gamechanger.
I'd like to see someone try to make something in 3d software without using anything created by pixar
Big #OpenUSD fans over here 🤝
Rightfully so! What a tool it is. And I can only dream of what it will become 💪🏻
That's great and all, but why am I being ignored when I request quotes for enterprise? I assume it's because I'm asking for a small pilot program but still... You don't want our money? If the pilot is successful it could lead to a huge buy, but right now I need to convince management it's worth the extreme price.
"Traditional pipeline": model/UV > export > import to substance > texture > export textures > import to blender > setup textures
"USD Pipeline": model/UV > install NVIDIA omniverse > export > import to omniverse > link to substance painter > texture > link back to omniverse > doesn't even show textures working in blender
I am not surprised because this is a sponsored video... But how is this faster? Or better? So far all I've seen is having yet another middle-man thrown in the pipeline, it doesn't look like it actually reduced the amount of steps you have to take.
Is this just because blender support isn't quite there yet? Don't get me wrong I am hopeful for USD, but as someone who primarily uses blender I haven't seen a compelling reason to use it yet, probably because blender doesn't support it super well natively yet?
You're right that in it's current state USD in Blender isn't optimal. The main advantage now is not having to re-import and export in apps like Substance, Unreal or USD Composer. Blender's USD support is lagging behind and doesn't work natively, which is why it's not perfect yet. You can get the textures to work as well in Blender, but you have to set them up after Substance manually AND everytime you change stuff in Substance you'll have to reload the textures in Blender since Blender doesn't support auto texture reloads currently.
Still it really beats the old workflow for me, since it's so easy to make changes in Blender, auto-update that in e.g. USD Composer and Unreal, Substance and then be able to texture it right away and have those textures reflect in USD composer or Unreal as well!
NVIDIA is working, through Omniverse, to get a complete live-link going with Blender, since Blender themselves have a lower prio on this, and once they have that up and running doing everything in all the apps simultaneously should be no issue anymore!
Here's hoping that it does become as seamless as it sounds! @@KaizenTutorials
Just??!! USD been there for more than a decade now and released to everyone atleast 6 - 7 years ago. and the big studio Pipeline has already matured on USD
It was released to the public in 2016, and the Blender integration is really basic!
You're right that USD isn't new. What is new however is the AOUSD organization which is now giving a huge stimulus of development to USD as a platform with all these major tech companies putting their effort behind it. That's what the big change is and this change was again initiated by Pixar! :-)
bro the way you worded your intro, it took me 2 minutes to figure out that it wasnt the advert section OF THE vid
Why though?
How is that different from Collada? That format failed, because it tried to include the kitchen sink and every program could only read the stuff that it supported itself. This also made it so complicated to implement that most software developers stopped bothering after being able to load a colored cube.
Collada put the burden on the apps to support specific feature subsets. It supported a lot, but few apps committed to support it fully and it became a fragmented mess of half-assed importers and exporters. Another big difference is nobody was reading Collada "live"... it was an interim format to load from or export to. USD, by comparison, is meant to be written out, iterated on, but sourced "live" and fed directly to the renderer and bypassing your DCC for most of its data.
Also, USD's "core" is a Pixar-written C++ library that every USD plugin and standalone software sources and uses, so Pixar is responsible for making and delivering all the core functionality. The plugins are merely integrations of API calls to this "core" bit. Nvidia sources it, Blender sources it, Maya sources it. It's all calling the same core.
Also, unlike Collada, USD supports extensive layering and composing of various components of an object at runtime, plus nested referencing. Think Photoshop layers, but for 3D scene data. You can thus go crazy and "compose" a USD of USDs that's referencing the topology from one, the unfolded UVs from another, the material definitions from another file, and the vertex deformation cache from another. (And let's not forget USD can store lights and cameras, too.) There is also a "variant" system so an object can have different variations, which is handy for doing subtle things like swapping a character's clothing or props. (Super handy for doing crowds, especially. Oh, did I mention USD has a notion of instancing?)
Not only this but USD allows declaring custom IO / datatypes, and has a plugins API to register code to your custom datatypes. (For example, this plugin system is used to be able to make sense of Alembic .abc cache filepaths as topology and vertex animation used inside a USD file.)
It also has a curious concept known as "custom path resolvers", which are ways to associate a USD layer's "filepath" with callback code to resolve at runtime. So, for example, you can make a custom resolver that says the text "mysecretserver?asset=bleepbloop&version=latest" will query some private database for the latest filepath of bleepbloop and at runtime it will get queried, resolve to a specific path to be passed on and used to read more data. Pretty neat!
TLDR; Collada is old and USD is cool ya'll.
Apple has also been pushing "usdz" as a format. It is basically a zipfile of packaged USD data with secondary files (like texture images) included within the same file. It's still just USD under the hood, and they too source Pixar's original C++ library.
Well I mean, I'm not going to add anything to @alanfregtman's comment here. Amazing!
@@AlanFregtmanYour never going to fix interpolarity by introducing more file types to support. Parsability is not really the issue. There are many text based formats that have nice features sets. FBX (has the ascii version, for example). Not that parsing a binary format is exactly a problem for a experienced developer. This is a poorly planned idea that seems to ignore the history of this.
2:08 universal scene description, USD for interoperability between software for non-destructive file exchange.
Compatibility is enhanced by using a USD composer editor.
13:36
AOUSD opensource governance (Adobe, Apple, etc)
This is the proper way to do advertising nowadays.
this was so insightful!!! thank u
Glad it was helpful!
In Toronto a couple years ago, 400 people were let go at Tangent Animation because Blender cannot handle pipeline workflow, it was a mistake switching from industry type Maya pipeline work flow to free blender open source
Damn that sucks. But a lot has changed these last few years and this same thing might not be necessary anymore these days. Blender is really becoming an industry standard quickly!
I’m trying to land a job in the industry and I had quit Autodesk Maya for 8 months and transitioned to Blender, looking into the industry and which roles I prefer, they want someone to be proficient in Autodesk 3ds max, with USD I can make everything in blender and also have same file in Autodesk software since they’re still holding strong on being the industry standard, now I need to convince future employers to hire me :’)
HAha nice, you're right! no more whining about industry standards; USD IS THE WAY!
Honestly, for 3d modelling, if you are good using one of the 3 softwares (maya, 3DS Max & Blender), you can use pretty much any of the three, you'll just need 2-3 weeks of acclimatization when starting out. After all an exrtude is an extrude, a bevel is a bevel (hemm, chamfer 3ds max ?) a spline is a spline, a bend is a bend, etc. You'll need to get used to the UI but the different tools are usually very similar, they might just have different names. If they don't want to hire you because you've used Maya AND Blender but not 3ds...there might be something else going on.
You would be better off with Houdini. It's an actual authoring tool. Blender isn't
Houdini right now has the most robust USD tools.
I believe that’s true yeah! Blender is still a baby for USD, but it’ll get there.
USD is INSANE!!!!!! Thank you Kaizen!!
No problem! Glad you liked it.
So what you're saying is artists should be using USD now? Is this already the standard we should be using, or are there some reasons we should hold off?
Just specific software support for USD features you anticipate using. I use USD in production, but since I'm a fanatic I want to use the latest MAYA USD package at all times because they're rapidly adding more and more USD features. Things you couldn't even imagine doing with formats like FBX. However being on the cutting edge has its disadvantages. I need to wait for my renderer VRAY to offer support for the latest version, or things start to break down, and Unitys support has been painfully slow. That being said, I think the time is here for everyone to start using it as an exchange file format (even though it's so much more) and to start figuring out which features of USD you're interested in, and if all your applications support those on a stable software branch.
Its like Michael said (probably a lot better than I could), but yeah USD is the way forward. But not yet for every project/pipeline. If in it's current state your workflow works with USD I can't recommend it more, but if it's still a bit buggy then doing it the old skool way might be better still.
finally, the USD that is truly needed by everyone in 3D community (we still need USD for a living too)
Lol hahaha I like both USD's ;-)
I didn't understand the "new pipeline" but cool video none the less
The new pipeline is basically an automated realtime link between Blender, substance and usd composer, allowing you to iterate in realtime!
sounds like an incredibly usefull feature in the future for artist teams, less for solo arrtists i suppose specially if you have to have 3 programms runnin at the same time instead of 1. never the less, this the beginning of USD and perhaps in a few years s gonna be as integrated as a gear in a giant machine. what i wonder tho is simple: when i paint with substance painter and export it as an usd instead of a texture file, how does blender know that this is the base color, and thats the emission map, and this other texture is the normal map? i recon we wont get around savin the image textures themselfes for a while still, be it as a backup to reinstert upon data loss or to plug it into any other software that doesnt support usd. but i apprechiate the effort to makin our lifes easier and am excited to see how itll develop.
The USD file still comes with attached folders that contain relevant data like textures. By using proper naming conventions it can tell Blender to look for those textures. Now this doesn't work perfectly yet as you'll still need to setup the textures in Blender manually. But after that it works and if you change stuff in Substance you can reload the textures in Blender (sadly not automatically... sigh Blender) and the textures will update.
Setting it up in blender is just a matter of CTRL+SHIFT+T for the principled setup and selecting the textures that are in the folder where your USD file is also saved and you're good to go from that point on!
The fact that Sybren implemented this early on shows how dedicated Blender is to giving us all the the best options before other software; even if they don't have all the new relevant information of a single variant of USD as there have been a few before the alliance was confirmed.
This is the main reason Blender hasn't been updated fully as there was no specific agreements of which variant was going to be standardised! so it not fair on Blender when people hark on it's difference in applied USD, it's like when people complain about Blender FBX or OBJ import/export, they do not control it, they have to go with the information they can glean from the source which has been closed source or obscured or out of date.
That's true, it's not always easy to adapt with these things as info can be sparse! Either way this is promising tech and it's great that Blender is open to it.
Your video title is misleading. They didn't "just" change it forever. Working as a pipeline TD I have to say that USD doesn't work so well out of the box. Maya has MayaUSD, Houdini has Solaris and they all have their own implementations of USD. If it comes to details it's not USD as advertised.
I understand your point, however the first iPhone was a pretty shitty phone and the 1st smartphones even worse. That doesn't mean that these products weren't a point of no return for development. USD, although almost 8 years old, is still very much in it's early days. With AOUSD they've 'just' (august 2023) taken a major step in unifying tech giants to build an interoperable file format. We're a long ways from it, but the first step has been taken for sure. That's why I feel the title is correct!
"What is USD?"
It's the American currency. Pretty much the entire world uses it for currency exchange for international trading.
🤣
finally !!! i wonder how they plan to future-proof the maintenance of that tool but its amazing !
It's open-source, so the community and AOUSD foundation will manage it and keep it going I think.
Probably a good solution to archive Blender projects and avoid the hassle of version incompatibility of Blend. Files
For sure! It doesn't go back further than 3.5 though I believe. So it's mainly a good way to archive using USD going forward!
This is huge, thank you for sharing very informative video
Glad you like it, thanks!
Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Nvidia. That sounds like a promising future ...
For sure! And that's just the founding members. There will be more who join in on this open-source project for interoperability for all!
Nice video, but I think the title might be a bit misleading. OpenUSD already exist for a long time internally in Pixar. Has been open sourced for more than 6 years. Houdini stage is based on usd for more than 4 year. So it is not new. A lot of work is getting done on OpenUSD. Adobe, Houdini, Blender, Nvidia Omniverse, Maya, ... are all contributing to OpenUSD. Together with MaterialX (created by Autodesk) is makes everything much easier.
USD isn't new no. But the AOUSD is and the efforts that these major tech companies are putting in is also new imo! It's a testimony to how useful usd is and that these big players are investing in it since recently.
With my own pipeline Blender -> Substance -> Unreal Engine there is no problem with FBX. I can still update files just with "reimport" or "update" button (both in Substance and Unreal) and it will update the object right in the scene... No problem here. I'm rather interested in USD be able to transfer some curves, particles, simulations and procedural things from blender or houdini
I mean you're not wrong, for a lot of purposes FBX works fine like you said with just reimporting.
Dose the USD workflow work well with importing models into Unreal engine?
It does as far as I know yes!
This reminds me that Resolve recently added very rudimentary USD support for Fusion. And I mean VERY rudimentary. It is basically just a previz renderer with no modern bells and whistles. Hmmm. NAB is right around the corner. I do hope they make it much more powerful for v19 or whatever they will show off in April.
Yep Resolve is joining the gang. A lot of software's are still in the early days of USD adoption. But it's coming! A few more years and this will be the main way of doing things. I'm sure of it!
Hm did they update the USD import/export function in Blender recently?
I remember trying it a few months ago and it was not able to transfer all material parameters/values properly.
Things like specular values would just be set to a default value for som reason
If you use the Omniverse branch version you’re miles ahead of the main blender branch. So using their nucleus exporter (part of the omniverse branch) it works!
Very curious about this but your game asset example missed a vital aspect of the process. You didn't address baking normal maps or handling the highpoly/cage. Additionally for something like the cone how does usd compare to fbx in regards to performance and filesize when working with something like unreal engine/Perforce?
A USD crate file will be smaller but comparable in size to a binary FBX. USD reduces file size by making assumptions about missing data instead of writing out default values to the file. However the USD file will carry PBR textures with it while FBX will not.
It kind of depends on what tool you use. Not every tool supports USD obviously and most who do don't support it in two directions YET. Having said that if you want to do your baking in Blender, Marmoset or Substance it's no problem. The process would remain exactly the same and all that data can be transferred using USD.
Never tried the usd workflow thanks for noticing 😊
You’re welcome! Definitely give it a try 💪🏻
Thank you for your work
Thanks for watching!
amazing video!
Thank you!
They invented a problem by making things incompatible in the first place. And now they're inventing a solution - presumably to make more money in the long run. Nothing is just a goodwill project, but I really appreciate this nonetheless.
I have to say I disagree. 'they' are just companies working on their own solutions for problems they saw in a market. These problems are unique and so require unique solutions, which tend to not work on other problems (unique = non-compatible). USD was initially also not there to fix this. It was there to fix Pixar's own problems. But since it grew and was released as open-source, other programmes started including it. This lead to the formation of AOUSD, which is a NON-PROFIT organization aiming to now take this unique solution and adapt it to fix everyone's problems.
In this case, universal scene description is open source so it's free, but it's not really an immediate magical fix to anything as much as it's a way to describe the structure of a whole scene. It came out in 2016, and a lot of studios had a very difficult time implementing it. Some packages like Unreal don't even fully support it, and it's really mostly used in linear content pipelines like film and animation.
True, but also this is USD in it's current state. With AOUSD a lot will happen to the format and it'll become better and better!@@computron5824
It's probably just me, but the first time I tested USD it didn't work at all. Missing animations, textures and even objects that weren't loaded. But in principle I'm excited about the concept and hope that it will be ready for production at some point :) GO PIXAR!
It's growing everyday and doesn't work for every pipeline currently. But it'll get there at some day! Go Pixar and go AOUSD!
nice video, thanks
Wow, amazing technology, hopefully, I'll be skilled enough to use it one day...
It’s actually not that hard and is becoming easier day by day because USD is growing and becoming more compatible and easy to use!
True, though I doubt I'll be using it anytime soon, since my journey in 3D has begun recently, and I am still learning different principles in Blender only :)
@@KaizenTutorials
i've used it recently but i'm holding out for a while for it to grow and get better integration and especially without USD Composer lol
Haha yeah it’s far from perfect, but already better than the traditional pipeline imo. It will become the one standard thing though, im sure of it!
With Autodesk saying it's getting rid of its FBX team, I'd say it's not a bad idea to start using USD in production as a file format. USD is way more than that, but getting your team to use USD as a transfer protocol will get them familiar with the tech for when composition systems are more fleshed out.
yup' it's already good enough in my opinion, but i'm more excited to see how it evolves and how many more indie and solo creators will start using it.@@michaeleaster8354
wasn't there supposed to be links to the usd file shown as an example?
Wops, you’re right! I’ll put that in the description tomorrow.
Here's the link; developer.nvidia.com/usd I also updated it in the video description. Thanks for pointing it out!
Meanwhile with Anime and 2D animation studios...
USD is gradually getting 2D support too! Plus a lot of animation and anime studios are switching to 3D and just make it look 2D ;-)
Wow!
Thnx Sir👊
Welcome 👍
I hope, Unity and Unreal also launches support for USD files.
Unreal has livelink realtime support through Omniverse! Not sure about Unity, but it might just be there too.
Unreal has a usd importer
There are Omniverse plugins for both game engines. Unity is unidirectional in beta. However more importantly if you don't have an infinite money glitch to afford OV for your team, both engines have native import as of the latest Unity 2023 update. Unreal has better native support with Unity struggling behind (probably because they keep firing everyone) although at Siggraph 23 Unreal admitted their support was early but not updated. They intend to make USD a priority this year.
@@michaeleaster8354 Thanks for the additional info. Still it stands that Unreal indeed has a USD importer and in time hopefully every dcc application will integrate a proper usd workflow. As of now sadly the workflow is not that great for every part of 3d production :(
even as an animator I think I'm def going to start using usd for a future personal project that I've been developing. But I'm curious , do you know if rigs are able to get transfered with usds (from maya to blender) or is it best to do that still in just one software ? (with the whole skinning weight stuff)
I haven’t tried myself but I know it handles animation well and plays back cached animation really well too. Rigs work, but afaik the filesize still increases a lot from it. Some people say gltf is better for rigs, but I expect that to change with AOUSD taking the lead on development now!
@@KaizenTutorials ah i see, thank you very much for explaining about that and never heard of gltf until now , so i really appreciate it :)
I’m getting heavy xkcd 927 feel from this.
I'm not sure what that is haha
Very helpful this one
Thanks mate! 🙏🏻
amazing video ! ! !
Thanks a lot! 🧡
Correct me if I was wrong but... Isn't this just gltf at this point? 🤔🤔🤔 like gltf has all the data as well, no? And btw you can't just give an example that the workflow is now non destructive, that is in no way true... It's still the same workflow and has the same flaws. It's cool to have real time changes without having to export and reimport all the time yes, but any changes to the model and then you gotta retexture again for example. I don't believe in a non-destructive workflow using different softwares or even using the same software unless everything is kinda proceduarly generated and linked in a magical way...
It is very similar to gltf yes, but more compatible with different softwares. Currently the workflow isn’t 100% non destructive no, but NVIDIA and Blender are working on fixing that. So in the not too distant future it should all work non-destructive for real! That’s why it’s so exciting. Plus this way now alone already saves a ton of time, which is important if you do this a lot and make a living with it 💪🏻
Hello! Is there any news on USD and rigging ?
I believe it works, but it’s quite big in filesize compared to gltf for example.
USD currently supports declaring skeletons and basic skinning weights. You wouldn't use it to export out an editable rig, but it can be helpful for doing a bunch of instanced data for say writing out a big crowd simulation as a bunch of animated skeleton animations.
OH MY GOD, THIS WILL MAKE ME ATLEAST 100% FASTER OMG THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Haha nice! I Love it.
USD have been around for many years now . Still have issues with some apps
Yes! But recently the AOUSD has been founded and it's a combined effort to really start implementing and growing USD as an open-source tech for the future!
I come from Maya and moving to Blender. The thing is, everything will be made in Maya and move it to blender for rendering, how do you update the usd inside blender? if animators have a retake and then they export it again, how can this be reflected in blender?? I don't wan to import it agains because Im doing texturing and lighting the USD inside blender, I just need it to be constantly updated
It depends. At some point just saving the file should be enough. But USD isn’t there yet. Instead you’ll have to rely on links to do it. These are available in Omniverse. Omniverse is now basically the automatic converter.
@@KaizenTutorials I’m really trying to understand omniverse but I can’t even create my local host and since we are a big team, I suggested to do everything inside Maya. The advantage of blender was to be free but I won’t take risks by figuring out how to work efficiently. We were considering alembics but the size will be too big and the extra step of re assigning materials… noup, too much work. I hope in the future I can implement blender for the team work. Awesome video btw!
@@KaizenTutorials oh I forgot to mention that I made tests, I moved a maya scene to blender with usd but once I animate the camera in maya or something that was not animated at the first place, it won’t update to blender that’s why I was asking
How were you able to render the entire Attic scene in Cycles? My GPU runs out of memory and I have a RTX 3070
I'm running an RTX 4090 with 24GB of VRAM, so it can handle basically anything I throw at it. But I think my 3070 would've handled it too, especially with tricks like layering the render or using viewport simplification to have it work in the viewport.
This tool is so similar to BIM workflow for enginers or architecture
Yes! 🙌🏻
SORA : Herro bishes!
Uh oh!
CAKE DOUGH CAKE DOUGH
batter?! No idea lol
But isn’t it what fbx, obj and gltf does? While it’s a great concept, do you think it’s worth that much effort to put in for small studios? Firstly you’d have to make a scene or a stage as they say, then save each model as usd stage, then merge all the stages into one. Rather just go ahead and make a scene and it ain’t destructible tbh?
I think for a small studio it can be useful, but at the same time it's still early days. USD is being developed fast and in the not too distant future will probably be a lot easier to use for smaller studios!
So far sooo good👍
But could u make a detailed video on NVIDIA OMNIVERSE and to exactly how it can be used in the content pipeline.... u see...the pros n cons and its overall functions 🙂
Thanks! Maybe I will at some point
Who knew a standard was a good thing.
Right?
Anything that could free us from Autodesk's FBX is good...
Lol 🤣
So what youre saying is, with the usd format. iit keeps all my data like materials and so on? I can just import that file into my game engine and it retain all data ? i dont have to bake my textures anymore, etc? Or am i missing something
Well you'll still need to bake, but as in my example baking is sort of automatic in Substance. If you're using basic materials from Blender for example, they will automatically transfer through USD. It's still in development but at some point everything should work almost automatically in every software!
Good cuz i just leanred about baking textures . So id be upset if this came along and made all that time a waste. Eventually it will tho which is cool. toook me a solid 2 dyas to figure it out after watching tutorials and such
@@KaizenTutorials
Excellent Ad
Thanks, but it’s not an ad really. Only the link shoutout is! The rest is just a video on usd :-)
Watch as there's that one software that refuses to use USD
Haha there's always that one guy amirite
What about USD file updating? If I edit just a single mesh in a huge scene saved in USD file my software will look into the file and overwrite just what it needs or load whole usd file and save everything again? Or is it just software dependant?
As I understand it it will only change that part of the USD file, which makes it so powerful for multiple person workflows and big teams!
OFF TOPIC: which font do you use for these videos?
It’s called Caught! 🙏🏻
Nice video. but would love to see if you had talked about both pros and cons instead of just talking about pros.
Fair point! I'll note that down for future videos in this style.
@@KaizenTutorials Awesome! Looking forward .
Nice to see USD come this far. Now only if ORA was able to get a few more features added.
Ooh ORA is USD for 2D right? I think it'll get there. Maybe USD will eventually also tackle 2D.
@@KaizenTutorials I'd love for ORA to get more features. It's a great idea. I could use Photoshop, Clip Paint, GIMP or whatever.
I don't know if it's productive to have USD tackle 2D. Do one thing well is the best. But if USD and ORA had similar features that allow for easy transfer that'd be great.
For example, when ORA adds support for guides and proper text (I remain hopeful), I don't know if it would make sense for USD to support that.
Could a picture made in AI like Dall-e or ideogram also be layered in multiple prims (to use the jargon) and then be imported in Blender? I saw an .OBJ file could I import any USD file to Blender export it as an OBJ and 3D-print it? I think the first question is harder, the second one maybe but you'ld have to check the files for inconcistencies in layers Amirite?
You could definitely import usd and export as obj to print. Youd have to check the model ofcourse, but it would work for sure. The other question I don’t know yet! It might be possible but it basically depends on if dall-e supports usd and layering.
cue the xkcd "how standards proliferate" comic
Hahaha fair point. I don't think that's going to happen, but who knows you might be right.
3:25 and they also say "you can't have your cake and eat it too" which makes absolutely no sense to me 😂
Hahaha well I guess once you eat the cake you can't have it in your possesion anymore and vice versa?
its a shame the usd exporter for the software i want to use is a bit expensive
Which USD exporter might that be?
Oh, I didn’t know USB cords did this
(joke)
😂😂
Let's hope someone comes up with an OSS solution that doesn't cost $5k a year (plus additions) ;)
Ah you mean the cost for Omniverse? Well yeah it's free for individuals, but yeah it's pricey for companies.
Getting sponsored by Nvidia is crazy wth
Really is! 🧡
what Camera are you using though?
I’m using a Sony A6400 with the kit lens.
I'll say it from experience USD is way over hyped here. It has its own slew of issues and limitations. It's just another format like everything else.
It’s still relatively ‘new’ yes! The formation of AOUSD by Pixar last year will propel development however. Give it 1-2 years and it’ll take over everything in my opinion!
@@KaizenTutorials that would be great. We've tried to use it in production a bu ch but just like all the others before it, it comes with limitations and you end up having to develop ontop if it. I agree with you though, it's. Great start though.
So... artists finally learn about version controlling 😂😂😂
Haha sortof. Actually USD allows version control pretty well too!
which font you use .. please tell me 😢
It’s called Caught! 👍🏻
@@KaizenTutorials thanks 👍
Wait, ppl don't know about .USD yet?
A lot don’t no! It’s an old tech, but had grown tremendously the last few months and years with AOUSD.
Can't wait for £
lol
Yes , does that answer the question?
To me it does. USD and especially AOUSD are gamechangers which will take over the 3D landscape and create a fully interoperable workflow for all!
I don't get it. Nvidia Omniverse has been out for like 2 years now and I don't ever see anyone using it or talking about it. I wonder if it actually would help me with my workflow. If it's free, open source and solves a problem everyone using more than one 3D softeare has then how come it hasn't been widely adopted yet?
That’s not Omniverse, that’s USD. Omniverse isn’t open source but free to use nonetheless. USD is the overarching tech that will enable cross-platform, boundless, creation. Omniverse is a current solution to create a great workflow portal for companies and individuals that works around current USD issues and provides valuable solutions to use USD more easily.
I see. No hate or anything like that, I am definitely going to try out both but if it's as good as it seems it's a little baffling so few are using it
It’s still not all thrre yet. It works great for some, but not for all. Plus it’s always hard finding info like this unless people make videos on it 😉
nice
informations about softwares and making arts
I'm not sure I follow?
informational
Thank you! 😊