https://uploadvr.com/epic-games-unreal-engine-april/
I wonder if Blender will be able to support USD properly. It would be nice to be able to export and import characters without issues, as it happens now with the fbx implementation.
indeed, working with FBX is a pain.
USD don’t cover everything stuff FBX does : http://graphics.pixar.com/usd/docs/index.html#IntroductiontoUSD-Whatcan’tUSDdo?
d’oh!
well we need something different anyway xD
Very interesting concept:
Here is some more Python examples:
http://graphics.pixar.com/usd/docs/USD-Tutorials.html
I don’t know anything about USD but from what I read, looking at their initial description:
- organizes data into hierarchical namespaces
- each prim can contain Attributes and Relationships known as Properties
Looks like an extensible tree node structure, for example like plain XML format or DNA of Blender.
By Blender experience, it has unlimited extensibility through custom attributes, thus making it multipurpose and multifunctional. It seems that USD will handle the same concept of organizing the data structures in a similar way as Blender’s DNA. According to what I understand, the FBX file format was very specialized and it was extremely focused to 3D graphics rendering.
It looks like USD is a very logical approach to solve the problem with multiple file formats for good.
I agree that it is a logical step forward and I believe that it is an amazing basis to further simplify the exchange between various applications. The very uncomfortable fact that there is nothing like a standard for rigging and animations, unfortunately still leaves a huge gap between those applications. I think that this is going to be one of the main upcoming challenges in this area and it will likely be orders of magnitudes harder to solve compared to the issues that USD already solved.
Well, USD or glTF which ever solves these problems we are having with FBX… glTF seems to support skining and joints, they recently released v 2.0. So Pixar probably has a plan for supporting skining… otherwise UE wouldn’t have invested in it.
I am optimistic that this is the case. It would be great to have an industry standard for this. But I am only going to believe it once it is actually established. I remember that there was a lot of hype because of Collada which turned out to be not so optimal due to its complexity. USD has the clear advantage, that it is not just a specification. It is already being used in production and has already been proven to be useful.