Hi sub to you

Its awesome for sure!

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.

Glad to hear it!

Thanks a lot and yes interoperability in any sector is amazing!

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.

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!

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

Thank you! Glad you like it and maybe I'll do more Omniverse vids in the future

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).

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.

Why though?

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 believe that’s true yeah! Blender is still a baby for USD, but it’ll get there.

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.

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.

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! :-)

Uh oh!

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.

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.

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!

The new pipeline is basically an automated realtime link between Blender, substance and usd composer, allowing you to iterate in realtime!

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 🤟

Thanks for watching!

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!

It's open-source, so the community and AOUSD foundation will manage it and keep it going I think.

Glad it was helpful!

Glad you like it, thanks!

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.

Hahaha well I guess once you eat the cake you can't have it in your possesion anymore and vice versa?

batter?! No idea lol

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!

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!

No problem! Glad you liked it.

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!

You’re welcome! Definitely give it a try 💪🏻

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

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.

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!

I’m using a Sony A6400 with the kit lens.

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 ;-)

Lol hahaha I like both USD's ;-)

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 :(

🤣

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

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!

It’s called Caught! 👍🏻

@@KaizenTutorials thanks 👍

Thank you!

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

Thanks! Maybe I will at some point

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!

😂😂

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

I'm not sure what that is haha

Hahaha fair point. I don't think that's going to happen, but who knows you might be right.

Right?

Haha there's always that one guy amirite

Welcome 👍

Thanks mate! 🙏🏻

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

It does as far as I know yes!

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.

It’s called Caught! 🙏🏻

Haha sortof. Actually USD allows version control pretty well too!

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!

Yes! 🙌🏻

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.

I mean you're not wrong, for a lot of purposes FBX works fine like you said with just reimporting.

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.

Lol 🤣

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 :)

Haha nice! I Love it.

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!

Thank you! 😊

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 💪🏻

Yess please!

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!

The only sponsored bit is the part with the link callouts :-)

Thanks, but it’s not an ad really. Only the link shoutout is! The rest is just a video on usd :-)

Which USD exporter might that be?

Gltf is pretty nice in some cases!

Really is! 🧡

A lot don’t no! It’s an old tech, but had grown tremendously the last few months and years with AOUSD.

Fair point! I'll note that down for future videos in this style.

@@KaizenTutorials Awesome! Looking forward .

I'm not sure I follow?

Not that I know. This and last year’s Blender conference there were talks on it. However I feel like USD has more potential, if only for the major companies backing it. That said I’ve learned gltf is for example currently better for rigged stuff!

USD and GLTF are getting along for now. At Siggraph there are discussions about using USD for authoring content and using GLTF as a final exported product because engines generally have better support for it. However if you pay attention it seems like those talks are quickly becoming irrelevant as USD support ramps up, and you note that both formats can achieve the same performance. Removing the final export step to GLTF is the obvious next step, even if we're not there yet. In film and animation GLTF isn't even a consideration, so I assume you're referring to real time applications. Unity finally grew up and added native USD support in their latest update, so long story short I think GLTF is finally on its way out. It is a shame though, because GLTF is great and never really got it's day in the sun.

​@@KaizenTutorials ​thank you!

@@michaeleaster8354 I just learn how to setup to export correctly in GLTF and now I have to swich to USD instead :') thank you for your info!

I have no idea what IFC is, so care to elaborate? :-D

​@@KaizenTutorials sure! IFC format is a universal standard file which contains all of Architectural, Structural, Electrical and Mechanical information in a single file. for example Revit, Archicad and BlenderBIM can create them. imagine a whole 3D model of the building with all the details and information needed for it. it's part of Building Information Model (BIM) concept. You can send the IFC file for client and they can inspect it even in their phone or via HTML link. I hope that makes sense :D

@danialsoozani ooh cool! Yeah that makes sense. Thanks for explaining 🙏🏻

@@KaizenTutorials Thank you for USD video. I was wondering since 3.6 how can I share my architectural files in a universal format so my clients can see the materials simply (PBR) even on their phones. I thought maybe usd is the key and your video made it clearer for me. Is it possible you think?

@@danialsoozani It depends on what software theyd use to view it. But yes technically that would be possible I think.

lol

AOUSD got founded in August 2023! USD has been around for a while but the new real big change, major tech companies backing this and putting their effort in creating this thing is pretty new!

Ah you mean the cost for Omniverse? Well yeah it's free for individuals, but yeah it's pricey for companies.