Time

9am Pacific

Agenda

• Holiday follow-up! (Recap of last meeting)
• USD assets and stages - discussion on the difference between an implementation like Remedy's and creating assets as their own USD packages to be imported.Follow up
  • Usage of kind and purpose in video games (https://academysoftwarefdn.slack.com/archives/C03GKF4DG7K/p1673464586138349 @spiff @Kristof Minnaert @Koen Vroeijenstijn @Levi Biasco and others)
    • Adding a Purpose page in the USD Book of Remedy : who can help @Kristof Minnaert?
  • How to manage layer vs Sublayer ?
  • Removal of Boost/Python (quick shout out to @Matthew Kuruc)
• USD at GDC : when and where do a gathering?
• Difference between FBX and USD based workflows.
  • What does FBX provide that is not available in USD?
  • What might be encountered when moving from an FBX based pipeline to USD?

Zoom

https://zoom-lfx.platform.linuxfoundation.org/meeting/94179328045

Notes

USD GDC

nVidia:

• No hands on so far because of travel restriction

Gathering : Frieder Erdmann , Rebecca, Jeremiah Zanin 

USD : kind and purpose

Thanks Sebastian "spiff" Grassia  for sharing the kind file from Pixar)

Remedy usage is minimal at the moment. They want to expand the filtering usage. Purpose is not very important because they don't use hydra.

Alab is really using purposes. We need to find a way to make the Pixar example legal.

Is it simple to create a new kind?

We can check Sebastian "spiff" Grassia example.

we need to put info in the plug in info file. It is pretty simple.

Layer vs SubLayer

At Infinity War, USD is used for prototype. THe real usage is more referencing.

At SantaMonica studio, they try to figure out the USD usage, how to build scene. There will be huge transition from Maya.

At Remedy, At the begining, it was only referencing. For Geom/anim, sublayers could be a good usage.

Sublayering, source control can bring difficulties.

At Santa Monica Studio, There could be one file world file and have references from other world. They want to have layers by department. It could be nice to have overrides for Variant Sets.

Pixar : you can do more damages using sublayers. Pixar is working on namespace Edits. There could be orphrans if it is not done correctly.
THey are working on a project to avoid this:

• interaction with Source Control
• pipeline control for Orphans
• Sublayering gives the ability to work on the same subject. It was requested by a lot of people.
  Is there a lot of latency?
  One of the challenge of the namespace Edit is that it checks a lot of things.

Boost removal

@Matthew Kuruc did an incredible work.

Some time in the near future, USD will be compiling without the usage of Boost except  for Python.

They are approaching the removal concept by concept.

What about the other dependencies? Is ther a huge usage of Boost?

• Move away from TBB for core
• MaterialX have no external dependencies
• every library that uses Boost should be reached out and explained that they shouldn't use boost.
• TBB:
  • creation of an abstraction (Work) to be able to use every own scheduler.
  • Pixar is making the work management abstraction to be plugable.

For Remedy, the real issue is Boost Python.

For Santa Monica Studio: USD is in the tool so there is no real issue. 
The TBB abstraction would be nice as they are using their own scheduler.

At EPIC, they use Boost for the Editor.

The final removing of Boost is also moving to C++17

USD vs FBX

The real question is why FBX is still an option?

Dhruv Govil explained that there a lot of things that are working well in FBX :

• IK
• COnstraints
• Animation curves
• Takes
  • Takes are similar to a Variant. You can blend between takes. They are libraries of animations. You can feed them to an animaiton Blender.

You want to be able to use several variant at the same time.

Does USDSkeletalAnim serve this purpose?
Yes it could.

Usage of Animaiton Blender will introduce complexity in the pipeline and it won't be as powerful as Houdini's ones0.

It would be great to have the ability to link a skel to a group of animation.

A colleciton could be the way to go.

For unsampled curves, we could use AnimX.

Attendance

•  François Devic, Co-Lead
•  TJ Trently, Co-Lead, NetEase Games
•  Alex Schwank - WG Co-chair, Apple
•  Nick Porcino - WG Co-chair, Pixar
•  Michael Min - USD Camera WG, Netflix
•  Roman Zulak - USD on the web WG, NVIDIA
•  Aaron Luk, NVIDIA
•  Adam Harder
•  Alan Blevins, NVIDIA
•  Alessandro Bernardi - Ubisoft - HELIX Studio
•  Alex Gerveshi, AWS
•  Alex Wilkie
•  Alexander Kalyuzhnyy, Wizart Animation
•  Allen Hastings, Foundry
•  Aloys Baillet, Animal Logic
•  Alson Entuna, Crytek
•  Alyssa Reuter
•  Andy Biar, Warner Bros.
•  Ana Gomez
•  Anandhaiyappan, Botvfx
•  Angelo Gabriel Sapaula
•  Anthony Tan, Autodesk
•  Anton Palmqvist
•  Arash Keissami, Nira.app
•  Arielle Martin, Foundry
•  Ashwin Bhat - USD and MaterialX, Autodesk 
•  Barry Ruff
•  Ben Chung-Hoon, NVIDIA
  
•  Ben Deniz
•  Bernard Kwok, Autodesk
•  Bill Dwelly
•  Bill Spitzak, Dreamworks Animation
•  Blazej Floch
•  Brian Gyss, 5th Kind
•  Bruno Ebe
•  Bruno Landry (Unity)
•  Carlos Felipe Garcia Murillo
•  Carolin Colón
•  Carson Brownlee, Intel
•  Charleen Chu, SPI
•  Charles Flèche, Ubisoft Montréal
•  Chris King
•  Christopher Lexington
•  Chris Rydalch, SideFX
•  Claire Chen
•  Claire Yb
•  Claude Robillard
•  Connor Smith, Magic Leap
•  Cory Omand, TWDS/Pixar
•  Curtis Andrus
•  Dan Herman
•  Dan Lee
•  Dan Rolinek
•  Daniel Heckenberg, Animal Logic
•  Daniel Lanner
•  Dave Hale, Riot Games
•  David Aguilar, Walt Disney Animation
•  David Larsson, Adobe
•  Dean Jackson, Apple
•  Deke Kincaid, Digital Domain
•  Dhruv Govil, Apple
•  Divyansh Mishra
•  Domenico Alessi
•  Dominic Couture
•  Doug MacMillan, Tippett Studio
•  Edward Slavin, NVidia
•  Élie Michel
•  Eric Chadwick, Wayfair
•  Eoin Murphy, NVidia
•  Eric Enderton, NVidia
•  Eric Majka, Psyonix/Epic Games
•  Erik Ostsjo
•  Étienne Archambault
•  F. Sebastian Grassia, Pixar
•  Fabrice Macagno, Animal Logic
•  Felix Herbst, Prefrontal Cortex
•  Fernando Leandro
•  Francois Lord, NAD-UQAC / Rodeo FX
•  Frieder Erdmann, Ubisoft Massive
•  Gary Jones, Foundry
•  Georgie Challis
•  Gordon Bradley, Autodesk
•  Gordon Cameron, Epic Games
•  Guido Quaroni, Adobe
•  Guillaume Laforge, Autodesk
•  Guy Martin, NVIDIA
•  Hendrik Helpach
•  Henrik Edstrom, Autodesk
•  Henry Vera, DNEG
•  James Pedlingham, Foundry
•  Jeff Bradley, Dreamworks
•  Jenna Bell, Disney / Invisible Thread
•  Jennifer Horowitz, Maxar
•  Jenny Zhang
•  Jeremiah Zanin, Santa Monica Studio
•  Jeremy Cowles - USD Assets WG Chair, Unity
•  Jerran Schmidt, NVIDIA
•  Jerry Gamache
•  Jesse Barker
•  Jesse Ng, Metropolitan Museum of Art
•  Joe Hultgren 
•  John Burnett, Bonfire Studios
•  John Creighton, Apple
•  John Hood, SPI
•  John Mertic, Linux Foundation
•  Jon Creighton, Apple
•  Jon Wade, Spotify
•  Jonah Friedman, Autodesk
•  Jonathan Gerber
•  Jonathan Stone
•  Jonghwan Hwang
•  Jordan Soles, Rodeo FX
•  Jordan Thistlewood, Epic
•  Joshua Miller
•  Joseph Goldstone
•  JT Nelson, Pasadena Open Source Consortium/SoCal Blender group
•  Julien Dubuisson
•  Kevin Bullock
•  Kelvin Chu, Riot Games
•  Kimball Thurston, Weta
•  Koen Vroeijenstijn, Activision / Infinity Ward
•  Kristof Minnaert, Remedy Entertainment
•  Kurtis Schmidt
•  Laura Scholl
•  Larry Gritz, SPI
•  Lee Kerley, SPI
•  Levi Biasco, Santa Monica Studio
•  Louis Marcoux, NVIDIA
•  Lucas Morante, Illusorium
•  Luca Scheller, RiseFX
•  Luiz Kruel, R* NYC
•  Luke Titley
•  Manuel Köster, Crytek
•  Mark Alexander
•  Mark Elendt, SideFX
•  Mark Final, Foundry
•  Mark Masson
•  Mark Manca
•  Mark Sisson
•  Mark Tucker, SideFX
•  Marteinn Oskarsson, Sony Imageworks
•  Martin Karlsson
•  Mathieu Bertrand
•  Mathieu Mazerolle, Foundry
•  Matias Codesal, NVIDIA
•  Matt Johnson, Epic Games
•  Matt Kuruc, NVIDIA
•  Matthew Levine, WDAS
•  Matthew Low, DWA
•  Michael B. Johnson, Apple
•  Michael Blain, Unity
•  Michael Buckley
•  Michael Kass, NVidia
•  Michael Min
•  Mika Vehkala, Remedy Entertainment
•  Mikko Haapoja, Shopify
•  Nat Brown
•  Natasha Tatarchuk, Unity
•  Neil Chodorowski
•  Niall Redmond, Foundry
•  Nicolas Popravka, Soul Machines
•  Nicolas Savva
•  Nishanth Singaraju
•  Oliver Dunn
•  Oscar Sebio, Autodesk
•  Paolo Selva, Weta
•  Paul Baaske, Jellyfish Pictures
•  Paul Molodowitch, NVIDIA
•  Patrick Palmer
•  Peter Arcara
•  Pete Segal
•  Phil Sawicki, NVIDIA
•  Prapanch Swamy, Disney / Invisible Thread
•  Pier Paolo Ciarravano, MPC
•  Pierre-Luc Bruyere
•  Quentin Birrer
•  Ramesh Santhanam
•  Rebecca Hallac
•  Richard Kerris, nVidia
•  Richard Lei, Weta
•  Rob Pieké
•  Rob Stauffer, SideFX
•  Robert Krupa, Elemental Games
•  Robin Rowe, CinePaint
•  Rohit Khonde
•  Rory Woodford, Foundry
•  Ryan Stelzleni
•  Scott Geffert, Metropolitan Museum of Art
•  Scott Keating
•  Sean Looper, AWS
•  Sean McDuffee, Intel
•  Seb Schmidt, Weta
•  Sebastian Herholz, Intel
•  Sebastian Grassia, Pixar
•  Sebastian Rath, Snowtrack Montréal
•  Sebastien Dalgo, Unity
•  Sergei Shaykin, Apple (usdzconvert)
•  Sergio Rojas, Different Dimension
•  Serguei Kalentchouk, Netflix
•  Shane Davis, SideFX
•  Shawn Dunn, Epic Games
•  Silvia Palara
•  Sneha Jaikumar
•  Spencer Luebbert
•  Stefan Habel, Foundry
•  Stephan Leroux, Shopify
•  Steve Agland, Animal Logic
•  Steve Hwan, DD
•  Steve LaVietes
•  Steven Anichini, Disbelief
•  Sue Sauer, Sunrise Productions
•  Sylvain Trottier, NVIDIA
•  Thibault Lambert
•  Thomas Kumlehn
•  Tiago Carvalho
•  Tim Fowler
•  Tzung-da Tsai
•  Vadim Slyusarev
•  Varun Talwar
•  Wayne Wu
•  Will Telford, NVIDIA
•  Xiaoxi Liu, Unity
•  Yassine Mankai
•  YJ Jang