September 30, 2020

Owned by Cory Omand
Last updated: Sept 30, 2020
2 min read

Video Conference Link

Attendance

Cory Omand - WG Chair, Pixar/TWDS
Alan Blevins, Dreamworks
Alex Schwank, Apple
Aloys Baillet, Animal Logic
Andy Biar,  Warner Bros.
Anandhaiyappan, Botvfx
Arash Keissami, Nira.app
Ben Chung-Hoon, Google
Bill Spitzak, Dreamworks Animation
Brian Green, Dreamworks
Carson Brownlee, Intel
Charles Fleche, Rodeo FX
Chris Rydalch, Blue Sky Studios
Daniel Heckenberg, Animal Logic
David Aguilar, Walt Disney Animation
Deke Kincaid, Digital Domain
Dhruv Govil, Apple
Doug MacMillan, Tippett Studio
Eoin Murphy, NVidia
Eric Enderton, NVidia
Fabrice Macagno, Animal Logic
Francois Lord, Rodeo FX
Gary Jones, Foundry
Gordon Bradley, Autodesk
Greg Wuller, AWS
Henry Vera, DNEG
James Pedlingham, Foundry
Jeff Bradley, Dreamworks
John Hood, SPI
John Mertic, Linux Foundation
Jordan Soles, Rodeo FX
JT Nelson, Pasadena Open Source Consortium/SoCal Blender group
Kimball Thurston, Weta
Larry Gritz, SPI
Lee Kerley, SPI
Luca Scheller, RiseFX
Mark Elendt, SideFX
Mark Final, Foundry
Mark Tucker, SideFX
Mathieu Mazerolle, Foundry
Matthew Levine, WDAS
Matthew Low, DWA
Michael B. Johnson, Apple
Michael Kass, NVidia
Michael Min, Netflix
Niall Redmond, Foundry
Nick Porcino, Pixar
Nicolas Montmarquette, Autodesk
Philippe Sawicki, Autodesk
Pier Paolo Ciarravano, MPC
Richard Lei, Weta
Robin Rowe, CinePaint
Roman Zulak, SPI
Rory Woodford, Foundry
Sean Looper, AWS
Sean McDuffee, Intel
Serguei Kalentchouk, Apple
Shawn Dunn, Epic Games
Sue Sauer, Sunrise Productions

Minutes

  • Action item follow-up (0:05-0:10)

    • Wiki content review (Cory O.)

    • Charter language changes (Cory O.)

      • No language changes necessary at this time, would be nice to do so for clarification, but this should not gate adding topics to the agenda.

    • Scheduling for WG self-organized standards (Cory O.)

      • Still need to add a page in the wiki for this, but in the mean time, please contact Cory if you have a topic you'd like to add.

  • Discussion: VFX platform/USD alignment (0:10-0:50)

    • Chief issue seems to be ABI stability

    • Bridge products are the best approach currently for vendors, but having ABI stability in USD, especially around schemas and other plugin points, would be better.

      • Would it be possible to have ABI stability around extension points, like schemas, file format plugins, other plugin points?

    • Discussion of a possible externally-developed "universal bridge" for portions of the USD interface that are important to implementors.

    • NVidia has a solution for this in their Omniverse product. Would be nice to get input from the USD team about this topic.

      • Plugins are versioned and have a stable interface.

    • Best way to proceed may be to write a white-paper/proposal about how such a shim might operate, which could then be iterated on by vendors/studios/implementors.

      • Could start as a wiki page in the USDWG space to allow interested parties to collaborate on what such a shim might look like.

    • Inclusion of a minimum version of USD in the VFX platform standard would help vendors choose a version to ship with, but without ABI stability it's not possible to swap in a new version unless a bridge exists for that product that allows recompilation against a newer version of USD.

    • KimballT: Weta has a potential pull request for USD to support setting the SONAME to allow different versions of USD in-memory at once.

  • Closing/Action Items (0:50-0:55)

    • Further discussion about the "universal bridge" approach.

Parking Lot

  • USD Superbuilds (Carson B.)

Reference

License: CC BY 4.0, Copyright Contributors to the ASWF USD working group.