March 4, 2020

Owned by Cory Omand
Jul 21, 2020
3 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.
Carson Brownlee, Intel
Charles Fleche, Rodeo FX
Daniel Heckenberg, Animal Logic
Dhruv Govil, Apple
Eoin Murphy, Animal Logic
Eric Enderton, NVidia
Francois Lord, Rodeo FX
Gary Jones, Foundry
Gordon Bradley, Autodesk
Henry Vera, DNEG
James Pedlingham, Foundry
John Hood, SPI
John Mertic, Linux Foundation
JT Nelson, Pasadena Open Source Consortium/SoCal Blender group
Kimball Thurston, Weta
Larry Gritz, SPI
Lee Kerley, SPI
Mark Elendt, SideFX
Mark Final, Foundry
Mark Tucker, SideFX
Matthew Levine, WDAS
Michael B. Johnson, Apple
Michael Kass, NVidia
Michael Min, Netflix
Niall Redmond, Foundry
Pilar Molina Lopez, Blue Sky Studios
Robin Rowe, CinePaint
Rory Woodford, Foundry
Sean McDuffee, Intel

Minutes

  • Kick-off, introductions (jmertic, 22:05)

  • Setting the context (jmertic, 30:40)

    • Intention of a working group is to tackle a particular problem or task in the industry.

    • TAC identified a desire for a working group around USD

    • This is the first project to go through the ASWF TAC working group process.

    • Cory put together a proposal for the working group, putting together a strawman, with objectives, goals and non-goals.

  • Discuss review charter template (comand, 32:30)

    • Purpose of the working group is to support the USD project for adoption and deployment across the industry.

    • Lots of strong interest in USD, supporting that level of interest is a challenge for the USD team.

    • Objectives, like setting up CI for USD, are distinct from the goals of the working group.

    • Cory: Question to the group about whether there were other items to add to the goals, or to further clarify the existing points in the WG template.

    • Kass[NVidia]: Desire for alignment between studios for schemas that are not on Pixar's radar.

    • Cory: USDWG is not a standards body. What seems more important is alignment to enable sharing of assets.

    • Wave[APPLE]: Seems important to provide best practices for USD to allow studios that are just getting started to have somewhere to start.

    • Daniel[AL]: These items around alignment and best practices are getting at edge cases on the stated goals of the working group; at a high-level, what can this working group add to the existing channels, like usd-interest, without splintering the current open space for communication?

      • Creating a repository for sharing of artifacts.

      • USD would like to ensure that whatever develops as part of the WG, it doesn't become a separate channel to support.

    • Kass[NVidia]: Could support development of projects that Pixar cannot do.

    • Alex[DNEG]: Could get more infrastructure in place for discussing these things where the usd-interest list is not the best place. Some repository or online forum where it's better to discuss technical things.

    • Cory: Concern is that if we add another channel of communication, it could potentially cut people that watch usd-interest out of the conversation.

    • Dhruv[APPLE]: Would you be open to using GH issues and GH wiki for more formalized interactions, which may not cause things to be any more fractured than they already are.

      • Cory: USD project does make use of GH issues today.

      • Dhruv: Some languages like rust and swift use issues as a way to do RFC proposals and similar things. Doesn't seem like anyone is submitting issues of this nature as GH issues.

      • Cory: Can take it to the team to see if they feel that would be an effective way for people to make these sorts of proposals.

      • Possible development of a white paper process, similar to how Pixar works within the usd-interest alias, proposing, commenting and approving via USDWG github (content + GH issues?).

    • Chris[Weta]: In a number of projects that involve sharing assets between studios. Need a higher standard for sharing assets, in particular shading, and how that is shared.

      • Michael[Netflix]: agree. Need additional resources to enable sharing of assets between studios.

      • Cory: definitely seems to be something that would be assisted by the consolidation and sharing of best practices.

    • Cory: Seems like most of the things discussed at this point are covered under the goals stated in the template. Does anyone feel that there are new goals to be added?

      • Eric[NVidia]: Need to be more explicit about alignment. Organizing efforts for projects like Python 3.

      • Larry[Sony]: Anxiety around Pixar and their schedule, while understandable, creates a bottleneck for others, and therefore a risk. Any way we can marshall resources without stomping on Pixar. Helping with opportunities to implement items that are on the schedule but wouldn't happen until later without assistance.

      • Gordon[Autodesk]: Complement the great work that Pixar is doing, tackle studio adoption blockers to coordinate our attack on a particular area.

      • Kass[NVidia]: There are a range of important topics where Pixar feels passionately how it should be done, and wants to carefully control the evolution of USD, but there are other areas where it's not as important, for instance asset management. Standardizing on the pieces that are outside of USD and connect to it would be a really valuable possible role for the WG.

Action items

  • Cory:

    • Get the USDWG GitHub project set up.

    • Reassess the template given some of the items from today's meeting.

  • John:

    • schedule next meeting for 2w out

      • alternating Wednesdays with the TAC meeting

      • extend time to 1h

      • bi-weekly cadence going forward

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