September 2, 2020

Owned by Cory Omand
Last updated: Sept 02, 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
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
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
Pilar Molina Lopez, Blue Sky Studios
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
Toby Jones, Walt Disney Animation Studios

Minutes

  • Action item follow-up (0:05-0:10)

    • Wiki content review (Cory O.)

      • No new content added in the last two weeks, likely due to SIGGRAPH demands.

    • Discussion for guided vs. self-organized standards (Cory O.)

      • Tabled until next session, follow up with USD team happening this week.

  • USD/VFX Platform (0:10-0:20)

    • Interesting video from ASWF open source days about vfxplatform.

    • Some notes toward the end of the video about adoption of USD into the platform standard.

    • Presenter (non-Pixar) mentioned that including USD in the standard right now may slow development.

      • Some speculation about why/whether inclusion would actually slow development

      • Perhaps needing to go back and fix bugs in older releases could detract from development of upcoming releases.

    • Larger discussion about how inter-release churn could be managed, with the help of USDWG members

      • Feedback from studios building the latest versions of USD internally, contributed to the wiki.

      • What needed to change for internal software when moving between USD versions?

      • Identifying which tests changed in the USD repo between releases as a way of determining which APIs are changing between releases.

      • Would be great to get feedback on cases where semantic behavior of USD changed between releases.

        • Is this a bug, or is this a change that should have been communicated in release notes?

        • If it turns out that the change was in the release notes, how could that be communicated more clearly?

  • Interest in USD from game studios (0:20-0:35)

    • CarsonB: Does anyone know whether there is any interest in USD in the games space?

    • CoryO: Doing some work with Epic on USD/Material X integration. 

    • NickP: Some interest from studios, some AAA studios using it internally, some with custom schemas, no plans to publicly release.

    • JT: Some interest from indie studios also.

  • Closing/Action Items (0:35-0:36)

Parking Lot

  • USD Superbuilds (Carson B.)

  • BIM representation (JT)

  • Discussion: guided vs. self-organized standards

    • How does the USD team view external self-organized standardization around USD extensions?

    • What is the role of the USD repo for extension proposals?

    • What is the best way to organize external contributions? Branch in the USD repo, contrib repo, individual repos?

    • What is the best way to support discoverability of USD extension projects?

Reference

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