Autodesk Maya 2022: USD Workflow for Beginners

hello and welcome to another video you may have seen on my channel a video i did about the new features in autodesk maya 2022 and one of those news features is the update to the usd plugin now i covered some of the workflow in that video but what i wanted to do is go a little bit more deeper and explain things a little bit more thoroughly to perhaps maybe those people who weren't too familiar with usd or hadn't really integrated yet into their workflow or pipeline so this is what this video is really about i'm not going to talk about usd as a concept um there's lots of reading online about what that actually is and i'll include some links in the description below so you can read them at your own leisure in the meantime though check out this video i really hope you find it useful and thanks for watching in the new version of maya there's been a number of improvements to the maya usd workflow this is building upon the the first iteration of the plug-in that was released last year by autodesk now they released two versions of the plug-in they have a compiled version which you can just load in straight into maya or people could choose to download the source code from github because usd is completely open source and this enabled people to try and incorporate usd into their own pipelines and tailor it to their own particular needs now in the new version of my there's been a number of improvements to to the workflows and how you bring in usd data into maya and also how you work with it once you have it inside maya the first area i want to look at is how data is imported into maya and the differences in how you import it and now how you work with it the normal method when the plugin was first introduced was to simply just import usd data into mine this allowed anybody to take a usd file and simply import it into maya and continue to work on it inside maya i'm going to use the pixar kitchen set as my sample the options have there's just been a slight change to these options we now have the ability to have materials and also convert materials as well so if these if the data inside this usd data set has any specific shaders and they've been converted then we can choose to convert them to any one of these options and of course if you've using the source code and implemented your own plugin then this allows you to plug in your own render support here as well there's also that's still the hierarchy view so what we can do is we can look at the usd structure and see what it contains before we load it we can choose to load up a specific variant by default or even uh selectively choose our particular prim to load in instead of loading the entire data set i'm going to keep everything as it is and just import this will take the usd data and convert it into into like a maya format really and that enabled users to use it in the normal maya way and you'll see that when i've brought it in when i select the kitchen set here it populates in the attribute editor and i can extend out the hierarchy in the usual way which is perfectly fine and that's it i've just bought in my usd file i can now make changes to this i can introduce other geometries uh group it put it in the hierarchy and then when i'm uh finished and i want to save it back out as a usd file again i can simply go to export selection choose your sd and now i've got my options here to make it binary or ascii i can now convert these materials out so that that that shaded information is contained now um exported with the file um so that's really handy for going into another package which also has arnold and that was all perfectly fine we've now got that round trip workflow um now there's another way of bringing in the dataset but also allows you to work in the way that usd works and that's done by going to the create menu and choosing here the universal scene description option and this time there's two options now and the one we're going to look at is that status and file and we select this i'm going to choose the same data set as before you'll notice there's fewer options here i'm just going to bring it in create and see how quick that was and it was significantly quicker than the previous import because there's been no conversion here really what we're dealing with now is you could say pure native usd data but inside maya and if we look at the attribute editor now even with the top um prim selected you'll see that it looks very different there's a number of different options here which we didn't have before we can see the root layer the default prim file path we can even look at the display and change over to say proxy to render and that's something we didn't have before and you'll notice that the the icon badge here in the outline has also changed and this is actually the usd um official badge and straight away it looks different and therefore we can we're not gonna this gives you more of a visual cue when working in maya so you know the what type of data you're working on but the real benefit here is if you turn on the shapes in the outliner we can now extend out the hierarchy but this time you'll notice that the branches look very different and that's because this is now native usd data and you'll notice as well that some of the icon badges have now changed and we've now got a few things here which we didn't usually have and this is now representing usd data in a different way so for example if we look at this here we can just hover over this kitchen one there's a small little kind of arc there this is a composition arc and that's a term that you should be familiar with when you're working with usd data and again when we select that we can see that we've got a whole bunch of different options here which we otherwise didn't have if i scroll down we can see here there's these icons have got like a slight v next to it and that's telling me it's a variant and again variant is something you should be also familiar with if you're working with usd data but what that basically means is that now in the outliner because i'm bringing in native usd data i can work with it in that particular way which means when i right click the outliner now i now have a new contextual menu which provides me with options for working with this usd data so this is a variant i can scroll down here and choose variant sets and i've got a model invariant and i can choose to swap out a different pan if i want to and this now starts to now bring in the benefits of usd particularly when you're bringing in a single stage and your different department and you want to work on this data if we look at the other options available to us we can choose to unload the variant so the prim completely and you'll notice this would this will completely vanish i can choose to load it back in again i can choose to make it invisible um i can even choose to deactivate the prim as well and you'll notice that when i do that i get the this this line through the name here and of course i can just reactivate it if i want to i can choose to expand out here into the geometry and i can choose to add a new print and we've got a number of different options here which all give us different different capabilities that are in accordance with the usd schema we can choose like a scope or a def and if you're working with usd you'll be very familiar with those particular terms and so already we're working in a very different way than just bringing in usd model data we're now actually working on usd sets and usd stages which which before we just weren't able to do if we right click the menu again there's another option here called the usd layer editor and this brings up a new feature uh for being able to work with layers inside usd data as well this was something that that wasn't possible before either i'm not going to go into this right this moment i'll come to this cinema in in another part of the video but what this enables me to do now is i can now add multiple layers into this data set in accordance with when i'm working on a shot sequence or department and i'm going to show you how you do that now one thing um you can also do with this is you can have both types of data occupy the same myocene in this very basic scene i've got this um car geometry um with some arnold um shaders assigned to it i've also got a very simple lighting setup and a basic plane to give me a ground and i've organized my assets here into a very basic rudimentary structure so that i can break so i can break things apart and maybe start to export different things separately what i can do now is choose to export this as a usd format this doesn't exist as usd pro before this this was all done natively in maya i want to make this a usd format and share it with maybe another team or even another studio i can now just choose file export selection and i can go to i'll just leave it here i'll just put bugatti and just uh i've look at my options i've got arnold shaders assigned to this so i'm going to keep this here to make sure that data is exported on the my scene and then created inside the usd i'm going to keep everything as is and just export selection now i've done that i can actually load this back into this same scene but this time i can well i've got two options i can choose to bring it back in as a standard usd model but that's only going to produce the same hierarchy as this and i've already got it inside my scene already so i don't need to do that what i can now do is i can then go to my crate menu and bring this in as a usd stage and this time i can then actually choose to work on it as if it's usd data if i bring that back in you'll see that my icon's there as well and if i just move it over here you see we've got both types of data inside my scene um if i was now to look at this file and go to shapes expand up the hierarchy we can now see that my hierarchy there is color coded in accordance with usd and this means that straight away if i was to bring this um bring this scene into or the business data set into maya i can see straight away from these visual cues that this is native usd data and this is just normal my data and as we can see though all the data is actually there if we scroll to the very bottom you'll notice there's a new node here and this is the scope and so if i right click this and add a new prim this scope node this is what this this node here and this is useful for um containing information that's not going to be transformed like materials and if i expand this out we can see these are my arnold shading materials that have been retained in this data set and been imported into my scene i didn't really name them effectively so that's why they look um slightly odd name but if i was to expand them all out you can see that i have actually named some of the material names so the shader group is here and we can see that um some of these i've named accordingly so this is a really good way straight away this already gives us many benefits over the previous workflow where we can selectively choose how we want to work with usd data we can bring it in as a simple usd model and work on it in maya in the usual way and then export it so we have that round trip workflow or we can now choose to bring it in as a native usd format and work within it work with it in the nate in in the usd schema now that we have this extra ability we can actually now start creating usd hierarchies inside maya natively the way to start doing that is again to the create menu choosing universal scene description but this time we're going to create a new stage with a new layer now we get this default here straight away it's the default name we can see it's a my usd proxy shape if we right click down bring up a usd layer editor we have an anonymous layer which is a this is a layer that's held in memory until we actually save it and this is what this little icon here is as well now what i can do here is start to now expand this out for example now this is my shape i may want to right click this and start thinking about adding a new prim now i may want to add a transform node and i could call it anything i want i could call this maybe um front wheel and then i may want to add um def from here and i'll just call this fr wheel and then i can then choose to add a reference and what i'm going to do i'm going to bring in part of that bugatti model because i've already exported some of these things as actual assets so i had the front wheel i'm gonna just use the front left wheel bring that in and there it is um now what i can do is i can go back up to um here my front wheel and then add another x form and then add another def and now bring in another reference and i just call it the front right wheel and straight away you'll see that and there's some variants here as well so again when i bring this data in because it was exported from um maya with all that data in it we can see that when i expand it out it contains the shader groups for these particular models because it's named looks i can change this if i want to and again i can rename these in the same way i would any kind of maya node and this is how we build out um the hierarchy with the usd schema in mind and you can see here that the the icon badge has been automatically changed because we've got different variations here we've got different models contained within it and so again we've got this complete flexibility to work in in with this data or build up our own structures and then export them completely out as usd i've loaded the pixar kitchen set back into my now and i've loaded it in as a new stage so i've got my usd hierarchy now we're going to explore the actual usd layer editor now i've got my default level here um which is perfect kitchen set dot usd and what i can do now is i can build up my data structure here in the outliner and in my scene but now what i want to do is how do i then start to work with this data across teams and departments and this is where the layer editor really comes in handy what i can do here is i can start adding multiple layers and if you're familiar with usd workflow and how layers work and the overrides and the opinions they give then this is where things can get quite complicated but also they can be very powerful when you're working with different stakeholders or different departments on a single scene or sequence inside the usd layer editor we've got the ability here to create the stage from the new layer and file which is the same option you also have here we've then got the um we've got other options around here about adding uh extra layers so i can just add a number of layers here and at the moment they're all anonymous because i haven't saved them out you might call them dirty layers you might say what i can also do is select any of these and then i can drag these into this and make it a sub layer um i can even choose to load an existing layer as well and i'll come to that in a moment now what i'm going to do now is at the moment this little orange icon is telling me that this these layers are held in memory and i haven't saved them out to disk yet and what that's the next thing i need to do and because once i do that i can then start using these layers more effectively and you can right click on on the top level here and choose to add a sub layer or even load sub layers here we'll come to these options in just a moment now i can choose to double click um the layer and i can choose a name for my layer if i want to or if i just click the icon here this brings up a new a new option box and this allows me to save the stage and also save the anonymous layers as well and then i can name these to everyone i can name them all in one go that's that's what i'm going to do now okay so i've renamed my layers and what i've done just to keep it very simple i followed the basic um glossary that pixar provide in their usd documentation and the idea of working on say a shot and then a sequence so i've followed this basic naming convention here but i've noticed i've missed off my main shot.usd file and i need to i need to correct that now before i proceed so i've got my sequence as a layer and then i've got these effects sequence layout and sequence dressing as as a sub layer i'm just going to click my shot effects and then add parent layer and what i can do here is then just change this to um or even just click here and this will give me the ability to change anonymous layer 1 and i'm just going to call this dot dot usd and what i can do is just want to correct the parenting and now i've got everything all laid out exactly how i want and you'll notice because i've made a change the icon changes straight away and this little star next to the name shows that there's been changes to those particular layers and set and i need to change and i need to save them when i do that it tells me that i've made edits to these two files and i need to save all and that's fine so now the idea is that i can now move between these different layers and make certain changes and this will depend on the department or team that i'm working in as an example let's look at sequence dressing and this to say i'm in maybe the asset department and i want to make a change and i want to make a change to this refrigerator and but i don't want to basically destroy anything the asset i'm just saying that i've had an instruction to change this to to remove these um these are these pinup posters and everything make it more cleaner now we have a variant for that as well and we can actually change that here and we can see in the refrigerator if i right click that we've got a variant set and we've got a bare one or a decorated room which is perfect now what i want to do i can now go down to my layer and just choose it here and now i will change that variant and i'll click this where it says and quickly change to bear and you'll notice as soon as i've done that i've now got a little star next to my name and this is now changed here to tell me i've made a change now what i can do i can just right click this and just save edits and when i've done that that's made a change now so that basically but only on this usd file i haven't actually changed anything here change it as a layer and one of the really cool things about this is i we can choose to see the change as well if i right click this and say print to script editor i do that and bring up my script editor we can see that uh what's actually done now we can see here's the usd layer editor we say the kitchen set the props the group the hierarchy and we can see here the change i've made in the variants and it's now choosing bear if i was to change this back then that would also be populated in the same way so essentially we're working in a very non-destructive way now those changes have been made i may wish to perhaps say well i want to mute this layer or i'd want to hide it somehow so i can see what it looked like in its previous state and i can do it here by clicking on this little button which will mute that layer and if i do that you'll see that now decorations have now come back and essentially you can see in the layer editor we've got the um it's been changed as well so we can instantly tell whether or not the layers being muted and of course if you want to bring it back i can just quick click it again and i've now gone back to that state i could choose to remove um the layer completely i could mute it here as well from the drop down menu i could just clear it completely again i've got the flexibility and there's a lot in those options and so if i want to change down to another layer um and say i'm another department say the layout department i can choose this layer now and this to say for an example we don't like the way this chair is positioned we can find it in the outliner we can find the geometry and we can then make a change to this as well um now we can move this around if we want to um we can choose to this will say that the pivot is all over there off to one side and we want to move that over here so we can actually move it um if i do this you'll notice as soon as i move it the icons have now changed and it's shown i've made a change but i don't like the way the icon is so this just just moved my pivot over very quickly um and get it to there and this is still technically counts as a change and i just want to maybe just rotate it in so it's a bit more straighter and i'm just going to move it here as well and that's it that's all i'm going to do so again i can do here save edits and that's just saved those edits to that particular um usd file and layer and again i can choose to mute it so i can see in its previous state or bring it back in now let's just say for example i'm now done what do i do with this well i can actually now remove all these layers from this scene these are the ones we can assume we've made some changes here but the the thing to remember here is just change just go between different layers and any changes you make will be on that layer only now i'm going to choose i can just simply just um remove them completely and you'll notice as soon as i've done that the the file is reverted back to its original uh state and that's because that's what it was when i imported it into um into our scene and this is essentially these are layers that i can control thing i can just now remove these completely and then i can save this out again so i can save this and i can make the make these edits to this one as well now what i could do um i've just really removed them and just saved these edits to this file as well and then i can start all over again and reload it back in on another day in another department and maybe even in another studio so what we're going to do now we're going to continue working on that kitchen set but say where it's on a different day a different team different studio even maybe a different user and we want to bring in the kitchen set again and again this could be part of different another part of pipeline we could be further on in a production and we want to go back and revisit that and make some changes based on the feedback we've received from our client so i'm just going to bring in the stage again and as you can see it's brought in its um its original form which is exactly what we want and now what i do is i would simply load in the layers which are relevant to me and the department i'm working in and also the changes that i need to make so what i can do here in my usd layer editor now is choose load an existing layer and again i can choose the path and i'm going to choose the sequence this was the the main parent layer and we had dressed in layout underneath it and that's really important when working with layers about the hierarchy and what overrides which we're going to load those in and you can see now uh load sub layers and you can see as soon as i've loaded those in things have changed we've now got back to our clean refrigerator and we've now got to our chair which is straight in accordance with this one here so this enables me to load in that data um and those edits on top of the existing file and look at it from my point of view on based on the changes i may have made previously and then what i can do i can then choose to continue that as well but of course i may want to go back and look at it again so i could just mute the dressing mute the layout and i can see what it was in its previous state and then bring it back choose the layout again and then make some changes and then resave that back out as a usd file and this is the advantage of working in usd is it enables different teams and people to work on the same data at different times of their productions and also it's very non-destructive i could be in say the layout department or even the asset department and i can bring in and make those changes as well i can even start thinking about adding new data to this as well on this new layer so when i import this layer i say set dressing it could be that we may want to go back to the decorated version of the refrigerator but maybe move one of these notes or even add a new prim to this hierarchy well that still enables me to do that and so long as i do it here and it's on this layer those edits will be retained on that layer and i can load them in at another time so once again we're really leveraging the benefits of usd now having the ability to bring in um usd data natively into maya and work on it in that way really allows us to really uh reap the rewards of working with usd and that can work in our entire pipeline and finally there's also been enhancements to facilitate the rendering and display of usd objects in maya and perhaps the most crucial component of that is the introduction of hydra i'm not going to go into what hydra is there's plenty of material online and i'll include some of the links to those um materials in the description below but what hydra is essentially from a very high level view it's it's an open source framework which facilitates the scene graph data to a renderer and in my 2022 that's available through a plug-in and you might notice this in your list this m2oh dot mml this is the maya to hydra plug-in now and once you've got that loaded this allows you to tap into hydra and then if you've got the means or you want to you can then start directing that data to your own particular renderer arnold is the default renderer in maya now so included in the plugin is also all the bits you need to render your usd objects in hydra you can also arnold has been updated to support usd data as well and once loaded in the menu you can go to your scene export and you have the ability now to export arnold data as a selection or export all to usd in the viewport now i've got viewport 2.0 turned on but we now have the using the hydra plug-in we now have the ability to go opengl with hydra and you can see i've just quickly changed that and you see the visual difference but more importantly to some you now have the ability to use arnold with hydra and when you turn this on this is now the arnold renderer displaying rendering in my viewport but it's using hydra to tap into the usd framework and as you can see it renders very quickly and this is again one of the benefits of working with usd data this is a lot quicker than what it would be if you want uh if you had uh normal my data in the scene but obviously that will depend of course the complexity of the data and how big the scene you've got actually open and of course if i wanted to i could fit to arnold but once you do this this actually now flips to the normal arnold renderer and to do that i'd have to include lights of the camera as well to get the most out of the visual fidelity and also i don't know what materials or shaders this has got assigned to it either so i'd have to add a lot more things to my data in order to get the best out of the arnold renderer but this is already pretty good and it gives me a good enough visual fidelity to see what's going on and then make some more creative decisions so to summarize usd maya has seen a massive improvement with maya 2022 and if you've been looking at usd and and been thinking about maybe utilizing it or looking to integrate in your pipeline and so far you haven't done then i think with maya 2022 now is the time to really start to consider it and also maya have updated the source code on their github site as well so you can now download the same source code as what's in the plugin that ships with maya when you add all these things up together i think now is a very good time to start looking at usd if you haven't otherwise done so i really hope this has been useful about understanding usd and maya and how the new version of the plug-in works in the latest version of maya if you want to know more about the other features in maya 2022 i have done another video which is available on this channel be sure to check that out and i really hope you find that useful as well thanks for watching and i'll see you again next time

Channel: Zero Conditional

Views: 23,414

Keywords: Autodesk, Maya, Maya 2022, USD, interoperability, open source, referencing, Universal Scene Description, variants, film, animation, autodesk maya, vfx tutorial, maya tutorial, whats new in maya 2022

Id: 37983btrp90

Length: 29min 45sec (1785 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 01 2021