Did Pixar Just Change the Future of 3D Forever?

blender makes your life easy by letting you do a lot of tasks using only de blender but once you start introducing other softwares into your pipeline problems start popping up left and right so let's talk about the biggest issues you're probably already running into today and how Pixar has created the solution to overcome them to infinity and beyond this video is sponsored by Nvidia if you've ever textured a model in substance imported your work into unreal or tried sharing a project with someone working in a different software you probably realized how annoying this can be having to deal with different file types proper export workflows for each individual software and losing precious data in the process can make you feel like you're banging your head against the wall on purpose repeatedly and believe me when I say that this is something that all 3D artists everywhere experience whether you're working as a solo creator with your own custom pipeline or in a big Studio like Pixar having to conform to rigorous pipeline constraints to maintain a proper workflow for all the other 1232 people working there the problem stays the same but it makes sense too right each software uses a proprietary file type that works for its needs so a file from for example blender has been coded to work in blender but not in substance obviously and in a company each artist requires a file to be compatible with their own tool of choice to make it easy and sometimes even possible possible for them to continue work on a project this is why having to export to a more Universal file type like fbx or obj is a must when switching to a different software or handing off your project to the next person but even these file types have a lot of limitations like the inability to properly store simulations lighting and many other aspects of your Blended projects so what is the answer to this problem Universal scene description or USD for short first published as an open open source software by Pixar in 2016 as their new core pipeline which was mainly a way for their artists to make it easier to move data between each other and the tools they use since its release USD is constantly undergoing changes and improvements which is common for open source softwares just like blender which is also consistently updated and expanded but what is USD USD is a lot of things and if I dive really deep into it it can actually be a very technical and complic at thing to describe but if I put it simply USD is a way of having apps like blender unreal Houdini substance Maya Nvidia Omniverse and loads more talk to and understand each other within the computer industry there's actually a fancy word for this interoperability kind of hard to say and however fancy that sounds it's actually not as you can start using it today on your own computer or even with multiple of your friends or colleagues across the world traditionally a pipeline is a very one directional thing where each person only gets to work on something once the previous person is finished or for you personally you can only go to the next step in the process like texturing if the modeling is completely done you could compare this with baking a cake as you build and create this cake you have to finish each step before being able to do so you can't bake the cake before you mix the dough and you can build it before baking the cakes in the oven each step is reliant on the previous one being completed and more importantly once you put on the frosting at the filling or decided that the sponge needed to be chocolate there's no going back you can't unbake the cake change the flavor to vanilla or take off the frosting and this is what we call a destructive workflow USD however is more like Legos each block represents a part of a 3D scene characters objects environments whatever and you can assemble disassemble and modify these blocks independently in a traditional pipeline changing this block here for a different one would involve having to adjust the rest of the structure but with USD each building block can be worked on independently and I can simply change this block to a different color for example without the need to rebuild the entire model it's a non-destructive approach that allows for experimentation and collaborative workflows without being bogged down by pipeline limitations the goal in all of this with USD is to create a way for data to move between applications freely to give artists and teams the freedom to focus on creation and not on exporting and being stuck waiting on each other to be able to continue working or to have to restart if the concept team decides to change things up later down the line or to have file formats coming in from other programs not working in your software of choice and on a service level that's what USD seems to be a highly inoperable file format that's easily exchangeable between different softwares and to be fair this is what it will be to most of you as a lot of blender users tend to work as solo artists and that's fine but USD is more than just a file type it's a way to assemble and organize any number of assets into virtual sets scenes shots and worlds using them from application to application and non-destructively editing them often in real time so let's look at how we can work with USD in a blender workflow in its most basic form USD has been an export option in blender ever seen 3.6 so if you have a file you're working on and want to save it as a USD file you can go to file export Universal scene description and it'll give you a prompt window to save def file it has quite a few options but the main ones to note are selection only which will only include selected objects in your export and animation and hair which will include or exclude of disabled animation and hair particle data for your object now here's a great example of how USD works this is a file from nvidia's USD sample Library which was made in a host of softwares like 3ds Max and substance and if you open this up in blender by importing it it works almost 100% immediately as you can see it contains all the data including lights dep of field the camera materials and much more the only thing that doesn't get exported properly is the hdri lighting which we have to set up ourself but it's quite incredible to think that this looks nearly identical inside of 3DS Max's Arnold renderer and just got exported over to blender and works just as well using a single file type it has proper hierarchy materials and basically everything is set up it's really really cool anyways this goes to show how USD Works between different applications and that it functions as an interoperable file format but let's take a look at a more practical example for this pipeline example I'll be using a typical workflow of using blender to model an object for a game so the pipeline L we go something like this we create a model and UV unwrap it in blender then since painter can't work with blend files we export it as an fbx next we import it into substance so we can add some materials we then export the textures from substance as images import the fbx file into your render engine of choice set up the textures manually and then finally you're able to create some renders using that model you just made with USD we can sign ific anly simplify this process and retain a largely non-destructive workflow the pipeline remains very similar with blender and substance being the main component but since USD doesn't natively work in real time between these apps mainly because blender still has limited USD support I'll be using Nvidia Omniverse to create that connection for us through Omniverse I can get access to a more used DEC compatible branch of blender built by Nvidia I can enable the Omniverse connector for substance to realize the LifeLink and I can use use decomposer to sort of bridge the the gap between the apps and to view the final product in and maintain a connection with that set up we can now open up our blender project in this Branch version if we then hit n and go to the right side here we get the nucleus add-on allowing us to export this as a USD file if we then go to USD composer and open up that USD file we get a sort of live link between the apps and I can now make any change to the mesh reexport it and have that automatically be picked up inside USD composer pretty cool right well it gets better once we're with the model we can then open up substance enable the Omniverse connector in the python Tab and go to import mesh to automatically import our object from used decomposer into substance at this point if we make changes in blunder we can still reexport and pick that up in Ed decomposer which automatically links to substance however once we add textures inside a substance doing this again we'll remove those textures so once you're happy add your materials and substance and with the Life Link enabled these will automatically pop up and use decomposer any changes you then make automatically export and update in use decomposer really really cool to me this workflow is pretty much mind-blowing being able to make changes in blender and substance in real time and having all of that automatically work down the line and reflect in the final render is something else if you're interested in trying out everything Nvidia Omniverse has to offer you can download it through the link in the description for free and if you want to learn more about all of the technical use cases that USD and Omniverse togethera provide you can find another free download link for that as well as a link to attend the open USD day sessions virtually or in person at GTC in March I really recommend checking that out because this is truly the future of 3D workflows but besides this fun example USD has a lot more to offer and if you make good use of its capabilities you'll become a lot more efficient as an artist in many ways so what else can it do well besides the fact that a universal file format would make your life a lot easier it's it's absolutely the future as an emerging and constantly evolving tool ever since August 2023 USD has become an official nonprofit organization called The Alliance of open USD or AO USD for short with Pixar Apple Adobe Autodesk and Nvidia as its founding members I think this really goes to show how invested these companies are and how they really see this as the future of an interoperable file format which you know everybody should be able to use very easily now besides being a file format USD stores almost everything from lights and cameras to simulation caches and scene data in a layerlike structure called prims which is short for Primitives and it contains all that data to describe the world as a sort of composition to a wide range of applications now knowing that the name Universal scene description actually makes a lot of sense to me in regards to the layer type structure of USD if you're familiar with blender collections it works similarly where You Can Have Anything inside of a collection inside of a collection inside of a collection inside of a collection with the added benefit that USD treats all these layers as instances and therefore is able to very quickly load and read all the data in an optimized way this works similarly to actually instancing collections in blender which is good because instances require less computing than the actual objects itself it's also very similar to for example pre-c comping in After Effects or compounding layers in thei you basically put stuff inside of other layers and that makes it easier and faster for the computer to work with the file a great example of this optimization is the newest USD sample project released by Nvidia called Da Vinci's workshop using their USD composer app which is perfect for viewing USD projects with real-time lighting I can play back this 67 gab folder of assets textures and lights with millions of polygons in close to 120 FPS without any lag or issues just because of how Ed the loads in the files and textures in an extremely optimized way similarly for animations which used to be exported as almic files before USD these are now a lot faster almic files are usually huge in size they're very unoptimized and are read by your computer slowly usually resulting in a choppy playback with USD achieving a steady FPS is no problem at all and the file size is significantly smaller another really cool feature is that you can access the layers inside of your USD project from the outside of the file quite easily so for example there's a prim layer containing the data that this fair is green inside of this USD file by simply changing that to Red in a USD compatible editor like USD composer we can change the color of the object without ever having to open the actual file in blender now that is incredibly powerful although this is obviously a very basic example another major benefit is that USD still allows you to only work on a single layer of a file in a certain software so even if you're file contains a complete project like the attic I just showed you including cameras lights and much more you're still able to open up only a single layer inside for example substance and work only on that Single part of the project this also goes for if multiple people are working on the same file which is another major strength of USD 10 people could work on the same file so changes made by artist number one are immediately visible to artist number two and can help build their art or make them change things for the better without having to and back and forth exported files even just being able to work with multiple people who don't have to be in the same room or even in the same country is kind of insane and Incredibly powerful it's safe to say that USD is far more than just a file format it's a comprehensive technology platform and ecosystem that in its Mission actually really aligns with blender the freedom to create USD is still very much under development however the dream is real a Universal software file format for any software within our industry without limitations editable in real time by multiple artists we should all be thankful for Pixar Paving the way with this incredible development and for companies like Nvidia and apple to pick up the torch and contribute their part in no small way

Channel: Kaizen

Views: 148,595

Keywords: Blender usd, USD, Pixar, Blender workflow, 3d workflow, USD workflow, AOUSD

Id: 0zZkE4S06HE

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 07 2024