[Bf-usd] Welcome to the BF-usd mailing list

[Jan Walter]

Hi,

Instead of an email introduction I send you a link about my background:

https://www.janwalter.org/jekyll/news/rendering/pbrt/2020/12/03/some-news.html

But let me answer this question:

> I'm the moderator of the bf-usd mailing-list. I would like to welcome
> you to the list and I would like to know what your specific interest is in the
> group.

I can be best described as a render addict, which published renderer
tests since more than 20 years. I see USD as the future of renderer
integration into DCCs like Houdini, Maya, and Blender. Here is what I
answered to someone who was writing a Blender add-on for Blender and
PBRT (see also
https://groups.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=msg/pbrt/Rpn2qJ72Zdw/bK2NMi0XAgAJ):

"my two cents are:

Invest some time to write a Hydra Render Delegate for PBRT.
I already started providing a skeleton for such an USD plugin and
gave the sources to interested people, e.g. someone  @ appleseed.
I think Pixar shipped an example for Embree, but that was using
an older version. Anyway, USD seems to be the future. A couple
of renderers, PRMan of course, but also Arnold (and others) can
render USD files (e.g. exported from Blender) directly. There is a
way to overwrite the materials (there are renderer agnostic
materials to start with) and make them renderer specific by using
a second USD file (which loads the geometry, and overwrites the
materials).

Houdini is leading the way of future renderer integrations. There the
USD workflow (using Solaris and Karma) just means that the Hydra
Render Delegate will work automatically from within Houdini. Will
take a while until others will follow, but I expect the Blender guys to
pick up the idea pretty fast ..."

Here is an article (in German) I wrote for the digital production
magazine:

https://www.janwalter.org/Publications/DP2005_049-053_USDView_HiRes.pdf

So, the goal, and therefore my interest in this mailing list, is that a
Hydra Render Delegate USD plugin is all you need to integrate a renderer
in a DCC like Houdini (the UI part might involve some .json files etc.).
It would be very cool if Blender would allow a similar integration. In
the past I wrote my own Blender addon for my renderer tests, but I
stored only materials in a Blender internal way and used heuristics to
translate those settings to other renderers. With USD that is not needed
anymore. You could export e.g. an USD file from Blender, knowing nothing
about e.g. Arnold or PRMan and by providing an additional USD file which
overwrites materials for a particular renderer. See:

https://answers.arnoldrenderer.com/questions/29173/arnold-standalone-and-usd.html
and
https://answers.arnoldrenderer.com/questions/29246/is-there-a-usdkick.html

That's a lot of information to digest for now.

Hello again and cheers,

Jan