USD Hands On Guide

This guide is a summary of several USD guides and files created by Houdini Solaris.

It aims to introduce USD in a practical way with lots of examples.

Acknowledgement

We create pipeline for animation and VFX you can rely on.

Many thanks to guys at Ynput for their inspiration, continuous support and encouragement. I am proud to be part of such a great team and positive community.

Table of contents

Notebook	Google Colab link

Environment preparation:

Below, Here's how I set up my development environment.

Code Editing

• VS Code
• USD Language Extension
• Jupyter Notebook

USD Library and Tools

You are free to use any of these options

I. Use USD tools embedded into your DCC

Note that, in this case you are leaning towards learning about how your DCC handles USD.

II. Standalone USD - Download prebuilt binaries

• Pre-build USD binaries from Nvidia
• Set Environment variables (I don't won't to set them in user or system environment, so I set them before running USD tools) e.g.

  set PATH=%PATH%;E:\USDROOT\bin;E:\USDROOT\lib;
  set PYTHONPATH=%PYTHONPATH%;E:\USDROOT\lib\python;E:\USDROOT\python\Lib; 
  

III. Standalone USD - Build it yourself

Good luck.

• OpenUSD

IV. Standalone USD - Steal Houdini's USD <<MY FAVORITE>>

Because I'm a Houdini Guy, I prefer this most.

In Houdini's installation folder, there's hcmd.exe (Houdini command line tools) It's command line where you have pre-configured environment which shares Houdini's environment.

I think you might want to consider using the same version of Python as your Houdini.
which I'm not doing in the following screenshot.

V. Nvidia Omniverse

Omniverse is the first app to be built entirely around USD. It extends USD to enable live collaboration.

You can explore USD concepts and fundamentals through Omniverse Compose. Also, Omniverse provides usd tools like usdview.

This guide mainly uses usdview.

Download Nvidia Omniverse, Free for individuals. Then from exchange tab, find usdview.

USD References and Dev Guides

I mainly use these links, dir(...) and pray for type hints.

• OpenUsd Guide | Official
• Omniverse Dev Guide | Nvidia
• OpenUsd API Docs | Official
• Omniverse USD API Docs | Nvidia

USD Learning Materials

• Learn OpenUsd | Marco Alesiani
• Awesome OpenUSD | Matias Codesal
• Book of USD | Remedy Entertainment Plc
• USD Survival Guide | Luca Scheller
• USD Tutorials | Pixar
• USD: Building Asset Pipelines | Pixar
• USD Fundamentals | Apple
• USD at Animal Logic Academy | ALA
• USD-Tutorials-And-Examples | Nvidia
• Getting Started with USD | Nvidia
• USD Basics | SideFx
• USD in Houdini Solaris | SideFx
• USD in Houdini 19.5 | FXPHD
• USD and LOPs for Houdini Artists | FXPHD

USD Asset Structure guides

• Principles of Scalable Asset Structure | Nvidia
• Guidelines for Structuring USD Assets | Chris Rydalch
• Component Builder | SideFx
• ALab File Structure | ALA

USD Example Scenes

• ALab | ALA
• ALab Documentation | ALA
• 3D Assets | JCube, I prefer Esper Room!
• Kitchen Set | Pixar
• USD Sample Assets | Nvidia