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So we’ve really tightened that loop and we try to use it as pretty much the format between tools.Īnd while we don’t currently use USD directly from Maya, we can actually use Maya as a front-end interface for assembling USD.
TOY STORY 1 VS 4 GRAPHICS SOFTWARE
It’s pretty much the format we use, unless we’re doing volumetric data to go between Houdini and our in-house software or from Houdini to Katana. We’ve tightened the knot more and more between the various parts of our software. I think the most recent developments have been in the last couple of years where we’ve integrated shading into USD as well. That makes it so that they can still get everything they need out of it while letting things work as fast as possible.ī&a: Where was USD up to when you were working on Toy Story 4?īob Moyer: USD was a pretty solid portion of our pipeline during production. So, if Woody is running along a bookshelf but needs to pop out one of the books, which then needs to be animated, artists can pick that one book and re-grab it as a separate object, while leaving the other 99.99% of the set as a single object. With our in-house tools, we’ve written something that allows artists, if they need to, to pop out individual objects. That really makes it easier for artists so that they can see and have everything loaded in the shot in a context that we didn’t really have before. For something like a set where animation isn’t going to actually need to interact with a whole lot of stuff, we just keep the whole thing as one flat object or even maybe with just a few levels of hierarchy. It can basically bake down all of the transformation properties inside of our in-house software. How did USD make that scene possible given it was such a data heavy scene?īob Moyer: USD creates a very concise format. Those two features, both the universality and the speed, are really what have been the big wins for Pixar.ī&a: I was going to ask about the antiques mall. Our camera and our animation departments could load the whole thing up and get pretty responsible responsive feedback. So, say with the antiques mall in Toy Story 4, it was modeled and dressed with tens of thousands of props. The main advantage besides the ‘universal’ part of USD is the speed. It forms the backbone of our pipeline now. So how did Pixar take advantage of USD for Toy Story 4, and how might other studios do the same in their workflows? To find out, I asked Pixar supervising technical director Bob Moyer about the implementation of USD at the studio and what impact it has had there.ī&a: How has USD impacted you in your work at Pixar?īob Moyer (Pixar supervising technical director): The main thing for us is that it provides a general and comprehensible format that we can use to transmit all kinds of information – geometry, shading, what have you – between the different portions of our pipeline, whether that’s our in-house software or third party software. Other applications including Maya and Katana are also supporting USD. USD is now implemented with a high level of support in the just-released RenderMan 23, and is supported as foundational data in Houdini 18 with its Solaris toolset. Pixar used USD in a major way in Toy Story 4. It’s at the heart of the studio’s pipeline – and, increasingly, at other VFX and animation studio pipelines – in providing a common way for 3D data to be interchanged among different digital content creation apps. Pixar’s Bob Moyer explains what all the fuss is about.īy now, you’ve probably all heard of Pixar’s open source Universal Scene Description (USD).