Associating multiple SkelAnimations to a given Skeleton?

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1

Imagine you have a Skeleton and you want to have multiple animations associated with it. For example, you have a rigged “Car” Skeleton where there’s both an “anim_doors” SkelAnimation and an “anim_wheels” SkelAnimation that’s been authored.

While it’s possible to define multiple SkelAnimations both inside and outside the Skeleton hierarchy (i.e. the UsdSkel Instancing documentation), I don’t see a way of strongly associating the SkelAnimation with a Skeleton. I would not want a hypothetical “anim_propeller” animation to ever become the animationSource for the “Car” Skeleton etc.

Is there an interoperable way of restricting/associating SkelAnimations to their intended Skeleton so that people and tools know which animations are permitted to become an animationSource for said Skeleton?

2

There isn’t something concrete like this yet. You could use clips to associate takes with a given skeleton to have the equivalent of FBX takes.

Alternatively you could define a collection or variant sets with the animation equivalents but they all have slightly different semantic meanings. Collections in particular would depend on the app to provide meaning.