Hey Guys
I’m wondering which approach is more effective: handling all USD composition entirely in the background and loading only the latest composed USD file into Maya as a single final stage, or treating USD files as individual assets and letting Maya manage them using its traditional mechanisms such as referencing. I realize the answer depends on the pipeline design, but from a production perspective, which approach tends to be more robust and scalable?
Cheers
Definitely use a single USD file referencing other USD files and load that in Maya. The simple fact that you can use references inside other references to construct complex scenes makes this a no brainer. The composition engine of USD makes it easy and efficient to load very large scenes. Besides, that one USD file you end up loading in Maya… you can load in other DCCs too!
Thank you Francois!
That completely makes sense. The steep learning curve of USD often tempts teams to use it only partially in their pipeline, treating it merely as a tool, while overlooking the fact that those who adopt it as core infrastructure reap its full benefits — otherwise, they’re only scratching the surface.
As you correctly stated, much depends on your application. For simplicity one USD stage should be fine. I developed a tool for our studio that uses USD in Maya to create background characters and small crowds that uses several USD stages, allowing artists to reposition them at will or constrain them to motion paths or other Maya objects and had great results with it, but I admit that’s not the most common use of USD in Maya.