The USD team at Autodesk is happy to share the latest releases of USD for Maya and 3ds Max. Below are some of the highlights of USD for Maya 0.29 and USD for 3ds Max 0.8.
USD for Maya 0.29
Edit Routing now supports the transform gizmos. This means that TDs can now control what layers viewport transformation edits will target.
Maya can now Copy & Paste USD prims just as you can with standard Maya objects. This can help speed up scene assembly workflows.
Another key highlight is the new capability of importing USD blendshapes into Maya. This will facilitate those studios that need to round-trip their blendshapes.
We’ve also added several additions around materials. First is the ability to see and edit material bindings from the attribute editor when a prim is selected. With this update, you can change the material binding strength as well as open your shaders for the prim directly in LookdevX.
Other material updates include the ability to to export materials without requiring meshes and a refactor of the material scope in the exporter. Now there is only a single material scope in an export and that scope will be under the default prim (if present) or at the root if there is no default prim.
USD for 3ds Max 0.8
In the latest iteration of USD for 3ds Max we exposed USD cameras in a stage to be used as Max cameras. This allows users to view/render from the incoming USD.
To facilitate the new USD-driven cameras, we have also added a new collection of USD Controllers. These controllers allow USD to drive actions inside Max.
Another new key feature is the ability for multi-selection and transform of prims in the viewport. This means you can now edit more than one prim transform at a time.
To go along with multi-selection, we also added support for zoom extents on selected USD prims.
Finally, we also added the ability to export progressive morphs as blendshape inbetweens.
We hope you enjoy the new features and look forward to your feedback.