Unreal Engine 5 (&4) - Intro to using USD (Universal Scene Description)

Learn the basics of bringing USD data in UE. USD is the likely future of vfx and animation workflows and pipelines, read more about it here:
graphics.pixar.com/usd/releas...

[@keithyakouboff8755]

Relatively simple and straightforward tute. Thanks.

[@FeedingWolves]

Thank you! This was a great overview!

[@favyijomah1889]

awesome tutorial man thank you so much for this i even understood this better than all i've seen

[@3dJC]

Glad it helped!

[@samin1991911]

Great vid. Would love to see more videos in a USD-Unreal tutorial series.

[@MichaelHurdleStudio]

Best video on this topic. Thank you.

[@SureshB-hq4tv]

Thank you for the tutorial, i made my USD concept much clearer

[@3dJC]

Glad it helped!!

[@outtoplay]

Really helpful intro. Appreciate the effort!

[@3dJC]

Glad it was helpful!

[@designerkybrs]

It is really clear explanation. Thank you very much.

[@3dJC]

Glad it was helpful!

[@Rafa_Almeida]

Bom ver a quantidade de ferramentas que o Unreal possui. Obrigado pelo video! / Good to see the amount of tools that Unreal has. Thanks for the video!

[@3dJC]

Yeah, so many tools... always something new to learn!

[@StanSeo]

That's awesome!! I should follow this tutorial!!

[@3dJC]

Yes you should 😀

[@liborbatek8938]

super informative and to the point

[@3dJC]

that's great!

[@ukmonk]

Hopefully they will make this more user friendly, it should be drag and drop to make it easier to share content between DCC etc

[@user-yx7ob3xc1s]

Thanks for the tutorial!

[@3dJC]

You bet!

[@lalamax3d]

thanks, it helped. imho (suggestions for next part 2) >> how to manage overrides ( materials) and render a small sequence with passes (beauty/depth/spec). also wanna find out. how multiple animated cameras can come with scene as well ??thanks again

[@syntheticperson]

Helpful thanks

[@sidneyngong2657]

thanks for resolving this nightmare

[@roadtoenviromentartist]

Nice tutorial.

[@Milan____]

Really hyped that they added USD support to DaVinci Resolve 18.5.

[@ohheyvoid]

Just started considering USD for our workflow. This was a great intro. Did you end up making more videos on this? Totally cool if you didn't the resources for from omniverse are... terrible. lol

[@XSI5]

Interesting and very well explained. I think this is going to change many pipelines in animation, vfx and games studios. I am curious to see how does that interacts with animation. Say you animate something in Maya, does UE updates the frame range automatically in order to play the animation?

[@3dJC]

I have to do some more playing with it myself, but if Maya puts that animation data into the USD file, UE should pick it up (assuming you reload the USD file in UE to reread it - unless there is a live option, not sure...). This tutorial from Pixar may help (kinda code-y tho) - it's about adding animation on static objects - graphics.pixar.com/usd/release/tut_xforms.html

[@TheDeadFriend]

This is actually one of the most useful explenations I've found of how to practically use USD, finally. However, I still have questions. Do you submit USD files to version control, or just store it on a network drive for a team to collaborate on. Can the files be merged? What happens if two save a change to the same object?

[@3dJC]

All great questions... that I don't have answers for... still digging deeper myself!

Thinking about it with Perforce, I’d guess you’d manually submit that file with P4V, if it’s not part of the content browser? Could get fiddly though…

[@ThomasLindemeier]

Thx, for that intro. It made things much more clear for me. Is there a way to use a remotely stored USD?

[@3dJC]

Hmmm, just guessing but I would think if it can read and write to the file, it could work? Not sure what the file path field syntax would need to be though...

[@riggsmurtah2788]

Whats the relationship with the geo in the USD file to nanite meshes in unreal 5? Does it have any issues with lumen or raytracing, like shadow issues you see with plants?

[@cr0uchingtiger]

is there a way to edit the materials within UE?

[@benjaminbernard7709]

Thanks this really cleared some things up... However I am having trouble rendering from the sequencer that was made from loading the USD... It seems to render from a random point on the map not the camera that it in the sequence... Any thoughts? Thanks!!

[@3dJC]

Do you have a camera cuts track? And is camera you want the one you see when visualizing the camera cuts track? Also what v software? I heard once someone on 5.1.0 had this issue but bumping to 5.1.1 fixed it…

[@benjaminbernard7709]

@@3dJC Yeah have camera cuts track and tried binding it the camera... Still didn't work... But binding it to the camera data did work... I felt like i tried that before and it didn't... but oh well seems to be working.. so yay!! Thanks for replying

[@nfrancisj2122]

once you import into the content browser, does it maintain the link to the USD? For example if you were to move the fridge door back again after importing into the content browser, will maya pick that up ?

[@3dJC]

Once you import into UE the assets are now converted to uassets and usd connection is severed

[@kiegh]

this is wild. will modifications to the world be able to be pushed to a shared usd file on a server by people perhaps playing a game?

[@3dJC]

Good question - I'll kinda make this up and answer of "yes, if the game had a way to reload the USD file", meaning, in UE there is a Reload option on the USD stage, which just grabs the most recent save of the USD. So if the game could also "reload" the USD file then maybe? I'm not too game savvy to know if that's a crazy idea or not... I probably should have just said "Hmmm, I don't know" :)

[@kiegh]

@@3dJC I like this version of the answer. I think this is probably how a lot of vr projects would be best suited to deal with shared environments. USD seems super powerful.

[@gillesavraam1496]

Thanks for this tutorial, I test to add some light to the USD stage inside unreal but the stage is not update it :( It is possible to add non prim element to the usd stage ?

[@3dJC]

There is the option under the File->export menu to output some USD options... I haven't tried those yet to see if that would work... holler back if you find it does!

[@0soft]

How to import USD in runtime? Does any USD->Datasmith exists maybe for UE runtime? I mean direct runtime conversion, not using studio, any Windows software or converter etc. Workflow: In runtime download USD, get in in the scene.

[@3dJC]

Sorry, I still have a bunch to learn myself around USD!!

[@ChristianSquare]

I would like to know that as well. No resources found online

[@adamkurtz1869]

i just get a grey model with none of the materials added and have to ass manually. any idea whats missing

[@Flurette]

question. when I import usd file to unity, no object that have texture shown properly. single color material are shown alright tho, while the texture are not. any possible solution that I can try?

[@3dJC]

when you say "unity", do you mean unreal?

[@Flurette]

@@3dJC nah, i do mean Unity. Also I can't see the imported animation, how can I see the animation within many imported object in a usd file?

[@mathajar9563]

how about skeletal animation ?but on usd file

[@notusingmyname4791]

what if you already have the uassets of models and what not, and want your USD to use those already imported objects... will it do that or do we have to redo all our work for thisfile format which... I could write a python script to corralate referenced maya assets and kick out a json file that has the unreal content versions thereof...

[@3dJC]

You can export the uassets as USD, under the file->export menu, but I’m not sure if that’s compatible/mergable into an existing USD. It’s still an area for me to explore as well!

[@Yggdrasil777]

Very nice. It is a shame that the Refridgerator has no backing to it. :)

[@3dJC]

Ha! I guess it's assumed no one will ever open it...

[@FattyBull]

Does USD also work for animations?

[@3dJC]

Yup! I’ll try and get a video demo of that up soon.

[@FattyBull]

@@3dJC that would be cool. Only with Maya? Or what about Cinema 4d, Max, Blender, etc. to UE5?

[@3dJC]

@@FattyBull the USD format is independent of the DCC such as Maya, Houdini, UE, Blender, etc. It’s up to each of those packages to build the tools to author/read/work with the USD format - which they are all generally working on to varying extents. Personally I find it a bit challenging to author in Maya, the process doesn’t seem super well documented (that I have found) yet. Here’s a good faq doc to dig in a bit deeper into general USD too: graphics.pixar.com/usd/release/usdfaq.html#what-is-usd-and-why-should-i-use-it

[@FattyBull]

@@3dJC thank you also for your videos. I was currently digging into cinema 4d, but that doesn’t seem to support any animation at all. At least for now. Didn’t try 3dsmax or blender yet. But for sure also very interesting

[@aledmb]

there is no "virtual production" menu option in UE 5.4... am i missing something here?

[@bellVFX]

is there no textures?

[@Sisheu8x]

The materials are to side and that cost a lot of performance how can i fix it

[@smalllixin]

Believe this a send2ue bug that donnot respect the swizzle the forward axis. My fool way to solve this is just use x as forward in blender. So just rotate it.

[@masgerb]

👍 I ask you to please do a lesson. How to make a fragment with falling stones in cinematics (collapse of 8 stones) The camera moves across the stage. Then in a certain place there is a collapse of stones. It is with physics, as it happens when you press the Play button in game mode. In cinematics, all objects hang in the air. I broke my head. I don't know what to do. I've been searching the Internet for a week now. And on foreign websites. Everything is dedicated to human animation. And how to record cinematics with a simple fall of an object with physics, there is nowhere. And I only roughly understand that most likely through Blueprints of specific stones and with the assignment of their physical properties in Blueprints Please help in solving this problem, If not with a video clip, then at least with advice or a link to a resource with a solution to this problem. Thanks!

[@3dJC]

Is this what you mean? kzbin.info/www/bejne/nnTXpopoad97lbs

[@petertremblay3725]

Soon fbx will be obsolete thank the gods!

[@mazzerisk]

error upon trying to open: "Failed to find primvar used as st input for texture 'z:/GameDev/Game Dev Hub/Assets and Materials/RenderCrate/RenderCrate-Medieval_Castle_Kit/Content/maps/Variation_Light_Bricks/Castle_Structures_BaseColor.png' in material 'Castle_Structures_1'. Will use UV index 0 instead" I have a folder named "maps" that has all the textures for my USD files, but when I use USD importer no preview of the asset comes in when stage fully loads. Can't find any answers online :(

[@ilijav]

Is there a way to import and show the simplest USD file that contains only a single sphere primitive. It seems to me that if there is no static mesh in it, nothing will be shown.

[@3dJC]

Hmmm …. Does the stage seem to load it? Maybe you just need a light? Switch to “unlit” and see if sphere shows up?

[@ilijav]

@@3dJC it does not help. Here the simplest USD file that imports fine in UE, you can place it in the level, but box is not visible: #usda 1.0 def Cube "box" { double size = 4.0 }

[@3dJC]

@@ilijav ok I’m not super usd pro but I’ll see if I can figure out what’s up.