USD Basics with Houdini Solaris

Solaris is Houdini’s environment for layout, lookdev and lighting and is built on USD, the open source Universal Scene Description format created by PIXAR. This makes Solaris a great environment for interacting and authoring USD scenes and assets. USD is an optimized system for organizing your assets that allows for efficient workflows for teams or individuals.
Lessons and Project Files: www.sidefx.com/tutorials/usd-...
In this course you will explore the Solaris UI, beginning with a discussion about what USD is, how to manipulate objects in the Solaris viewport, and how to import and render SOPs geometry in Solaris using Karma. The goal is to introduce you to the concepts of USD and how they are implemented in Houdini using Solaris.
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:30 Terminology
00:03:10 Resources
00:05:28 USD Import/Export SOP
00:10:23 USD Formats and Extensions
00:15:02 ASCII .usd files
00:17:04 Similar File Types
00:19:17 The Scene Graph Tree Pane
00:25:11 The Scene Graph Details Pane
00:28:06 Primitive Terminology
00:35:05 Color Meanings
00:39:29 Viewport Manipulation
00:46:01 Collections and Selection Sets
00:53:00 Primitive Matching Patterns
00:59:17 Scene Import
01:03:35 SOP Import
01:06:29 SOP Create
01:09:25 Writing USD to Disk
01:13:16 Import and Render with Karma

[@LukeLetellier]

More Solaris tutorial videos that follow this style please! So many other "intro" videos scared me away.

[@houdini3d]

Some more videos from Peter on USD in Solaris are being uploaded right now. Check out the playlist on our profile page.

[@rishirajmitra2017]

One of the best way to introduce Solaris while also brushing over related topics. These type of tutorials are so top notch. Really would love to learn more in this way.

[@arupsan]

Amazing channel regarding the Houdini technical people .. best of the best …

[@jamaljamalwaziat1002]

Really amazing intro to usd.

[@user-jy2ki2bt3l]

Thank you for this sharing this wonderful video. Very useful even for a non houdini user.

[@RikiRisnandar]

easy to follow tutorial.. thx Peter

[@paoloricaldone6273]

Very well done, thanks.

[@KeWang-MISC]

thanks , great one!

[@szymonsniegocki528]

Great for basic knowledge, but in my case real nuances occur with animated and instanced primitives, also when it comes to optimalization. In depth video about time samples and optimizing, as well as instances, would be marvelous. Keep it doing because when embraced, usd is really powerfull even for solo artists

[@SLPCaires]

Nuances, or as I like to call them 'special requirements` for this and that... yeah... not a great way to pass the time.

[@cgaltruist2938]

how rigs are published as USD? Still a mystery. Cached geo as USD, super complicated, and also a mystery. I’m using USD in production, but only assets with no animation, useful to make set dressing files and lookdev files and variants.

[@szymonsniegocki528]

@@cgaltruist2938 i havent heard about rigs but for animation there are several ways. Values clips are something you should read about

[@tsiwt]

@@cgaltruist2938precisely my sentiment. I have not found any use for usd since I can’t make them with animations. If there is a way to do it , sidefx please publish something about this and how “easy” it is . If not this whole workflow is useless 2 me .

[@user-lp5ts9tb2w]

This is gold

[@rendermanpro]

Thanks!

[@jessesolomonscott]

Thanks

[@arnabpandit478]

thanks

[@amandaestrada6761]

How do we open the collection path window if hovering at the lower part of the scene graph path doesn't pop up anything?

[@hanheecho6437]

How do I import usd files in geometry level for simulations?

[@TheHighFlys]

Is houdini going to finally get solid Nvidia Omniverse support!? :D

[@baldoski]

[@user-fi1sr1bm8r]

4:24

[@SLPCaires]

if everything is a primitive, then what is the point of anything being a primitive? besides making the UI more obtuse than it needs to be.

[@lewistaylorFX]

you need to take that up with Pixar

[@schmoborama]

there's a difference btwn a primitive and a group, a layer, an asset, etc. But I know what you mean - this whole thing is a pain in the dick

[@MissEldira]

I am about to have a heartattack from USD. Everything seam to be named and made to be needlessly academic and opaque. Feels like a lot of the naming is reinventing a wheel or purposely naming them the opposite of what they are. Just as I think I understand something and memorized one confusing set of terms it is all trown out and a new set of 5 terms added on top. I feel like I am studying for an advanced degree in computer science rather then learning a simple file system. I feel less and less like an artist. This is not suppose to be hard, its a file system with layers and rank/strength. Why name it opinion and add in things like "arch" and "traversal". All I wanted to get rendering working and see if I could make some pretty textures with houdini rather then using substance for a project. Its been a month I have still to make a single texture and have no work done, all I am doing is studying how shaders work, what OSL is, is it relevant to me, why is my rendering not working and how do I get it to work (that took multiple tutorials and it still refuses to save but viewport and gpu is working finally), how do I navigate solaris, save and export my files properly. Most of the frustration in the end is with USD... A month of this 4 hours a day. I am about to pull my hair out!! TLDR: bleep USD and the pixar unicorn it "traversed" in on.

[@MissEldira]

@@schmoborama Not according to what I read or whats in houdini. I heard that primitive is anything including groups, a single thing. In fact try adding a prim and you will find that "group" is just a kind which you can select. Also there are no assets in USD and models are assemblies.

[@schmoborama]

@@MissEldira " make some pretty textures with houdini rather then using substance" That's a fantastic idea, Substances is very much a pro-sumer app, and it shows. Or you could use Mari, that seems pretty solid I would try this in plain Houdini ( obj context ) without solaris, it can be imported later if you need/want. I plan on trying the same thing with all my lighting ; do everything in obj and then import to solaris at the last possible second, just to render. Pre-Solaris Houdini lighting is the fastest, most flexible and most powerful lighting I've ever been able to do in my 15yrs of it

[@chrispetersen3613]

The project file link is broken. On the link provided, If you change "USD_with_Solaris_Basics2.zip" to "USD_with_Solaris_Basics.zip" by removing the 2 the download starts.

[@JohnSmith-wg3pl]

Anyone think this is for artist? Why does artist need to learn a format?

[@houdini3d]

This is more designed for Pipeline TDs - it is possible to work with Solaris without worrying about USD - but if you are building a pipeline then it is worth diving deeper.

[@schmoborama]

I have also yet to see any video that talks about rendering objects separately to be comped back together ; how do you separate them? How do you do material overrides? How / where do you do render flags? How does lops organize all that? This is absolutely fundamental to VFX lighting... but you never mention it 🤷‍♂ This is the kind of thing you get when tools for lighters are made by not-lighters

[@houdini3d]

These videos are for understanding how Solaris can be used to create and manage USD files. Lighting workflows sit on top of this. These videos are more focused on lighting and rendering features: www.sidefx.com/tutorials/karma-a-beautiful-game/

[@schmoborama]

@@houdini3d I already watched that one last year, there's nothing in it about rendering separate passes. Like I said, "any" video. I've watched every one I can find, and apparently you don't have it - that's a pretty big oversight. My studio has already set up their own way of doing it, but others watching these videos still need it.

[@schmoborama]

Solaris is *not ready* to use in production. So many bugs, missing features, and over-complications that it's taking double the time, double the hair-pulling, and 10 times more tech support, to light a shot. Viewport rendering is for the birds. Multi-shot workflow is for the birds. It's not worth it. Original Houdini is still the best lighting tool I've ever used

[@MissEldira]

Agreed except when you have it setup it is kind of neat to work with some of the tools. All the setting up and I still have not figured out how to set up a scene, work with layers, and save it out correctly. All that seam to be a computer science degrees worth of knowledge I am having to learn on top of learning houdini, texturing, modelling and so on. Feels like I am spending most of my time learning CS rather then art thanks to USD and third party rendering in solaris, and houdini already force me to be more of a tech artist, I feel this has transcended technical artist and I am now studying some strange academic scripture by a crazy philosophy major.

[@schmoborama]

@@MissEldira Yes it is neat, but that's the problem. When people enjoy it, or are proud of learning difficult tasks, they don't mind doing more technical work and less creative work, nor do they question whether it needs to be that difficult. Especially when technical people are not ( visually ) creative and have no problem hoisting non-creative, slow, tedious and ultimately impractical work on us, when they think it's "neat" or because it's "from pixar" ( Pixar is known for climbing Mt. Everest to save a dollar, b/c they have the resources to do it ).