2023-09-14 Pipeline, Assets & I/O meeting

Meetings
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Everyone is welcome on the Google Meet linked below every other Thursday, at 17:00 CEST.

Present: Bastien Montagne, Matt McLin, Micheal Kowalski

The meeting covers the pipeline & I/O module in a broader sense, including some topics hosted in other modules (e.g. some I/O python add-ons, or overrides and .blend file I/O from the Core module).

Links

USD

  • UsdSkel export:
    • Feature is now stable and ready for review, but getting it there was harder than expected.
    • Complex modifiers stacks cannot be represented in USD.
    • Solution is likely to support two cases:
      • Basic export of rigs, with most of the modifiers disabled.
      • Export of full complex animation through baking into point caches.
    • Bastien will handle review.
    • Target release is now Blender 4.1.
  • 4.1 targets:
    • No real new targets added yet. Ideas:
    • Support subdivision schema for export?
  • Bastien reminds the team that now is also a good moment to check on bug reports for Blender 4.0.

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on Thursday 05th October, 17:00 CEST/Amsterdam time (your local time: 2023-10-05T15:00:00Z).

The provisional meeting agenda will be linked in the #pipeline-assets-io-module channel before the meeting.

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Question: since in USD 4.1 targets I don’t see this, I wonder if this is already supported for 4.0, since it was in doubt: Point Clouds :slight_smile:

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No, point clouds will not be supported for 4.0, but we can add it to the list of goals for 4.1. Here is the task: #106398 - UsdGeomPoints import support - blender - Blender Projects

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4.1 target ideas?:

  • drag and drop from os browser: all popular formats (obj coming sounds nice!) -ie obj, fbx, USD and gltf/glb
  • drag and drop of texture assets
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I think a great goal for 4.1 would be to support instances import/export. They should have been added a long time ago

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I wish there was a general Import / export window, with drop down to choose format.
Instead of like 20 menu items to choose which thing to import.

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It is being worked on, currently, it is in the code design phase Check Progress here #111242 - WIP: Experiment: Drop import operator helper and file drop type - blender - Blender Projects

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Are there plans to integrate a reference system rather than an import/export system for the USD ? This seems important to me for the integration of Blender into 3D Pipelines.

Also, I notice that animated focal in cameras don’t seem to work with USD/ABC.

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@ThomasMCS if cameras are supported, I would consider that a bug TBH, that’s crucial, I refer to the animated focal in cameras, I think you can report it as such.

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There are already some reports about this : #102424 - Alembic Imported Camera - misses Focal Length Animation & Depth of Field Animation - blender - Blender Projects
I don’t know if this will be resolved for 4.0

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That’s for ABC, but I would report it with Blender 4 alpha and USD, that’s more actual, and Alembic is not progressing so far

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Alembic Import: Visibility #69191

USD has the same problem.
There is no way to import a cache file with visibility animations into blender.
This is one of the barriers to adapting blender in the studio.
Implementing the extended functionality of USD is important, but the
I think being able to import animated geometry normally is a priority.