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Zero to USD in 80 Days
DreamWorks transitioned How to Train Your Dragon 3 to USD as primary asset and shot representation in 80 working days, covering adoption strategy and implementation challenges.
Abstract
This talk describes how DreamWorks adopted Pixar's Universal Scene Description (USD) as the primary asset and shot representation across its production pipeline, starting with How To Train Your Dragon 3. It recounts the motivation for the switch, driven by the new Moonray renderer whose objects had no representation in the legacy ASG format, and the strategy for integrating USD within a constrained 80 working day timeline. The authors review their methodology for planning the integration, present implementation details such as intermediate ASG-compatible pipelines and Alembic geometry caches, and discuss successes and challenges including mastering USD's LIVRPS composition scheme and adapting a partly procedural asset model to USD's declarative data model.
How to read this
- Category
- Production talk / pipeline adoption case study
- Contributions
- Recounts DreamWorks adopting USD as primary asset and shot representation, starting on How To Train Your Dragon 3, within an 80 working day timeline
- Documents integration strategy including intermediate ASG-compatible pipelines and Alembic geometry caches
- Discusses successes and challenges, notably mastering USD's LIVRPS composition and fitting a partly procedural asset model into USD's declarative data model
- Context
- A studio adoption story for Pixar's Universal Scene Description, motivated by the new Moonray renderer whose objects had no place in the legacy ASG format.Builds on: Universal Scene Description: Open Source Release
- Correctness
- Studio practice, not peer-reviewed; the experience is specific to DreamWorks' tooling, legacy format, and one film, so transfer to other pipelines is suggestive rather than guaranteed.
- Clarity
- Narrative and accessible; one pass conveys the adoption strategy, with a second pass useful for the LIVRPS and procedural-to-declarative details.
- How to read it
- Read for the migration playbook: focus on the timeline strategy, the intermediate-pipeline bridging, and the LIVRPS and procedural-model pain points if you are planning a USD transition.
Builds on
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Nothing yet.
Related work
- USD and Scene Interoperability: Demystifying the State of the Art 2018 / SIGGRAPH Courses
- Forging a New Animation Pipeline with USD 2018 / SIGGRAPH
- USD in Production 2023 / SIGGRAPH Courses
- Universal Scene Description: Open Source Release 2016 / Tech Note
Keywords
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