More and more applications are starting to support USD and most studios are in some way using it in their pipelines. USD is here to stay and it is slowly becoming the industry standard. This course is designed for artists who want to get familiar with how USD works to better understand the pipelines that they are working in. It will cover all the basics you need to know about USD in general, and then it will focus more on Houdini and its new LOP context introduced in version 18.0 which allows artists to procedurally edit and create USD files.
The course begins by explaining all the core concepts of USD, followed up by applying this knowledge on an example shot as it moves along a USD based pipeline. It will go over asset creation, layout, animation, FX and lighting. In the end, you will have a solid understanding of what a USD pipeline looks like from start to finish and especially how you can work with USD files in Houdini. Everything you will need as a Houdini artist from opening USD files to importing them into SOPs and then successfully exporting it back to USD will be covered.
Jeronimo Maggi started his career as a 3D generalist and has been working with Houdini as an FX TD in feature films for the last 6 years. He worked for several years in the education field teaching Houdini and currently works in Animal Logic Vancouver as a Character FX Technical Director.
