Road to New Lighting Workflows

Pixar’s Universal Scene Description (USD) and Hydra combined together to define a scene-description and rendering API to present a view of future interchange and efficient rendering. The industry has embraced this, and integrations have been provided for all DCCs. With that, Hydra has been broadly restricted to use as a viewport render API and not deployed as a final frame render API. We believe that embracing the power of the composition and layering system coupled with live components and interactive rendering enables the ability to revolutionize how artists deliver final frames. With tools built on top of this common foundation, it improves iteration time, but also changes how they work together, across departments, tools, and even companies. By examining the components and conventions built to enable and demonstrate a working, end-to-end system, we encourage discussion and further contributions and improvements to this ecosystem.