USD issues

[antonio_cruz]

I am having problems with importing USD files into Maya 2023.
Exporting a model created in Maya, using VRay materials. works fine.
Importing the USD into my scene freezes out my viewport.

Not sure what I am doing wrong.

[hsz]

Can you try to export the USD binary instead of ASCII? Unless you need to debug something you should be using binary. And see if that helps, it might not.

[antonio_cruz]

I re-exported the model as a binary USD and I'm still getting the frozen viewport.

[hsz]

Can you share the .usd file?

[antonio_cruz]

the file seems too large to send through this messenger

[yolov]

I might be wrong, but it looks like you're importing the USD data as Maya data (from File > import). Is that correct?
If so, this actually 'consumes' the data and recreates it as Maya data, so it's no longer USD and no longer referenced.

Instead, you should be able to do Create > USD > Stage from file and load the USD file as a MayaUsdProxy. This will only hold a reference to the file on disk, but still display it in the viewport, it can be rendered with V-Ray and so on.

[antonio_cruz]

It was 100% the problem. Thank you!
Everything is working like a champ now.

[Measter]

I am also having this issue. Referencing works fine, but I want to import the data or open it as Maya data so I can edit it. Viewport crashes when importing USD generated in a previous version of Maya. If I make a new USD file I can round trip it just fine.

[yolov]

This could be an issue with Maya and/or MayaUSD, especially if it happens without any V-Ray data written to the USD file.
Autodesk is making improvements to MayaUSD and it's becoming more stable and usable, so you might want to check with a newer version.
https://github.com/Autodesk/maya-usd/releases
Some of the recent versions even allow you to right click on a USD primitive from the outliner, edit it as Maya data and merge the change back to the USD stage.

Keep in mind that we support up to MayaUSD 0.20.0 in V-Ray 6 and if you are on V-Ray 5.2 you'll need a recent stable build to use newer MayaUSD versions.

[oglu]

I recommend todo the changes in your original file where you exported from.

Otherwise this is getting really messy and misses the point of USD.

[yolov]

I recommend todo the changes in your original file where you exported from.

Otherwise this is getting really messy and misses the point of USD.

Yes, of course this is the cleanest and safest way.
I might also add that whenever you're bringing in a USD proxy, and you mean to add overrides to it (f.e. changing the transform, or a material assignment) - it's best to add the file as a sublayer and store the changes to a parent layer. This way the parent layer only holds a reference to the original file + overrides, and it doesn't modify the original file in any way. This might be very handy when you're pushing new versions of the original file.

[Measter]

This could be an issue with Maya and/or MayaUSD, especially if it happens without any V-Ray data written to the USD file.
Autodesk is making improvements to MayaUSD and it's becoming more stable and usable, so you might want to check with a newer version.
https://github.com/Autodesk/maya-usd/releases
Some of the recent versions even allow you to right click on a USD primitive from the outliner, edit it as Maya data and merge the change back to the USD stage.

Keep in mind that we support up to MayaUSD 0.20.0 in V-Ray 6 and if you are on V-Ray 5.2 you'll need a recent stable build to use newer MayaUSD versions.

After a lot of installing/uninstalling different versions of everything. It appears that the content I made using MayaUSD .17 will only work with that same version or newer, but VRAY like you said only supports certain versions. Unfortunately my org is having troubles updating our license to VRAY 6 because of the complexities of switching from permanent versions to the subscription model. (It's not on you guys, it's our internal bureaucracy)

Further new Maya 2023 features don't work with MayaUSD .17, so we're in a mess of sacrificing the features we upgraded Maya to 2023 if we want to render with VRAY5 because we need to rollback the Maya USD version.

Are there versions of VRAY5 that work with Maya 2023 and the newer versions of MayaUSD? If so how can I access them. Clicking "all versions" in downloads don't show versions of VRAY5 past 2.2

[yolov]

You can try the latest stable builds for V-Ray 5.20.03.
What MayaUSD version are you locking to?

[Measter]

You can try the latest stable builds for V-Ray 5.20.03.
What MayaUSD version are you locking to?

I would prefer not to lock to any version and stay on latest as USD implementations are rapidly evolving.

We are working on getting VRAY 6, but like I said, my org is very very slow in approving software versions, the funding is approved, but the process is convoluted, time consuming and easy to get stuck on one person who doesn't care.

To answer the question though we have version .16 for the USD plugin on Maya 2023, and version .17 on Maya 2022. For some reason the USD content we made is only working in 2022 with .17. So essentially we're producing the content in Maya 2022 in USD .17 and we're rendering with VRAY5 in Maya 2023 with USD .16.

That workflow is working, but definitely not ideal, and not benefiting from the new Maya 2023 USD features like editing USD references in a scene and sending the changes back to the USD file. I'm considering just rolling back to Maya 2022 completely for USD work for now, but would like a path forward to embrace latest versions. If there are versions of VRAY5 for Maya 2023 that work with newer USD plugin versions, that would be ideal.

God only knows what's going to happen with Maya 2024 releases in the next few months

[yolov]

So essentially we're producing the content in Maya 2022 in USD .17 and we're rendering with VRAY5 in Maya 2023 with USD .16.

I agree, that's not ideal.

MayaUSD has been a lot more stable in later versions, development on the Autodesk side has turned towards stability, so it's definitely not as in the beginning.
There's one big difference in favor of 2023 - the Ufe API is newer in 2023 and some MayaUSD features are only available there, which opens up some features like editing USD data in Maya and merging the changes back to the stage. The latest versions have also opened up some very useful workflows for material assignment in the stage, pushing Maya data directly to the stage without writing to disk first and so on.

We support 0.20 and 0.21 in V-Ray 6 and we're currently working on adding 0.22 to the list. We're trying to get V-Ray working with the latest versions as they come out.
We've backported some of the changes in 5.2 and the latest 5.20.03 stable builds should work with 0.20. Not sure how many changes we can keep backporting, as it only becomes more difficult with time, as the code base diverges.

As for Maya 2024 and the next MayaUSD versions - we'll see. I personally have high hopes