Autodesk / Autodesk/maya-usd

Export only Transforms and Point Positions for animation or Export only materials and render attributes for lookdev

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#3,567 4 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
enhancement
Dominant language
Wolfram Language
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

**Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.**

I'm looking to do the following, given a DAG hierarchy:

1. Export only the material assignments + render-related geometry attributes but ignore the geometry itself. I'd like to try and export a "look" layer from Native maya geometry as opposed to Maya USD / LookdevX for some of our legacy assets. Is this even a somewhat viable idea? Basically I'd want to be able to overlay this output on top of another USD file. (This would be for Arnold jobContext exports)
2. Export only the point deformations from animation as opposed to the full geometry with UVs, etc. (I suppose that'd be a matter of dropping all data except for `points` and `extent` on a `Mesh`?

I imagine that'd be up to an Export Chaser to strip the attributes that I'd want to exclude. It would seem quite 'unoptimized' to first export these geometries to then "drop" parts of it in the Chaser. I'd rather influence that certain data won't be exported at all to begin with but maybe there's no option to do so.

What are my options to optimally do an export with only the data I'm interested in? Is the Export Chaser the best way (even if not optimized)? Are there any examples of Export Chaser stripping attributes/data from the USD file? (I've only seen stuff being added). Would it be a matter of removing specs?

**Describe the solution you'd like**

See point 1) and 2) above, those are my preferred outputs.

**Describe alternatives you've considered**

For 1) LookdevX (or Houdini Solaris) for shaders but that'd mean a manual conversion from our legacy assets which is time-consuming and not preferred.
For 2) not sure if there's an alternative?

**Additional context**

n/a

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

Start by reviewing the Export Chaser entry point and the Arnold jobContext export mentioned in the issue. Compare the requested Mesh data—points and extent—with material and render-related attributes, then determine whether existing examples or USD spec removal can support either output. Done means documenting or implementing a decided export path for the two requested subsets.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
tooling
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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