Child Materials

This page documents how child materials are imported into Katana through UsdIn nodes.

To translate between USD’s method of creating material inheritance to a format compatible with Katana, we must alter the hierarchy from a structure of sibling materials with a specializes arc to child materials.

Consider the following USD layer:

def "root"
{
    def "materials"
    {
        def Material "metal"
        {
            color3f inputs:diffuseColor = (0.073087625, 0.073087625, 0.073087625)
            float inputs:metallic = 0.663
            float inputs:roughness = 0.432
            token outputs:glslfx:surface.connect = </root/root/materials/metal/UsdPreviewSurface.outputs:surface>

            def Shader "UsdPreviewSurface"
            {
                uniform token info:id = "UsdPreviewSurface"
                color3f inputs:diffuseColor = (0.073087625, 0.073087625, 0.073087625)
                color3f inputs:diffuseColor.connect = </root/root/materials/metal.inputs:diffuseColor>
                float inputs:metallic = 0.663
                float inputs:metallic.connect = </root/root/materials/metal.inputs:metallic>
                float inputs:roughness = 0.432
                float inputs:roughness.connect = </root/root/materials/metal.inputs:roughness>
                token outputs:surface
                uniform token ui:nodegraph:node:expansionState = "open"
                uniform float2 ui:nodegraph:node:pos = (-105, 114)
            }
        }

        def Material "metal_dull" (
            prepend apiSchemas = ["LookAPI"]
            specializes = </root/root/materials/metal>
        )
        {
            float inputs:metallic = 0.872
            float inputs:roughness = 0.671
            uniform string katana:primName = "dull"
        }

        def Material "metal_dull_rusty" (
            prepend apiSchemas = ["LookAPI"]
            specializes = </root/root/materials/metal_dull>
        )
        {
            color3f inputs:diffuseColor = (0.7265149, 0.22986107, 0.005717588)
            uniform string katana:primName = "rusty"
        }

        def Material "metal_shiny" (
            prepend apiSchemas = ["LookAPI"]
            specializes = </root/root/materials/metal>
        )
        {
            float inputs:metallic = 0.845
            float inputs:roughness = 0.195
            uniform string katana:primName = "shiny"
        }
    }
}

In this layer, a material metal_dull specializes parameters from metal through the specializes composition arc overriding the inputs:metallic and inputs:roughness parameter values to create a different look while not affecting inputs:diffuse color. Similarly, metal_dull_rusty is another material which further modifies metal_dull to change the inputs:diffuse color to a slight orange, while retaining the dullness from metal_dull.

Katana uses a parent-child relationship for inheritance of attributes and their values, which differs from the above example whereby siblings share parameters through the specializes composition arc. In Katana, we would expect a similarly functioning material hierarchy to be:

root
└─ materials
   └─ metal
      ├─ dull
      │  └─ rusty
      └─ shiny

When this layer is imported through UsdIn, the hierarchy is altered to move this derived Material to become a child of the material it specializes. This only occurs under certain prim names. By default, this is: Looks, looks or materials. These prim names can be set manually though the USD_KATANA_LOOK_TOKENS environment variable (see UsdIn Options).

Child Materials and UsdInIsolate

The UsdInIsolate node type and the UsdIn’ isolatePath parameter isolate the prims of the USD stage before the UsdIn node’s Ops (In particular UsdInCore_LooksGroupOp) can reparent the child underneath the parent. For this reason, isolating a parent material will not show the child material underneath, because at the USD stage, this is still a sibling. Similarly, to isolate the child material, the full path to the location in the USD file must be used, for example /root/materials/metal_shiny instead of /root/materials/metal/shiny.