USD Processing Engine API

✨ New in Katana 6.5

This is a very quick introduction to the use of the new API to give a sense of the basic feel.

There are three main parts to the new API for plugin writers. The first is a new math and common-function library, the second is the API which wraps USD, and the third is for shared geometry functionality. These reside in three new libraries, libFdkBase(fdk), libFnUsdAbstraction(usg) and libFnUsdEngine(usg). You will need to link against these libraries. Each library have different namespaces and top include paths to separate conceptually different code subsections rather than sharing a single folder. Include files for all new libs are included like so:

#include “fdk/math/Vec3.h”

The Math Library

The FDK contains a set of math classes which are templated for float, double, half and (sometimes) int. These include vectors (Vec2, Vec3, Vec4), matrices (Mat4), quaternions (Quat) and boxes (Box2, Box3). These are suffixed by f, d, h or i. Thus fdk::Vec3f is a 3-vector of floats and fdk::Quath is a quaternion of half-floats.

The USD Wrapper

The UPE has a set of classes which act as thin wrappers around USD classes. The intention of the wrappers is to insulate Katana from dependence on a particular version of USD. We may provide the source code of lib FnUsdAbstraction so customers can build the abstraction lib for different or custom versions of USD.

The wrapper classes include:

  • Token (TfToken)

  • Path (SdfPath)

  • Attribute (UsdAttr/SdfAttributeSpec)

  • Prim (UsdPrim/SdfPrimSpec)

  • BoundablePrim, XformablePrim, PointBasedPrim, MeshPrim (UsdGeomBoundable etc.)

  • Layer (SdfLayer)

  • Stage (UsdStage)

Note that some of these, such as usg::Attribute, can wrap either a USD or SDF class. This simplifies the API while keeping it efficient - we can use the same code to set an attribute whether we’re defining a prim in a layer or changing a prim from a USD stage.