Adding 3D Assets

The most common way to start a recipe is by defining the steps that bring in your 3D assets. Possible assets include static geometry, animated geometry in the form of a geometry cache, a particle cache, or an animated camera from a camera tracking package.

Katana's most common nodes for bringing in scene assets are:

• PrimitiveCreate

The PrimitiveCreate node contains a list of basic geometry shapes used in most 3D packages. These range from simple shapes such as planes and cylinders to teapots and gnomes.

• CameraCreate

A simple node designed to create a camera. You can also import cameras using the Alembic_In node.

• Alembic_In

The Alembic open standard has been adopted by Katana as its preferred means of asset interchange. Alembic is covered in more depth in Adopting Alembic.

• Importomatic

The Importomatic is a one-stop-shop for bringing in assets. It has a plug-in structure enabling assets to be imported from different formats. It ships with plug-ins for Alembic_In and Casting Sheets. To learn more on its use, see Using the Importomatic.

• USD

Universal Scene Descriptor (USD), is an open-source scene information interchange framework developed by Pixar. The UsdIn node allows you to import USD assets into Katana. To learn about about it, see UsdIn.

Note:  Your studio may use its own geometry format, complete with a custom node to bring that format into Katana.