Fundamental concepts of Bifrost-USD

Bifrost-USD allows you to procedurally create and modify USD data, as well as view and interact with the results in a Maya scene.

There are several components involved:

• Bifrost-USD allows Bifrost to communicate with USD, and manipulate USD data in the graph interface.
• USD for Maya allows Maya to communicate with USD, and lets you view and interact with USD data in Maya.
• USD itself is a software framework for the interchange of 3D data, and allows for efficient data management and collaboration through the composition of assets.
• Your renderer is also an important component, and may have specific considerations for USD data.

Bifrost-USD workflows

Bifrost-USD has both low-level nodes that closely match the USD API, as well as higher-level compounds that abstract away many of the details and provide an artist-friendly workflow. While the low-level nodes usually input and output BifrostUsd objects (USD data in a Bifrost "wrapper" that allows for connections in the graph), the high-level nodes often input or output Amino objects (the usual type of objects in Bifrost) that contain "recipes" — these recipes get turned into USD data at specific points in the graph, such as when they are connected to an add_to_stage node.

This guide focuses mainly on the high-level workflows that are specific to Bifrost. However, if you are already familiar with the USD API then you may prefer to use the low-level nodes.

USD concepts and capabilities

For more information about USD in general, see Pixar's USD documentation and in particular the glossary of terms and concepts.