Radeon ProRender USD for Blender 3.0

With Blender 4.0, we contributed enhancements here back our USD Hydra rendering system directly to Blender's code (more info).

The updated plugin uses that Hydra rendering system (and works only with Blender 4.0).

Furthermore the RPR addon for Blender now allows collaboration of USD files across systems and applications via the new AMD Render Studio system.

Weekly Development builds v1.1.8 (09/23/2022)

BLEN-214: Material doesn't update on import from MatX library if rend…

USD Hydra plugin for Blender v1.1

This release adds:

• Support for referencing and exporting animated USD files.
• Rendering with Pixar's RenderMan Hydra delegate.
• Support for Blender 3.1 and 3.2. (Blender 3.2 uses the 3.1 version below)
• Many other fixes based on user feedback.

USD Hydra plugin for Blender v1.0.65

Version 1.0 of the Blender USD Hydra add-on has now been officially released! This includes:

• Viewport and final rendering via Hydra using the hdStorm OpenGL renderer as well as one of the Radeon ProRender modes:
  • RPR Final — final rendering with the utmost physical correctness and image quality;
  • RPR Interactive — faster and more interactive viewport rendering using Vulkan ray-tracing.
• A nodegraph system for assembling and manipulating USD data. The assembled USD hierarchy is displayed in the Blender scene outline, even though USD data is not necessarily loaded into the Blender memory. This allows the manipulation of USD data that is not fully loaded before the rendering time.
• Support for materials via the MaterialX system. MaterialX nodes can be used to create materials, and native Blender materials can be converted to MaterialX.
• Integration with the new GPUOpen online MaterialX Material Library for loading example materials.

(build updated to 1.0.65 to fix Linux issue.)

USD Hydra plugin for Blender v1.0.0 beta

This is an beta release of the Hydra Rendering Addon for Blender.

Our main goal is to open new workflows of using USD and MaterialX in Blender. This allows:

• Assembling and manipulating USD data
• Referencing USD files, not just import and export so they don't have to be in Blender memory
• Importing and converting MaterialX networks.

We're very interested to hear feedback on how YOU want to use USD and MaterialX in Blender!

USD Hydra plugin for Blender v1.0.0 alpha

This is an alpha release of the Hydra Rendering Addon for Blender.

What this does is gives a way to use Pixar's USD and Hydra system inside of Blender. In particular it gives a few things:

• A new render engine "USD Hydra". In this render engine you can select installed Hydra Render Delegates (we include the USD GL renderer and our RPR renderer)
• A USD node tree for assembling USD data in nodes
• List view of the USD hierarchy
• Coming soon a conversion from Blender Materials to MaterialX for sharing between renderers. For now we translate Blender "Principled" Shaders to USDPreviewSurface. Lights are translated to USD as well.

This is an early preview, mostly for developers and TD's familiar with USD. We would like help with the material system and using other Render Delegates with this plugin.