SideFX Procedural Dependency Graph

I think it is huge! 
I try to imagine how it will affect on the VFX intustry. I have to look closer, but I think it is a step toward a procedural pipeline and task management which is basically project-asset management from a bird's eye view.


All the details are here:
Side FX PDG

(updated on 2023-06-20 the link was broken so it turned out that PDG is now under Houdini which soft of a admission of that PDG is not software agnostic solution sadly)

Not to forget about Blender 1.

So here is some stuff about / under / in connection with Blender.

First of all Blender 2.81 is here. So cool!

Second. Animation Nodes is available for Blender 2.8x.
https://animation-nodes.com/

Third. It seems Blender is part of the motion graphics market.
https://www.skywayvisuals.com/
https://freemembership.blenderinmotion.org/


Fourth. Couple of useful sites.
https://elfnor.com/
https://cgboost.com
https://www.blenderdiplom.com

Universal Scene Description - Moving to the Next Level

It is reminiscent to this music:

ILS - Next Level  

So USD (Universal Scene Description) has been announced long long time ago. I wrote about it 2016. Major studios pleased to Pixar that they open-sourced their technology.

I thought during that time it could standardize pipelines some level. Because the main pipeline issue is always that how to transfer/share data from one process/software to another.

Now (4 years later) it seems the topic starting to be HOT. Software development companies like Autodesk and Side Effects Software step further to make available USD for users / companies which can't afford a big investment into pipeline development.

Side Effects Software

SideFX Solaris Reveal | SIGGRAPH 2019 from SideFX Houdini on Vimeo.

Autodesk

Universal Scene Description: Open Source at Autodesk from Autodesk Media and Entertainment on Vimeo.

The Foundry

https://www.foundry.com/insights/film-tv/implementing-usd  

Blender

https://code.blender.org/2019/07/first-steps-with-universal-scene-description/  

Scott Ross went to China (might never come back)

Everybody knows Scott Ross in the VFX industry. So it might be an old story but I found these interviews recently:

Why do we invest in pipeline? - Psyop & Shotgun Software & Pipeline Toolkit

Awsome!


Tony Barbieri and Don Parker; The Shotgun Pipeline at PSYOP from Autodesk Media and Entertainment on Vimeo.

Nuke - Lock Viewer Input

You might find confusing in nuke to switch between viewer inputs. Here is a short script which can lock the specified input of the viewer.

 def lockThisVersion():  
   nuke.activeViewer().node().setInput(9, nuke.toNode("Read1"))  
 def callbackLockThisVersion():  
   nuke.addKnobChanged(lockThisVersion, nodeClass='Viewer')  
 if __name__ == '__main__':  
   callbackLockThisVersion()  

So as we can see in the sample code, the 9 input is locked to the node called Read1. We can replace this name in the code with the exact node name what we want to lock.