rigging pipelines - DIGITAL PRODUCTION https://digitalproduction.com Magazine for Digital Media Production Tue, 02 Sep 2025 06:58:34 +0000 en-US hourly 1 236729828 USDSkel: Optimized Character Rigging https://digitalproduction.com/2025/08/26/usdskel-optimized-character-rigging/ Tue, 26 Aug 2025 06:00:00 +0000 https://digitalproduction.com/?p=196740 USDSkel

USDSkel is an OpenUSD component that supports scalable, manipulable, and interchangeable skinned characters. Wanna know more?

The post USDSkel: Optimized Character Rigging first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Alexander Richter.

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Together with Paul Kanyuk (Crowd TD at Pixar Animation Studios), we’ll look into the backstory of USDSkel, including how he became involved in its development.

A man with short dark hair and a beard wearing glasses and a black shirt, smiling against a blurred colorful background.

Next, we’ll explore USDSkel imports of example characters into major digital content creation (DCC) software and onto an iPhone using USDSkel. Finally we’ll also take a look at Wonder Dynamics, a new markerless motion capture tool that exports USDSkel and how Python creates new opportunities.

Put simply: UsdSkel is Pixar’s USD module for defining and animating skeletal rigs—complete with schemas (structure), queries (reading), and APIs (writing and manipulation). It’s a bridge between your DCC (Digital Content Creation) tools and USD pipelines, ensuring skinned meshes and joint animations can move smoothly across different tools and engines: OpenUSD.

A man with glasses and a beard sitting in front of a computer screen, showing a 3D character model and lines of code in a software interface.

Why It Might Matter to Your Workflow

If you’re working with rigged characters, skeletal animations, or skinned meshes, understanding UsdSkel gives you the power to:

  • Implement or tweak performance-sensitive parts like caching skeleton data or remapping joints.
  • Export rigs from tools like Maya or Blender into USD while preserving joint structure and animations.
  • Bind skeletons to geometry and control joint influences programmatically.
  • Efficiently reuse skeleton definitions through instancing, thanks to USD’s layer system.
  • Query skeleton and animation data within custom USD tools or pipelines.

Watch the FULL event

The post USDSkel: Optimized Character Rigging first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Alexander Richter.

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