With Universal Scene Description (USD) support for V-Ray 5 for Maya, Chaos ties the renderer to one of the fastest-growing file formats in the VFX industry. It offers a non-destructive way for artists to collaborate and assemble their scenes, which makes it easier to store and move data between different applications.
The USD format, initially developed by Pixar, holds the most common types of scene data. Assets such as lights, geometry, shaders, hair, and rigs, can be shared and dynamically updated in an easy way. As pipelines have become more complex, the need for a universal format has grown. The Maya implementation supports several key asset exchanges which include static/animated meshes, V-Ray materials, subdivisions, and displacement.
