USD Material MDL Export

Overview

This extension adds a contextual menu item “Export to MDL” to the stage window. It shows when right-clicking a (single) selected material node. When the new menu item is chosen, the user is prompted for a destination MDL filename. The selected USD material is then converted to an MDL material and saved to the selected destination in a new MDL module.

Issues and limitations

  • The USD material needs to be bound to geometry in order to be fully available to the renderer and ready for export.

  • Resources that are exported with the material are not overwritten if files with the name exist already. Instead, new filenames are generated for those resources. This also applies when exporting a USD material to the same MDL file multiple times.

  • Public parameters connected to the Material Prim are not yet exposed in the MDL

Usage

Load Extension

Enable the USD Material MDL Export extension from the Extension Manager.

_images/usd_material_mdl_export_extension.png

Export

Select the Material Prim and choose Export to MDL from the Context menu

_images/usd_material_mdl_export_menu.png

Export the MDL file to local disk or Nucleus. Resources are collected with the MDL and saved alongside the material.

_images/usd_material_mdl_export_save.png

Re-Import

The resulting MDL material can be loaded into kit based apps (like Omniverse USD Presenter, Omniverse USD Composer, Omniverse Machinima, etc) and applied.

_images/usd_material_mdl_export_import.png