Hi,
I'm interested in using Arnold standalone with USD from Pixar. I did manage to compile the Arnold Hydra Render Delegate and exported the Cornell Box in ASCII and binary encoded versions from within Blender 2.90.1. Feel free to download both files from the GitHub repository (export_multi).
The scene loads fine into usdview, as you can see here:
I can also switch to the Arnold Hydra Render Delegate and render e.g. using the following Hydra Settings:
So, what are my options to assign Arnold shaders to the resulting USD files? What I really would like to do is to render one of those .usda or .usdc files with Arnold standalone, but somehow apply shaders to the geometry (e.g. a light emitter to the mesh which is used as such within Cycles).
I found already some hints in this forum where someone else exported from Blender and loaded the resulting USD file(s) into 3DS Max, but I thought I ask here as well. What is the simplest solution if I do not want to use any other DCC, just Arnold and USD files?
Links:
https://github.com/Autodesk/arnold-usd
https://github.com/wahn/export_multi/tree/master/00_cornell_box/usd