Write Display Color to USD

It is possible to write per-shape color information so that Hydra viewport delegates (such as Storm and NSI) can render colored shapes in the viewport. This is commonly referred as “Display Color” and, as the name suggests is primarily for "display" purposes (though, being a "primvar" it can be queried into a shading network with a primvar reader node, see below).

Besides Multiverse for Maya, other DCC applications and game engines are able to read display color information and use it their respective game engines.

Multiverse allows you to easily write Display Color information from any Maya material Shading Group (shadingEngine nodes) that is assign to your Maya shapes. All you need to do is:

1. Set the display Color:

2. Write out the Display Color information from the Multiverse Write USD Asset UI:

Once the display color is written you can read back the asset in Maya and you will see the display color in any Hydra rendering delegate, such as Storm or NSI, additionally, if you MMB over an Item Name in MEOW, you will be able to see the primvars:displayColor primitive variable.

Use as a Renderer Primvar

Primitive variable can be also queried in a shading network and fed to the renderer, you can use noses such as:

• Arnold aiUserData<Type>
• 3Delight dlPrimitiveAttribute
• Redshift RedshiftUserData<type>
• Renderman pxrVariable
• VRay vrayUser<type>

Additionally you can see it in Many other applications, such as Unity and Unreal Engine: