Tangent Animation open sources hdCycles

Tangent Animation, the Canadian animation studio behind the animated feature “Next Gen”, has recently open sourced hdCycles, their implementation of the Universal Scene Description (USD) Hydra Render Delegate and Cycles Renderer.

?#SIGGRAPH ANNOUNCEMENT!
Today Tangent Animation, has open-sourced hdCycles! An implementation of the Universal Scene Description (USD) Hydra Render Delegate and Cycles Renderer. It allows rendering of USD datasets with the free and open @CyclesRenderer https://t.co/u84TnZngOL

— Tangent Animation (@tangent_anim) August 17, 2020

This enables Cycles to be used as the production renderer in any application that supports Hydra,  bringing Cycles to the heart of industry standard production workflows, and into wider adoption.

Here is Cycles running in Houdini’s viewport thanks to this implementation:

A little more of a preview of the seamless workflow powered by #HdCycles. @openusd really is powering the future. The @CyclesRenderer is such a powerful and fast renderer and this will put it in a lot more people's hands. Still early in development, but the potential is huge! pic.twitter.com/aFlK78ymq4

— Ben (@Vochsel) August 16, 2020