MaterialX

Third-Party MaterialX Support


Pixar USD

Pixar's Universal Scene Description (USD) supports MaterialX through a dedicated UsdMtlx library, enabling the referencing of MaterialX documents and composition of MaterialX content in USD stages.

The USD Hydra rendering framework supports MaterialX in HdStorm and HdPrman, using ShaderGen to generate GLSL and OSL shaders from MaterialX graphs on demand.

Additional details on MaterialX support in USD Hydra may be found in the slides from the MaterialX Virtual Towh Hall at ASWF Open Source Days 2023.

SideFX Houdini

SideFX supports MaterialX in Houdini 19 and beyond, including the authoring and exporting of MaterialX graphs through the Solaris framework, and rendering of MaterialX content in Karma CPU/XPU.

Karma, A Beautiful Game by Moeen Sayed provides a useful tutorial on look development in Houdini/Solaris, including an overview of using MaterialX to construct surface and volume materials.

Additional details on MaterialX BSDF graphs in Houdini may be found in the Solaris Essentials tutorial series.

Autodesk Maya

Autodesk supports MaterialX in Maya through the MayaUSD plug-in, building upon the native support for MaterialX in USD.

Maya 2024 introduced a technology preview of LookdevX, which supports the creation, editing, and rendering of MaterialX graphs.

Additional details on LookdevX in Maya may be found in the slides from the MaterialX Virtual Town Hall at ASWF Open Source Days 2023.

Autodesk 3ds Max

Autodesk supports MaterialX in 3ds Max 2024 through a bundled MaterialX plug-in, enabling the authoring, import, and export of MaterialX content.

The MaterialX and USD plug-ins in 3ds Max are integrated, allowing USD content to reference MaterialX documents in a combined USD/MaterialX workflow.

Apple VisionOS

Apple has adopted MaterialX as the material representation for its upcoming VisionOS platform, including a pathway for translating Unity Shader Graph content to MaterialX.

Additional details on MaterialX in Apple VisionOS may be found in the video presentations for WWDC 2023.

Unreal Engine

Epic Games supports MaterialX in Unreal Engine 5.1 and beyond, allowing the import of MaterialX documents based on the Standard Surface shading model.

As of Unreal Engine 5.3, MaterialX content may additionally be referenced in USD workflows within Unreal.

For now, only a subset of the MaterialX standard data types and nodes is supported, and Epic plans to extend this supported set in future releases.

NVIDIA Omniverse

NVIDIA supports MaterialX in Omniverse Kit 104.1 and beyond, allowing MaterialX documents to be imported and rendered through MDL shader generation.

Additional details on MaterialX support in Omniverse may be found in the slides from the MaterialX and OSL session at ASWF Open Source Days 2022.

Autodesk Arnold

Autodesk supports MaterialX in Arnold 5 and beyond, allowing MaterialX documents to be referenced and rendered through a custom MaterialX operator.

MaterialX content can be exported from Arnold implementations in tools such as Maya and Cinema 4D.

Additional details on MaterialX support in Arnold may be found in the slides from the MaterialX and OSL session at ASWF Open Source Days 2022.

Pixar RenderMan

Pixar supports MaterialX in RenderMan 24 and beyond, rendering MaterialX pattern nodes through USD HdPrman, and rendering Physically Based Shading features through a custom implementation of the MaterialX Lama nodes.

Additional details on MaterialX Lama may be found in this tutorial series from Pixar.

Chaos V-Ray

Chaos Group supports MaterialX in V-Ray 6 and beyond, rendering MaterialX pattern nodes through VRayScene-USD.

Additional details on MaterialX support in V-Ray may be found in the ChaosTV video series.