One last thing, does Cinema4d have solid USD reading capabilities now? I'm asking b/c what you'll get out of lops are USD files, not fbx. papsphilip Is there a tutorial that can help me out with these specific questions?Sorry I'm not sure how much stuff there is around importing from fbx or shading with Redshift. For casual usage I imagine it's probably easier to just manually zip/unzip in the normal way. But it adds complexity and I believe is mostly intended for remote client/server type exchange. There is a usdz file format that is basically a zip file that can be expanded on the fly with everything kept in memory. papsphilip 3) are textures embedded or will i need to have folders containing textures along with my final usd file? USD files don't contain texture data so yes you'll probably need to bundle up textures as well. MaterialX is kind of on the bleeding edge so ymmv and it's probably safest to assume you'll need Redshift running in lops.

MaterialX is another potential option that hopes to standardize shading networks across renderers. But the preview surface is pretty limited and supports a very small set of utility nodes (iirc just 2d texture, 2d placement, and primvar reader).

USD does have a cross-renderer Preview Surface that all renderers are supposed to be able render in an identical way. papsphilip 2) the materials have to be setup for a specific renderer? if it will be rendered in Redshift cinema4d should i also have redshift in houdini to setup materials? Yes, renderers have their own materials for final renders. And of course if the assets could be exported by USD in the first place that would be even less work. So if you can export your assets as Alembic instead you may (or may not) have an easier time getting things into lops. I don't know how tied you are to fbx but it's worth mentioning that USD can read Alembic directly. If the fbx assets are going to keep changing on the other hand you can keep the sceneimport/sopimport stuff around to pick up any updates. Once in lops, if you wanted, you could save your assets as usd and be free of fbx. Papsphilip 1) how can i import assets fbx obj to build a usd scene? do they also need to be usd files if we want to update them? USD can't read fbx directly, so I think you would need to import into Houdini obj/sop and then import into lops using a sceneimport or sopimport lop.

Redshift for cinema 4d r23