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Activision USD Shell Extension

A Windows Shell Extension for the Pixar USD file format.

Windows Explorer Features

• Hydra Realtime Preview
• Thumbnails
• Context Menus
• Metadata Properties

Windows Search Features

• Metadata Search

More details available here.

Goals

There are several goals that this shell extension tries to adhere to and takes extra precautions to meet.

• Performance
  It is important that the shell extension not stall Windows Explorer.

• Stability
  Instability in the shell extension will take down Window Explorer and/or the entire desktop.

The mitigation strategy is to run the majority of the shell extension asynchronously out of the Windows Explorer process.

Dependencies

The following dependencies are required:

• Microsoft Visual Studio (2017 or newer)
• Universal Scene Description (USD)
• Python (2.7, 3.6, 3.7)

Required Microsoft Visual Studio Components:

• Desktop development with C++
• C++ ATL
• Windows 10 SDK
• Windows Universal C Runtime
• Python language support