The Big Bang of Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD)

Last year, Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and NVIDIA came together to form the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD), a collaborative effort aimed at promoting open standards and driving innovation in 3D content creation.?

AOUSD's primary objective is to standardize and advance Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD), a high-performance 3D scene description technology. What makes OpenUSD so powerful is its interoperability across 3D tools and data, enabling developers and content creators to collaborate seamlessly on large-scale 3D projects. By standardizing and advancing OpenUSD, the alliance seeks to foster the growth of a diverse range of 3D-enabled products and services, driving innovation and efficiency within the industry.

In the time since we launched the alliance, there has been sustained momentum and progress, with new members including Intel, Siemens, Trimble, WPP, and Worley joining AOUSD. The first working group created (Core Specification Working Group) has made critical progress toward building the foundation for compatible data modeling within OpenUSD. You can learn more about the AOUSD Core Specification Approach and Roadmap here.??

However, we didn't stop there, with two new working groups (Materials and Geometry) also recently created. Defining interoperability within physically-accurate materials in USD will be a critical part of the Materials Working Group’s first deliverable.? The Geometry Working Group will tackle normatively defining surfaces, shapes and volumes, as well as working toward interoperable sharing of CAD data within 3D applications that support USD.

At NVIDIA GTC, industry leaders will come together to further collaborate on the future of OpenUSD and share what their teams are doing to contribute to the evolution of the framework and ecosystem, including examples of real-world use cases and product integrations.

You can be a part of it by joining a panel discussion on The Big Bang of OpenUSD with me and the following technical leaders:

• Aliza Carpio, Director, Tech Evanglist, Autodesk
• Gordon Bradley, Fellow, Autodesk
• Guido Quaroni, Senior Director of Engineering of 3D & Immersive, Adobe
• Steve May, Chief Technology Officer, Pixar

NVIDIA GTC will also feature OpenUSD Day, a full day of sessions focused on building generative AI-enabled pipelines and tools using OpenUSD.?

Technical artists and developers interested in getting hands-on training with OpenUSD can also join numerous OpenUSD Training Labs and learn how to build OpenUSD applications for industrial digital twins, build a 3D product configurator with OpenUSD, build a native OpenUSD XR application, and more!

I’m hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) about AOUSD on Tuesday, March 19th, 2024 at the “Lunch and Experts AMA” during OpenUSD Day, and I look forward to connecting with folks there. I’m also doing a Braindate during GTC on the same topic on Wednesday, March 20th, 2024. Once registered for GTC, you can sign up here by selecting “GTC Meetups” in the menu on the right hand side and navigating to Braindates.? You can learn more about Braindates and other networking opportunities here.

Through the AOUSD community, you can take advantage of an exclusive promotional offer — 40% off any GTC pass, with the code GTC24AO. Register today!