Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Nvidia, Pixar and the Joint Development Foundation have formed an alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) to promote the standardisation and development of Pixar’s Universal Scene Description Technology.
The companies will attempt to standardise the 3D tool ecosystem by helping to advance Open Universal Scene Description OpenUSD. The alliance will also aid content creators and developers in describing, developing and simulating large-scale 3D projects. AOUSD plans to achieve this through promoting interoperability among 3D tools and data.
OpenUSD was developed by Pixar Animation Studios. The 3D scene description technology captures collaborative artist visions and streamlines 3D content production. The tech is interoperable with various tools and workflows and the alliance believes OpenUSD’s flexibility and power make it ideal for use in new industries.
“Universal Scene Description was invented at Pixar and is the technological foundation of our state-of-the-art animation pipeline,” says Steve May, Chief Technology Officer at Pixar and Chairperson of AOUSD. “OpenUSD is based on years of research and application in Pixar filmmaking. We open-sourced the project in 2016, and the influence of OpenUSD now expands beyond film, visual effects, and animation and into other industries that increasingly rely on 3D data for media interchange. With the announcement of AOUSD, we signal the exciting next step: the continued evolution of OpenUSD as a technology and its position as an international standard.”
AOUSD Members Speak at SIGGRAPH conference
AOUSD plans to make the technology compatible with even more tools. This will allow a wider range of users in various industries to use the tech. Additionally, the alliance plans to create written specifications outlining OpenUSD’s features. The project will be housed at the Joint Development Foundation. Members of the OpenUSD alliance spoke at the Academy Software Foundation’s Open Source Days on August 6th and also at the SIGGRAPH conference at the Autodesk Vision Series on the 8th.
“OpenUSD will help accelerate the next generation of AR experiences, from artistic creation to content delivery, and produce an ever-widening array of spatial computing applications,” says Mike Rockwell, Apple’s vice president of the Vision Products Group. “Apple has been an active contributor to the development of USD, and it is an essential technology for the groundbreaking visionOS platform, as well as the new Reality Composer Pro developer tool. We look forward to fostering its growth into a broadly adopted standard.”
Jack Brassell is a freelance journalist and aspiring novelist. Jack is a self-proclaimed nerd with a lifelong passion for storytelling. As an author, Jack writes mostly horror and young adult fantasy. Also an avid gamer, she works as the lead news editor at Hardcore Droid. When she isn't writing or playing games, she can often be found binge-watching Parks & Rec or The Office, proudly considering herself to be a cross between Leslie Knope and Pam Beasley.
