The tech industry heavyweights, including Apple, Adobe, Pixar, Autodesk, NVIDIA, and the Joint Development Foundation, have come together to form the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD). This alliance aims to standardize, develop, and evolve Pixar’s Universal Scene Description (USD) technology, which has the potential to bring virtual reality (VR) into our everyday lives in work and entertainment, including enhancing the possibilities of the Metaverse.
The primary goal of the Alliance for OpenUSD is to foster standardization of 3D creativity and promote interoperability among tools and data. This standardization will bridge the gap between creative assets in the 3D arena, making it easier for experiences to be accessed across various channels. It will provide a conducive environment for designers to develop 3D projects, products, and services that can function across all compatible systems. According to NVIDIA, standardizing OpenUSD will accelerate its adoption and create a foundational technology that will help transform the current 2D internet into a 3D web.
To provide more insights into their collaborative efforts, the consortium plans to share information at the forthcoming Academy Software Foundation’s Open Source Days on August 6 and Siggraph on August 8.
OpenUSD has an impressive history, originating in 2012 as a project of Pixar Animation Studios to serve as a 3D foundation for its feature films. It transitioned to open-source in 2016 and led to a collaboration between Apple and Pixar in 2018 to develop USDZ Universal, a file format specifically designed for creating 3D models for augmented reality (AR).
Steve May, Chief Technology Officer at Pixar and Chairperson of AOUSD, emphasized the extensive groundwork behind OpenUSD, stating that it is based on years of research and application in Pixar filmmaking and has now expanded beyond film, visual effects, and animation into other industries that rely on 3D data for media interchange.
With its high-performance 3D scene description technology, OpenUSD has already found applications in various sectors, including architecture, engineering, construction, and manufacturing.
The Alliance for OpenUSD is focused on expanding and standardizing the OpenUSD specification to enhance its use. The fact that other standards bodies can include OpenUSD within their specifications post-standardization is a positive sign for its acceptance. The alliance plans to formulate explicit specifications that define the functions of OpenUSD, facilitating broader adoption, implementation, and integration of the standard. The goal is to ensure compatibility for inclusion in specifications by other standards organizations.
Apple’s interest in 3D assets and AR has been well-documented. The company sees it as part of the computing future, as demonstrated through its Apple Vision series. Mike Rockwell, Apple’s Vice President of the vision products group, mentioned that OpenUSD will accelerate the next generation of AR experiences and will be essential for Apple’s groundbreaking visionOS platform and the new Reality Composer Pro developer tool. Apple looks forward to fostering the growth of OpenUSD into a widely adopted standard.
Notably, Meta is absent from this alliance, potentially indicating the challenges the corporation is facing, despite its significant investment in AR.
The Alliance for OpenUSD’s formation and its efforts to establish a standardized 3D creative process are critical milestones in the evolution of the Metaverse. As the boundaries between digital and physical realities continue to blur, this united approach from major industry players becomes highly significant. It paves the way for interoperability, which is essential in creating immersive, cross-platform Metaverse experiences. The widespread adoption of OpenUSD could accelerate the emergence of a vibrant and accessible Metaverse, revolutionizing how we interact with digital content in various sectors.
