Adobe's USD Plugins Are Officially Open-Source Now

USD, or Universal Scene Description, is a high-performance encoding format for content creation that enables 3D software to exchange assets using a shared language. USD has been widely adopted around the globe by 3D artists, software developers, game designers, and other creators since it's open-source and allows to collaborate on complex projects.

This video from 2023 above features Guido Quaroni, a Senior Director Of Engineering at Adobe, showcasing USD file format plug-ins Adobe has been working on for their own software. These plug-ins have been already employed in products like Substance 3D.

Now, Adobe finally made the plug-ins open-source and available on GitHub for other creators to integrate into their own applications. These plug-ins make it possible to convert 3D models, materials, and animations between USD and FBX, OBJ, PLY, STL, and glTF formats.

Adobe plug-ins process data in USD, including support for groups, material assignments, skeletal animation, and other information depending on the file format.

As mentioned in Guido Quaroni's presentation, Adobe has also been working on the SBSAR plug-in for Substance 3D material format, although it's still missing from the released open-source collection of USD file format plug-ins.

Adobe's USD file format plug-ins can be compiled on Windows, Linux, and macOS. The GitHub repository contains detailed instructions for all available platforms and a list of tools and dependencies required.

Visit Adobe's GitHub for the source code and don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.