AOUSD Released OpenUSD Core Specification

The Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD), formed in 2023 to guide the standardization and development of Pixar's Universal Scene Description, has released OpenUSD Core Specification 1.0. This marks a major milestone for the project, establishing a universal language for the 3D ecosystem and enabling interoperability across simulation, digital twins, and world-building.

According to AOUSD, OpenUSD Core Specification 1.0 serves multiple critical functions:

• Acts as the official guide for all future AOUSD projects, providing canonical documentation for all higher-level specifications;
• Establishes clear baseline compliance and testing to ensure software is truly compatible;
• Enables independent projects to be built with confidence;
• Sets the stage for specialized, domain-specific standards in geometry, materials, and physics currently in development.

You can think of Core Specification as the syntax and grammar of a spoken language: it defines the structural rules, how sentences are constructed, and how verbs relate to subjects. The 1.0 version includes detailed specifications for USDA (human-readable), USDC (binary), and USDZ (packaged) interchange formats.

The working group is already moving ahead with Core Specification 1.1, planned for 2026, which is expected to introduce animation features, improved scalability for massive and complex scenes, and more refined guidelines for testing software compliance.

Learn more about the scope of OpenUSD Core Specification and its implications for developers here. Don't forget to subscribe to our Newsletter and join our 80 Level Talent platform, follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, and Instagram, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.