Common USD Plug-In For Maya In The Works

Autodesk has recently announced that they have teamed up with Animal Logic, Luma Pictures, and Pixar Animation Studios to integrate all the Maya Universal Scene Description (USD) projects into a common USD integration in Maya.

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“As part of our continued efforts to support and accelerate the adoption of open standards, we’re taking responsibility for the plugin formerly hosted by our friends above, which will be fully open-source and used as a baseline going forward,” wrote the team. “Our ultimate goal is to ensure a consistent yet modifiable way to use USD within Maya.”

The whole USD initiative is a huge step to unified and integrated 3D production, so the announcement is pretty awesome. Quixel and other tool developers have also announced they will use the format.

Animal Logic Head of Production Technology Aidan Sarsfield said: “Integrating the USD plugin into Maya is a testament to Autodesk’s commitment to open-source and will benefit the larger industry, allowing every Maya user to embrace USD as a scene description format. USD will only grow stronger with further development on Maya’s UFE architecture.”

Get more details here.