LogInThe Alliance for OpenUSD, an organization committed to promoting interoperability in 3D workflows, has announced the formation of several working groups and a collaborative liaison relationship, launching new standards for the industry.
Originally developed by Pixar Animation Studios, USD (also referred to as OpenUSD) is, as the name suggests, an open-source 3D scene description used for 3D content creation and interchange among different tools and workflows. Its incredible versatility has made it an industry standard, from architecture and manufacturing to VFX and design.
The Alliance for OpenUSD is a non-profit organization focused on fostering the Universal Scene Description ecosystem. On March 11 it announced the formation of a new Materials Working Group, a new Geometry Working Group, and a new collaboration with the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), as well as 8 new members, marking a significant milestone in the advancement of 3D workflows.
Image Credit: NVIDIA
AOUSD has established the Materials Working Group, aimed at standardizing material definitions within OpenUSD and fostering seamless collaboration across various tools, applications, and renderers. By providing the consistency of OpenUSD materials, developers can confidently employ them across the ecosystem with guaranteed stability.
At the same time, the Geometry Working Group will draft specifications for describing surfaces, shapes, and volumes in USD for both virtual and physical worlds. This group will also specify interoperability standards for CAD geometry data. Both of these areas are crucial to formalizing OpenUSD geometry specifications across industries, for example, in entertainment, these specifications ensure that geometry modeled in one tool will behave the same in all other USD-compliant tools. For industrial use cases, the specifications and reliability of data are even more critical, as it interacts with humans, machines, and more.
Image Credit: Disney/Pixar, Coco
The Alliance for OpenUSD also declared its commitment to collaboration by forming a liaison relationship with the Academy Software Foundation, another open-source association for developers in the motion picture and media. This collaboration is set to facilitate communication and coordination between AOUSD and ASWF, providing the foundation for the Materials Working Group.
In other words, this unlocks the potential of OpenUSD to empower the motion picture industry to develop and employ more advanced solutions.
"We are excited to see the continued growth of the open-source ecosystem surrounding USD. The Academy Software Foundation is working with AOUSD to incorporate the ideas and techniques developed by our USD Working Group – which now counts more than 1000 participants. Also, many of our projects have joint activities with AOUSD, such as MaterialX and its OpenPBR shading model. The formalization of our relationship will facilitate cross-collaboration and communication, accelerating open-source adoption and interoperability across the industry", commented David Morin, Executive Director of the Academy Software Foundation.
As the demand for interoperability across 3D workflows continues to drive interest in the Alliance for OpenUSD within various industries, AOUSD welcomed 8 new general members: Ansys, Bright Machines, Intel, Maxon, Siemens, Trimble, Worley, and WPP.
Image Credit: Disney/Pixar, Elemental
Lastly, Pixar, a major contributor to AOUSD, announced the release of OpenUSD v24.03.
It's said to introduce new features that enhance usability and compatibility across different platforms and applications catering to international user and market needs. Above all, the release includes support for Unicode identifiers, allowing source data originating in non-Latin-based languages to be natively represented in USD content. This feature allows content creators all over the world to encode USD in their native languages.
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