NVIDIA Announced Full Open Sourcing of MDL

At SIGGRAPH 2022, NVIDIA announced it was open sourcing its Material Definition Language (MDL), including the MDL Distiller and GLSL backend, to "further expand the MDL ecosystem" and streamline graphics pipelines.

MDL gives the freedom to share physically based materials and lights between supporting applications and can be used to define complex, physically accurate materials by reducing material complexity to boost performance. It is supported in software including Substance 3D Designer, Substance 3D Painter, V-Ray renderer, and Unreal Engine, and by the Megascans asset library.

Previously, NVIDIA open sourced MDL SDK, now the other key parts MDL Distiller and GLSL backend technologies are also available.

MDL Distiller enables implementations of MDL support for all kinds of renderers. It is an automated solution to simplify MDL materials to a reduced material model of a simpler renderer. Renderer developers can now provide MDL Distiller rules instead of material artists providing simpler materials for simple renderers.

GLSL backend technologies provide MDL support to renderer developers building on OpenGL or Vulkan. The MDL Distiller and GLSL backend are meant to help more developers to leverage the power of MDL.

Open sourcing MDL means artists now have the freedom to work across ecosystems while maintaining material appearance, so a material can be created once and then shared across multiple applications, which saves time and effort in many workflows and pipelines.

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