One year after its formation, the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) is progressing in its objectives to foster the standardization, development, evolution, and growth of OpenUSD. OpenUSD is a comprehensive technology, platform, and ecosystem for building large-scale 3D scenes, whether in M&E, manufacturing, architecture, or other industries. Some of AOUSD’s latest accomplishments include the addition of new members, a new version of OpenUSD, the formation of Interest Groups, and more.
’Tis the season to promote openness.
A year ago, tech leaders Pixar, Adobe, Autodesk, Apple, and Nvidia formed the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD), with the goal of promoting the development, standardization, and growth of OpenUSD technology. One year later, the alliance is off and running.
At the end of last year, a dozen new general members joined the alliance. This week, AOUSD announced additional new members, which include DigitalFish, Hunan Mango Innocreative Technology, Microsoft Corp., Shutterstock, Sony Group, and Sunvega Information Technology. The alliance has also launched new Interest Groups. It has a new release of OpenUSD. And, it is seeing progress being made by its Core Specification Working Group.
The founding companies launched AOUSD to define and advance OpenUSD as it continues to spread into various industries. AOUSD is hosted by the Linux Foundation under its Joint Development Foundation, with the further goal of standardizing, developing, and growing OpenUSD technology.
OpenUSD has evolved from Pixar’s Universal Scene Description (USD) technology as a way to develop and manage large-scale 3D scenes and assets in film, and to facilitate the interchange of assets created using different software across large teams. Today, it is used by those in gaming, AECO, manufacturing, product design, robotics, and digital twin industries, and is a core technology of Nvidia Omniverse. As the user base grew, the responsibility of nurturing and expanding USD to serve these diverse industries did as well, prompting the formation of this dedicated group. AOUSD was born.
The new AOUSD members continue to represent the diverse industries where OpenUSD is being used. In this vein, the alliance announced newly formed Interest Groups, described by AOUSD as open environments for developers that provide a channel for input and requests from the community to incubate new ideas that can drive OpenUSD development across the various industries.
The first three Interest Groups to be formed are:
- Architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO)
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)
- Emerging geometry
According to Steve May, AOUSD chairperson and Pixar VP/CTO, the formation of those Interest Groups represents a big step forward in expanding the reach and capabilities of OpenUSD.
Each Interest Group will operate under a specific charter, with the goal of providing recommendations to the AOUSD Working Groups. Currently, these Working Groups include Core Specification Working Group, Materials Working Group, Geometry Working Group, and Marketing Working Group.
The Core Specification Working Group, says AOUSD, is moving along quite well and has made major progress over the year, producing drafts for review in the areas of foundational data types, document data model, and core file formats. It has also developed sample implementations and compliance tests for consistency and reliability.
In other news, AOUSD announced the availability of OpenUSD 24.08, which the group says resulted from a collaboration across the OpenUSD ecosystem, including liaison agreements between AOUSD, ASWF, and Khronos. This update, the alliance states, is more flexible and accessible to OpenUSD developers and workflows.