Industry Giants Join Forces for 3D Standard
Tech industry heavyweights Apple, Adobe, Pixar, Autodesk, NVIDIA, and the Joint Development Foundation have come together to form the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD). This alliance aims to standardize, develop, and evolve Pixar’s Universal Scene Description (USD) technology, increasing the potential for virtual reality to become part of our everyday lives.
The Alliance for OpenUSD has a clear mandate to foster the standardization of 3D creativity and develop interoperability among tools and data. This move aims to bridge the gap between creative assets in the 3D arena, making it easier for experiences to be accessed across various channels. Standardizing OpenUSD will accelerate its adoption, creating a foundational technology that will help transition today’s 2D internet into a 3D web, as stated by NVIDIA.
OpenUSD has a prestigious lineage, originating as a project of Pixar Animation Studios in 2012 and transitioning to open-source in 2016. Apple collaborated with Pixar in 2018 to develop USDZ Universal, a file format for creating 3D models for augmented reality. OpenUSD has already found wide application across sectors such as architecture, engineering, construction, and manufacturing.
The Alliance for OpenUSD will work on expanding and standardizing the OpenUSD specification to enhance its use. The goal is to formulate explicit specifications that define the functions of OpenUSD, facilitating broader adoption, implementation, and integration of the standard. This will ensure compatibility for inclusion in specifications by other standards organizations.
Apple, with its focus on 3D assets and augmented/mixed reality, has been an active contributor to the development of USD. The company sees OpenUSD as a technology that will accelerate the next generation of AR experiences and is essential for its groundbreaking visionOS platform and the new Reality Composer Pro developer tool.
Notably missing from this alliance is Meta, which may indicate the current challenges the corporation faces, especially considering its significant investment in AR.
In addition to its impact on 3D creativity, the formation of the Alliance for OpenUSD holds potential for the metaverse. The metaverse combines virtual and augmented reality technologies with enhanced internet elements to provide realistic digital experiences. The alliance’s unified approach and standardized 3D creative process lay a solid foundation for interoperability, crucial in crafting immersive, cross-platform metaverse experiences. The widespread adoption of OpenUSD could accelerate the emergence of a vibrant and accessible metaverse, revolutionizing how we interact with digital content.
In conclusion, the collaboration between industry giants in the Alliance for OpenUSD marks an important step in standardizing 3D technology and fostering the development of the metaverse. With their combined efforts, these companies are working towards a future where virtual reality becomes ingrained in our work and entertainment experiences.
