Alliance for OpenUSD Announces Advancements in OpenUSD, Core Specification, and Industry Collaboration

New Members and Interest Groups Expand Industry Contribution to the Alliance, New OpenUSD Release and Core Specification Development Simplifies OpenUSD Adoption and Implementation

SAN FRANCISCO, July 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) today announced DigitalFish, Hunan Mango Innocreative Technology, Microsoft Corp., Shutterstock, Sony Group, and Sunvega Information Technology as new members, the launch of new Interest Groups, a new release of OpenUSD, and momentum in core specification definition.

Formed in 2023, AOUSD is an organization dedicated to fostering the standardization, development, evolution, and growth of Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD), an extensible framework for describing, composing, simulating, and collaboratively navigating and constructing 3D scenes.

New Members

AOUSD is proud to welcome six new general members whose participation will expand the use, evolution, and expansion of OpenUSD applications across industries such as Architecture, Engineering, and Construction, Industrial Manufacturing, and Media and Entertainment. View Quotes from New Members.

Learn more about becoming a member of AOUSD today.

New Interest Groups Drive Innovation and Inclusivity

AOUSD also announced a new level of Alliance collaboration and participation as contributors in newly formed Interest Groups. Interest Groups provide industry experts the ability to incubate new ideas that can drive OpenUSD development across industries and applications. Each Interest Group operates under a specific charter that outlines clear scopes and objectives, ultimately providing recommendations to official AOUSD Working Groups, which drive normative specifications.

The first of these Interest Groups are:

• Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations (AECO)
• Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI)
• Emerging Geometry

"The formation of these Interest Groups represents a significant step forward in our mission to expand the reach and capabilities of OpenUSD," said Steve May, Chairperson at AOUSD. "By focusing on crucial areas such as diversity and inclusion, emerging geometries, and industry-specific applications, we're ensuring that OpenUSD continues to evolve as a versatile and inclusive standard for 3D content creation and interchange."

AECO (Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations) Interest Group

The AECO Interest Group will examine the potential for USD in the AECO sector and provide recommendations on its adoption. Chaired by Angel Velez of Autodesk and Sean Snyders of Trimble, the group will assess the role of USD in AECO and its relationship with existing standards such as IFC.

Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) Interest Group

The DEI Interest Group is committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion across AOUSD's organization and its activities. Chaired by Lori Smallwood of Apple, the group will explore concrete actions AOUSD can take to accomplish these goals, leveraging OpenUSD's potential.

Emerging Geometry Interest Group

The Emerging Geometry Interest Group will focus on learning and sharing experiences from the latest graphics research in 3D asset representation — such as Gaussian splats or Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs). Chaired by Raymond Fei of Adobe and Gavriel State, senior director of system software at NVIDIA, the group's initial focus will be on assets generated via neural reconstruction and Signed Distance Field primitives and operators.

New Release of OpenUSD

OpenUSD v24.08 is now available, bringing more flexibility and accessibility to OpenUSD developers and workflows. This release is a result of major collaboration across the OpenUSD ecosystem including the liaison agreements between AOUSD, ASWF, and Khronos.

A new OpenUSD Validation Framework is now available, making it easier for content owners to identify and address issues in their OpenUSD scenes.

The new release also aligns with the VFX Reference Platform to support OneTBB for more recent developments in data parallelism, and Python 3.12 for newer scripting features.

OpenUSD also now supports a Vulkan-backed Storm renderer, improving performance across platforms by leveraging modern graphics APIs.

Advancing OpenUSD Core Specification

The Alliance for OpenUSD Core Specification Working Group made major progress since its inception in 2023. The Working Group produced drafts now available for AOUSD members to review, including drafts for attribute data types, document data model, and core file formats (USDA, USDC, USDZ). The group continues to drive development of sample implementations for USDA and USDC parsers and compliance testing, editorial activities including a conceptual glossary, and composition and stage population specifications. 

See AOUSD at SIGGRAPH

Those attending SIGGRAPH 2024 are invited to explore the numerous OpenUSD-related sessions and network with AOUSD members. This year, several AOUSD members, including Adobe, Ansys, Apple, Autodesk, Cesium, Epic Games, Meta, NVIDIA, Pixar, SideFX, Sony Group, and WPP, will be presenting on a wide range of topics related to AOUSD, OpenUSD, and its applications in the industry.

Connect with AOUSD members and the broader OpenUSD community at the Alliance for OpenUSD and Academy Software Foundation USD Working Group and the OpenUSD Developer Meetup.

For a detailed list of highlighted sessions and more information about AOUSD's presence at SIGGRAPH 2024, please visit our blog here.

About the Alliance for OpenUSD

The Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) is an open organization dedicated to fostering the interoperability of 3D content through OpenUSD to enable developers and content creators to more easily describe, compose, and simulate large-scale 3D projects. The Alliance brings together a diverse and inclusive community to provide an open forum for collaborative development and discussion around the standardization, development, and growth of OpenUSD.

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