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Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia form alliance for OpenUSD
- zgluck 3y agoSomething I've always wondered about: All of these alliances for this and that format/standard/whatever - do they end up hiring some secretarial staff in some office for several decades? There should be several hundreds active corporate alliances now.
- CodeCompost 3y agoDoesn't the Linux Foundation take care of all that?
- franzb 3y agoAs far as I know: no. It’s people like you and me from the involved companies that are largely responsible for moving things forward (most often in addition to their regular engineering work!) through Working Groups (WG) or Task Sub-Committees (TSC).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zgluck 3y agoOf course, but who's doing the actual admin work? Who chases the sponsors for cash, who books the events, who collects the member fees, who creates that crappy member web site? I'm just curious :)
- dagmx 3y agoIt’s people who work for the Linux Foundation. Basically they offer this kind of organization standup as a service.
- MAGZine 3y agoThis is a big deal. I used to work at Autodesk, trying to build software that made 3D blueprints available to everyone, everywhere. Rendering things on mobile is hard, in part because you need to writer bespoke renderers, and in part because the data formats for the assets are not aligned. Pixar developed USD, and it should really help to standardize 3D tech. In particular, I hope that USD can help make it easier to build high-performance rendering tech for a variety of applications that might not receive so much attention from the 3D graphics people (this is one thing video games do quite well, from a CS approach!) Having some big names behind the standard should help, but of course, the proof will be in the pudding as to how meaningful their contributions are, and how much their involvement pushes the adoption of the standard.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoCan I open an OpenUSD file in a text editor and read it?
- franzb 3y agoYes, absolutely.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- omershapira 3y agoOpenUSD has a plaintext encoding mode, which by convention gets saved as .usda. The standard OpenUSD SDK contains two command line utilities `usdcat` and `usdedit` to do plaintext editing, but most programs using the SDK have better editing functionality by directly using the C/Python SDK.
- wilg 3y agoHere is an example file for the curious: https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenUSD/blob/release/extras/usd/examples/usdGeomExamples/basisCurves.usda https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenUSD/blob/releas...
- zokier 3y agoFor people complaining about the name, USD has been already a thing publicly since at least 2013, and internally probably fair bit before that: https://www.cgchannel.com/2013/10/pixars-usd-system-the-new-super-alembic/ https://www.cgchannel.com/2013/10/pixars-usd-system-the-new-... I did also happen to find small comment about the name from an interview: > Just a little fun an anecdote, the original name ... And we were looking at the extension for the file. Technically when I do something that says layered scene description. But the extension LSD we thought it was a little too trippy, so we decided that we couldn't go in that route. So that's why the universal came, because it feels a little too far, but technically it was supposed to be a layered scene description. But anyway, we couldn't use that. https://cesium.com/open-metaverse-podcast/the-genesis-of-usd/ https://cesium.com/open-metaverse-podcast/the-genesis-of-usd...
- pitaj 3y agoOdd to see Nvidia and Apple working together on anything
- pier25 3y agoBoth are also members of the Kronos group.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- latchkey 3y agoI'm more wondering where AMD is in this. "Open" isn't very open without all the major GPU players involved.
- jsheard 3y agoAMD isn't directly involved with the alliance, but they have embraced USD: https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-prorender https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-prorender ("A Pixar® USD™ Hydra™ render delegate...") https://gpuopen.com/learn/amd-usd-hydra-blender https://gpuopen.com/learn/amd-usd-hydra-blender
- latchkey 3y agoGood to know, thanks! Would be nice to see them join the standard too.
- hiidrew 3y agoUnity and Epic seem like two glaringly omissions from this.
- jsheard 3y agoUnreal already supports USD: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/universal-scene-description-in-unreal-engine/ https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/universal-scene-desc... USD has the most traction in the offline rendering world, but it's creeping into gamedev workflows too as a replacement for FBX.
- namrog84 3y agoI thought gltf or something was gaining traction to be the replacement for fbx in gamedev?
- 9erdelta 3y agoUnity supports USD -- also Unity isn't technically a content creation tool (well...in the sense of what Adobe and Autodesk tools are). It is way bigger deal for the content creation tools to be aligning on an export format than consumers of said content (i.e. Unity) to align on importer.
- colinthompson 3y agoFrom the AOUSD website: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/aousd-quotes https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/aousd-quotes “Unity is committed to the continued adoption of USD standards. AOUSD is an important step forward to delivering a common foundation for content creation, collaboration and interoperability. We are excited to be involved in the alliance and to help shape the future of USD.” - Allan Poore, Senior Vice President, Unity Wētā Tools "Epic Games recognizes the significance of USD in establishing standards for 3D content, virtual worlds, and the open metaverse. Pixar has demonstrated exceptional leadership in the open source community over the last decade, and we are excited to witness the formation of the Alliance for OpenUSD, which will propel the technology to new levels of standardization." - Marc Petit, VP Unreal Engine Ecosystem, Epic Games
- dang 3y agoAll: if you want to argue about what "USD" means, please do that at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36962507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36962507, not here. But also consider: "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. [...] name collisions [...]. They're too common to be interesting." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 3y agoStub for arguing about what "USD" means. These comments were originally at the top level but the offtopicness was choking the thread so I'm moving them here. I left https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36962294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36962294 out because it has actual interesting information about the project.
- dyingkneepad 3y agoOpenUSD sounds like something bitcoin-related. The USD acronym is so known for being for US Dollars, why would they want to overload it...
- jshreder 3y agoPixar has been using USD for years, OpenUSD is the rebranding of it as an open format. > Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD) is an extensible framework and ecosystem for describing, composing, simulating, and collaborating within 3D worlds. Originally developed by Pixar Animation Studios, USD, also referred to as OpenUSD, is more than a file format. It’s an open-source 3D scene description used for 3D content creation and interchange among different tools. [1] [1] https://developer.nvidia.com/usd https://developer.nvidia.com/usd
- ninepoints 3y agoAs someone in and out of the USD ecosystem for years (starting around 2014 or so), this comment is especially hilaruous.
- jimbob45 3y agoMaybe this is the new anti-crypto meta - we proactively take away the best acronyms that the crypto community would want to use.
- theogravity 3y agoI also thought this was crypto related and felt it was odd Adobe, Pixar, and Autodesk were involved.
- can16358p 3y agoSo, can we finally say a "JPEG" or "H.264-in-MP4" for 3D content is coming? (I mean as a universally accepted format that just works everywhere, not literally a JPEG on H.264 inside a scene)
- CharlesW 3y ago> So, can we finally say a "JPEG" or "H.264-in-MP4" for 3D content is coming? Both of those are generally considered distribution formats, where my understanding is that USD is an authoring/interchange format. In that case, somewhat more analogous file formats might include TIFF and PSD for images. or Motion-JPEG and ProRes for video.
- perilunar 3y agoOddly enough, MP4 already includes a 3D content specification: MPEG-4 Part 11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_11
- pier25 3y agoSurprised to see Adobe here. Maybe they're working on some new 3D tools?
- rallyforthesun 3y agoAdobe owns Substance, a material painting tool for 3d character and other assets, often used in game and movie industry
- pier25 3y agoBut how is a texture/material generator related to a scene description standard?
- franzb 3y agoAdobe makes many 3D tools that are able to import and export USD files. For instance, you could import a USD scene into Substance Painter, paint some objects and export it again in a lossless manner.
- pixelesque 3y agoUsers will want to load USD scenes/models into Adobe products. Also, USD supports USDShade and MaterialX material (shader network) definitions, and I imagine there will be full round-tripping support for that?
- sammorrowdrums 3y agoThe have Aero and Substance 3D Apps https://www.adobe.com/products/aero.html https://www.adobe.com/products/aero.html https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/3d-ar.html https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/3d-ar.html
- franzb 3y agoAdobe acquired Allegorithmic in 2019. Allegorithmic were the makers of Substance Designer, Substance Painter and many other 3D tools that are de facto standards for digital texturing. They’re _widely_ used in the video games, film and design industries (among others). Disclaimer: I worked for Allegorithmic and now work for Adobe.
- elif 3y agoUSD will be great for animators, but I think the biggest beneficiaries will be AI's. The question of how and at what layers AI could interact with 3D art and still give the final aesthetic decision to humans with a true artistic eye left a big gap in willingness to use AI for 3D projects. If, essentially, they are speaking the same language as humans, this curation becomes trivial and the cost of incorporating AI becomes purely artistic in nature rather than a technical or organizational cost. There will be no downside for a 3D artist to tell the servers "render this scene, but generate a few different versions if you finish before I get back to work tomorrow" in the worst scenario it is electricity used, in the average scenario it can inspire new ideas, and in the ideal scenario it creates something usable.
- rcarr 3y agoThis was my immediate thought. I reckon this will be one of the early steps in getting to automated movies.
- rallyforthesun 3y agonvidia uses usd as standardfileformat in its omniverse 3d suite. They are starting to integrate AI into it, for example to convert an image into a 3d scene.
- flohofwoe 3y ago> but I think the biggest beneficiaries will be AI's It's just another 3D file format, calm down ;) There have been quite a few "standard" 3D file formats in the last 30 years (COLLADA, FBX, glTF, to name a few of the more popular ones, check here for a more complete list: https://github.com/assimp/assimp/tree/master/code/AssetLib https://github.com/assimp/assimp/tree/master/code/AssetLib), USD isn't anything special except that Apple is involved (which means you probably shouldn't put too much hope into the "Open" prefix, or at least expect that Apple jumps ship as soon as the first cracks start to show in the "alliance").
- ferrumfist 3y agoIt's a standardized file that describes a 3D scene (with references to assets, transforms, etc). It makes asset pipelines easier to spin up and iterate on, but I don't think anything about USD specifically will further enable AI art projects more than they actually do.
- LASR 3y agoReading between the lines, is Apple making moves in preparation for VisionPro?
- echelon 3y agoApple wants to own spatial computing. They've been building LIDAR into their phones for some time.
- stalfosknight 3y agoOnly some of them.
- jsheard 3y agoIt's pretty explicit at this point, the visionOS AR app model is centered around handing off content to a centralized renderer provided by Apple, and they've settled on USD and MaterialX as the ingest formats for that renderer.
- llm_nerd 3y agoApple worked with Pixar on USZD back in 2018 (making a file format around USD). This initiative is simply making an open consortium to guide the evolution of USD. Apple has been preparing for the VisionPro for a long time. LIDAR makes zero sense on a smartphone, but was foundational. ARKit was foundational. A lot of their scene technologies were clearly targeting a headset, and smartphones were just a temporary kickoff.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoIs this like HTML for 3D scenes? Sidenote- OpenUSD sounds like a crypto currency.
- khazhoux 3y agoNo, because HTML is semantic (rendering is open to interpretation) whereas USD is explicit. But in terms of "common format which different systems can read", then yes, sure.
- petercooper 3y agoSidenote- OpenUSD sounds like a crypto currency. This is exactly what I thought at first too. But then realized it's August 1st and not April..
- avmich 3y agoSeen Autodesk here, which might - or might not - mean that the standard is also applicable for 3D engineering artifacts. However I see no explicit mention of this in the article by the link. Can this standard be well used for, say, designing a model for a 3D printer?
- cobbal 3y agoI suspect, but have no evidence, that it's the Maya side of AutoDesk
- LightFog 3y agoI doubt it - for 3D CAD there are STEP/IGES etc. Most of the 3D printing issues are from triangulation/voxelization of analytical surfaces rather than interchange format.
- bsimpson 3y agoWhen Pixar launched USD, the release included a Maya plugin. That's a totally reasonable assumption.
- jahewson 3y agoFor professional CAD/CAM use cases? No. Those do not use meshes but more sophisticated and computationally expensive 3D modelling techniques. For hobby use? Sure. Most of that stuff uses meshes already. Edit: it’s actually not just meshes that are supported. But the usual CAD/CAM surfaces are still not supported.
- gibsonf1 3y agoWith a brief look at the example, it looks like they represent form with formulas instead of meshes, enabling fabrication from the form, for example. This is one of the reasons BIM software like Revit is so unhelpful for fabrication as they don't use formulas to represent the form so you can't get high enough accuracy.
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- epolanski 3y agoI see lots of off topic comments, but I'd like to ask as someone who played with fbx and similar formats supported by Autodesk and large parts of the gaming/CG industry what does OpenUSD provides exactly over different formats. I feel like there's never been a 3D counterpart to standards like Midi for audio.
- jsheard 3y agoFor one the reference implementation of USD is open source, unlike FBX where you have to depend on Autodesks binary blobs and are at the mercy of whatever jankiness comes with them. Such as the fact that the FBX SDK still isn't thread safe in TYOOL 2023 so you have to take a global lock whenever you touch it. Even Autodesk is backing USD so presumably even they have given up on the long term prospects of FBX.
- OmarShehata 3y agoWhat about glTF?
- jsheard 3y agoThey serve different roles, glTF is intended to be an asset delivery format that aligns with how GPUs work so it can be loaded onto one with fairly minimal overhead. USD is intended to be an interchange format for moving assets between editors and renderers. They're kind of analogous to JPG/PNG and PSD respectively, if PSD were an open standard. What Apple is doing with USD might have been better served by glTF, but glTF is a Khronos standard and Apple refuses to work with them for unspecified legal reasons.
- GeekyBear 3y ago> glTF is a Khronos standard and Apple refuses to work with them Given that Apple created OpenCL and handed it over to Khronos, this seems a bit off. > OpenCL was initially developed by Apple Inc., which holds trademark rights, and refined into an initial proposal in collaboration with technical teams at AMD, IBM, Qualcomm, Intel, and Nvidia. Apple submitted this initial proposal to the Khronos Group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL#History Apple just has a long history of working with Pixar. I think they've been using Pixar's USD as the basis for their AR asset file format since 2018. https://www.techrepublic.com/article/apples-usdz-ar-file-format-what-you-need-to-know/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/apples-usdz-ar-file-for...
- andrewstuart 3y agoNo Intel and AMD? No thanks. This is just a power play by all the companies most well known for lock-in and monopoly-like behavior. This is not a good thing.
- pjmlp 3y agoAs if Intel and AMD don't have lock-in and monopoly-like behavior of their own.
- dagmx 3y agoAs with many joint development groups, there’s ongoing membership inductions. Intel or AMD may join in the future. The initial set of companies isn’t representative of anything other than who founded it.
- coldtea 3y agoDoes anybody know if the Blender project is involved / working towards this in any capacity?
- erichocean 3y agoBlender has USD support, but I think it would be difficult for them to contribute to OpenUSD directly. They're more of an "downstream user". It's similar to SideFX and Houdini, which is an extremely common way to author USD scenes. SideFX isn't a member either, just a downstream user.
- dagmx 3y agoSideFX are a member. They’re listed on the main site under General Members.
- erichocean 3y agoShould have looked first. Blender should buy in at that level too.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zitterbewegung 3y agoThey support USDZ (Blender includes support for USD export.[6] Import support from version 3.0. )
- dagmx 3y agoBlender could in theory join the Alliance, but a lot of the companies in the Alliance do already contribute for USD support in Blender as well as other features. NVIDIA and Apple do quite a bit.
- bssrdf 3y agoJust finished writing [0] about Blender's USD import issue. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36947946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36947946
- TheMagicHorsey 3y agoHow is this different from Collada from Kronos group? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COLLADA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COLLADA They already made a universal scene description standard.
- lattalayta 3y agoFrom the Collada wiki page: Initial release October 2004; 18 years ago Latest release 1.5.0 August 2008; 14 years ago USD has more layering and referencing capabilities
- caycep 3y agowait, Apple and Nvidia in the same room together?!
- ruuda 3y agoHow does USD compare to Collada?
- Oarch 3y agoMaybe it's a revolution, but I don't understand how one format can be all things to all types of users. BIM requirements are very different to 3D graphics and animation requirements.
- omershapira 3y agoI think this is the biggest mental shift to make when considering OpenUSD. It allows splitting the data representation from the render pipeline. On the data side, OpenUSD can support BIM just fine: • Can store the geo representation, will render as long is there is a plugin written to render it (for systems that don't, the geo is still available to query) • Can store additional information either on the same file, referenced in a different referenced file (ex.: In-wall pipe layouts can be referenced from the main construction file to keep it small) • Can 'layer' additional information and resolve conflicts according to a well-defined resolution method, allowing multiple authors.
- PoignardAzur 3y agoCan someone ELI5 how this is different from glTF? What information does the OpenUSD format carry?
- beiller 3y agoUSD is at a higher level of abstraction than gltf (IMO). It was created to ease things such as scene graph LOD (levels of detail) for example. It's made for very large scenes. It was created as a file format to exchange very large scenes for 3d animated movies. Inside of a USD file you can point to many other files, for example GLTF, OBJ files etc. It seems like a great format so far, but I'm skeptical based on Adobe, Apple, Autodesk track records for "open" formats.
- dagw 3y agoQuoting from the USD homepage: "Well-known file formats for interchange in the VFX industry like OBJ, FBX, and Alembic primarily deal with interchanging flat/cached geometry, with no facility for assembling assets or editing the data directly. USD does serve the role of an “interchange file format,” more comprehensively than previous public efforts, because it already interchanges not only geometry, but also shading/materials, lights, rendering, linear-blend skinning and blend-shape animation, rigid body physics, and is extensible along numerous axes."
- zengid 3y agoThis is pretty neat to see Apple involved in a standard. They don't like to back everything that comes along. What is very interesting though, is that Meta isn't involved. Maybe because they're backing another horse, namely OpenXR [0]. [0] https://www.khronos.org/openxr/ https://www.khronos.org/openxr/
- HPMOR 3y agoIt probably helped that Pixar was the developer of the technology. I'm sure Tim Cook & Apple writ large think very fondly of tech developed by a company run by it's old CEO.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- schoubey 3y agoWhy have they created yet another alliance, isn't Khronos group which standardizes similar things(APIs, 3d model standards such as GlTF etc) enough?
- thrillgore 3y agoApple is currently in litigation with Khronos https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22538214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22538214
- cubefox 3y agoSeems indeed to compete with https://www.khronos.org/openxr/ https://www.khronos.org/openxr/
- CSMastermind 3y agoStandardization is desperately needed here - Apple is out in the wilderness doing their own thing. Trying to import the USD files their software generates into other tools is a nightmare. Most people I see, my own team included, ends up writing a deserialization tool that just parses the raw data they generate because working with their wonky USD files is too much of an annoyance.
- gyf304 3y agoDoes anyone remember X3D[1] / VRML? X3D is roughly the same concept, 20-some years ago. Here's a hello world for X3D: https://www.web3d.org/x3d/content/examples/Basic/X3dSpecifications/RedSphereBlueBoxIndex.html https://www.web3d.org/x3d/content/examples/Basic/X3dSpecific... And here's a hello world for OpenUSD: https://www.openusd.org/release/tut_helloworld.html#viewing-and-editing-usd-file-contents https://www.openusd.org/release/tut_helloworld.html#viewing-... Although X3D is a bit more verbose, a lot of parallels can be drawn between the two, 20 years apart. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X3D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X3D
- vxNsr 3y agoNot all surprising that X3D uses xml and of course OpenUSD uses some form of python/json thing
- khazhoux 3y agoI was tinkering in that space in the mid-90s, and always felt the file format was a missed opportunity, and wasn't taking any of the lessons of HTML. What I wanted (but never built) was a semantic file format, something like: <room style="square" id="room1"> <wall direction=north> <picture frame="modern" src="http://foo.com/fancycat.jpg" /> </wall> <wall direction=south> <door room="room2" /> </wall> </room>
- sien 3y agoThere was a company in Sweden that built a system that used VRML and extended like that where you could define what the nodes were and reference and re-use them. The system also enable Python to script behaviour. It also used the PHANToM for haptic feedback and used a 3D stereoscopic display https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-Reachin-Display-equipped-with-a-Desktop-PHANToM_fig2_228367531 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-Reachin-Display-equipp... The company H3D has built something similar. https://h3d.org/ https://h3d.org/
- cubefox 3y agoThat's way too high level and ambiguous. Something could look okay in one browser and totally crap in another.
- wildpeaks 3y agoI look forward to USD & USDZ being supported more consistently. The same file can look quite different even within the Apple ecosystem, as these screenshots from a few monthes ago show: https://twitter.com/mrdoob/status/1654494500230778887 https://twitter.com/mrdoob/status/1654494500230778887
- meindnoch 3y agoSomething is broken with your texcoords. The whole texture atlas is misaligned.
- bhouston 3y agoThe issue is that Apple doesn't support multiple texture transforms per material, rather it only supports one.
- dagmx 3y agoThe issue actually turned out to be three.js itself in that case, so the poster himself was at fault. The way it writes out materials and texture coordinates was wrong because it doesn’t use the USD API. Different apps had different tolerances for correctness leading to that mishmash. That’s not to say USD support can’t be improved, but that post is actually a bad example.
- bhouston 3y agoAre you sure? Apple's USDZ viewer didn't support true independent second UV channels and multiple texture transforms per material, rather it makes a bunch of assumptions that are much more restrictive than the USD format. That is why that example is messed up I understand. For example these caveats which screw things up tremendously: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/realitykit/validating-usd-files https://developer.apple.com/documentation/realitykit/validat... "RealityKit supports a single UV Set in iOS 15 and macOS 12. In iOS 16 and macOS 13, it supports two." "RealityKit supports only a single packed texture per material. You can, however, reference multiple scalar channels within a single texture." "RealityKit supports USD texture scaling except for normal map textures." "RealityKit supports a single UsdTransform2d per material. If a material contains multiple UsdTransform2D instances, the renderer will use the first one it finds."
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- danwills 3y agoI find it slightly odd that SideFX aren't part of this. They have worked very closely with Pixar on integrating USD into Houdini in a new subsystem/type of network called 'Solaris' / Lops. It is a very deep and powerful integration too: You can edit USD data using the Python Lop (pxr.Usd API) or even with Vex/Vops (a SIMD-focused language that can be 'written' using 'Vop' nodes that compiles to bytecode and runs (fast) on LLVM.) Makes sense considering how much Houdini gets used to create assets (including at Pixar and for many AAA games as well.) Hopefully the alliance don't make things harder for Solaris! (Autodesk is a direct competitor because of Maya).
- danwills 3y agoAh, I see SideFX are there as a "General Member"! Cool!
- agumonkey 3y agopretty cool indeed long live sidefx
- danwills 3y agoI couldn't agree more, and that's from much experience working in VFX on tools/code and contacting SideFX support a lot (mostly by email) It's just been some astoundingly good support! I hope they last forever, and if they ever do have to pack it in, I hope they release the source so that Houdini can live on.
- lvncelot 3y agoSolaris (in Houdini 18 I think?) was my introduction to USD and a pretty deep rabbit hole for a few weeks. Although its functionality is way beyond a solo hobbyist's needs, the whole time I was thinking about how cool it is to have a standardized format, and how much it must benefit teams working together on a project.
- serf 3y agoI'll be genuinely surprised if Autodesk doesn't act like a bad actor w.r.t. an open format standard. It doesn't fit their displayed principles/ethics/concept/mission from the past 30 years whatsoever, so i'm probably just not clever enough to see what their scheme is yet.
- cubefox 3y agoDidn't Meta and a few others propose something similar a few months ago?
- rkagerer 3y agoThe alliance will develop written specifications detailing the features of OpenUSD Since its an existing standard hasn't this already been done, at least to a decent extent?
- dagmx 3y agoNo, there is an implementation but not a formal specification. Albeit parts of the implementation are well defined enough that they are a good basis for a specification, many behaviour specifics are only existent in code. A specification would need to be implementation independent.
- th0ughtcr1me 3y agotimely
- pnw 3y agoI spent a ton of time in 2022 looking for people adopting USD for game development and came up with nada. It's popular in vfx but nobody in gaming seems to be adopting it in any way I could find. Has that changed since?
- joeyrideout 3y agoRealityKit (iOS & visionOS AR/VR/3D library) makes use of USD. Native apps and games for the Vision Pro will also use USD, alongside their new implementation of Entity Component System (ECS).
- ladberg 3y agoYes, but using .reality files is better for stuff like games in RealityKit. For example it would contain a GPU-ready texture instead of a jpeg (and a lot of other differences), so it's more in-line with how assets are typically loaded in games.
- dagmx 3y agoGenerally it never makes sense to use interchange formats for a runtime use. Take the predominant game development format: FBX. It’s used strictly for interchange not runtime. The use of USD is exactly the same. You’d compile it into a runtime friendly format that benefits your specific runtime.
- jsheard 3y agoIt's early days for USD in gamedev, but Remedy is using it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI2pyzTOvaQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI2pyzTOvaQ
- pnw 3y agoInteresting find, thanks!
- ninepoints 3y agoUSD isn't usable as a last-mile format, so many game engines still use internal formats that facilitate fast edit-time to last-mile format conversion and compression, mainly as a point of pragmatism. There is some slow adoption of USD, but given that the main drivers of the format are from VFX, it's understandable that it will take some time for game devs to embrace USD fully.
- gjvc 3y agoname collisions "They're too common to be interesting" bullshit
- pbreit 3y agoI thought this was going to be some sort of US Dollar-based stable coin. Interesting naming.
- itishappy 3y agoPixar started work on the Universal Scene Descriptor format in 2012. [0] Larimer theorized bitUSD in 2013. [1] [0] https://openusd.org/release/intro.html#heritage-of-usd-at-pixar https://openusd.org/release/intro.html#heritage-of-usd-at-pi... [1] https://www.steem.center/index.php?title=BitShares:Proposal_post https://www.steem.center/index.php?title=BitShares:Proposal_...
- knapcio 3y agoI find that my confusion primarily arises from the utilization of "USD", an abbreviation denoting the United States Dollar which exists since 1792 :)
- itishappy 3y agoOh, huh... Excellent point that hadn't even occurred to me!
- rasz 3y agoI remember when Jobs was introducing later version of Next he was asked about lack of OpenGL support and replied that Next will use Pixar developed scene description 'something' (already had some early shaders, maybe used by renderman?). You could say Pixar has been preparing for this for almost 40 years :) there it is https://allaboutstevejobs.com/videos/misc/nextstep_3_demo_1992 https://allaboutstevejobs.com/videos/misc/nextstep_3_demo_19... "one of the other things that we've done with NeXTSTEP release 3.0 is we've actually built in some three dimensional graphics. We have built in Pixar's RenderMan photorealistic rendering software, which can produce the most photorealistic rendered images from 3D models. In addition to that, we've built in some real time 3D graphics, interactive RenderMan. We've taken photorealistic RenderMan and made a version that will run interactively on the screen." OpenUSD is Steve Jobs laughing from the grave, once again he got his way.
- diogenescynic 3y agoI assumed this was some sort of stablecoin and was thoroughly confused.
- habibur 3y agoAnyone remembers VRML?
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- FrostKiwi 3y agoHow is this different from glTF? Are we getting another XKCD #927?
- inconfident2021 3y agoMy only question, why aren't they using gltf? What is the issue with gltf? It supports most of the things?
- strix_varius 3y agoOpenUSD solves a very different problem than gltf.
- pjmlp 3y agoIt is yet another Khronos format, by committee, instead of something Hollywood designed for their workflows. Additionally Gltf only became a thing thanks to Microsoft changes that originated Gltf 2.0. Initially it was designed as a format specifically for WebGL.
- dagw 3y agoQuoting from the the USD homepage: "Well-known file formats for interchange in the VFX industry like OBJ, FBX, and Alembic primarily deal with interchanging flat/cached geometry, with no facility for assembling assets or editing the data directly. USD does serve the role of an “interchange file format,” more comprehensively than previous public efforts, because it already interchanges not only geometry, but also shading/materials, lights, rendering, linear-blend skinning and blend-shape animation, rigid body physics, and is extensible along numerous axes." Basically, glft is primarily designed for sharing individual 3D geometry, while USD is designed for sharing whole 3D scenes and is designed in a way that lots of different departments can collaborate on different parts of the same scene at the same time.
- gdtfmaster 3y agoFor entertainment, there has been MVR - My Virtual Rig - specification. The My Virtual Rig file format allows programs to share data and geometry of a scene for the entertainment industry. Official repo: [1] Current Spec: [2] WIP for DIN Spec release: [3] [1] https://github.com/mvrdevelopment/spec/ https://github.com/mvrdevelopment/spec/ [2] https://github.com/mvrdevelopment/spec/blob/main/mvr-spec.md https://github.com/mvrdevelopment/spec/blob/main/mvr-spec.md [3] https://github.com/mvrdevelopment/spec/pull/153 https://github.com/mvrdevelopment/spec/pull/153
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- TigerTeamX 3y agoStandards are good, but I am a little weary about this. Is this another embrace, extend, extinguish moment?
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- nottorp 3y agoCurrency hijack aside, will this be usable without paying royalties? Adobe and Autodesk are involved...
- hospitalJail 3y agoWhat a list of anti-consumer companies. Natural allies. What are the odds that its Open, like OpenAI is open?
- suierklepye 3y agoThe fact that these major players in the industry are joining forces to develop a common platform for sharing and editing 3D content is a testament to the importance of collaboration and interoperability in today's creative landscape.
- kaveh808 3y agoUSD is very complex, mainly because it includes an interchange format as well as workflow features. I wonder if it would make sense to split the standard into layers to expand the target audience beyond the major production houses. Or maybe glTF and other interchange formats already satisfy that need.
- nightowl_games 3y agoHow does USD compare to gltf?