The Alliance for OpenUSD also announced that DigitalFish, Hunan Mango Innocreative Technology, Microsoft Corp., Shutterstock, Sony Group, and Sunvega Information Technology have joined the organization.
Formed in 2023, AOUSD fosters 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.
AOUSD’s six new general members will expand participation in the use, evolution, and expansion of OpenUSD applications across industries such as Architecture, Engineering, and Construction, Industrial Manufacturing, and Media and Entertainment.
New Interest Groups Drive Innovation and Inclusivity:
Also announced, AOUSD’s Alliance collaboration and participation as contributors in newly formed Interest Groups. The 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, 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 AOUSD Chairperson Steve May. “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 will examine potential for USD in the AECO sector and provide recommendations on its adoption. Chaired by Autodesk’s Angel Velez and Trimble’s Sean Snyders, the group will assess the role of USD in AECO and its relationship with existing standards such as IFC.
DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Interest) Group is committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion across AOUSD’s organization and activities. Chaired by Apple’s Lori Smallwood, the group will explore concrete actions AOUSD can take to accomplish these goals, leveraging OpenUSD’s potential.
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 Adobe’s Raymond Fei and NVIDIA senior director Gavriel State, 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, with added flexibility and accessibility to OpenUSD developers and workflows. The 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 2023 inception. 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.
AOUSD at SIGGRAPH
SIGGRAPH 2024 attendees can explore the OpenUSD-related sessions and network with AOUSD members. This year, AOUSD members, including Adobe, Ansys, Apple, Autodesk, Cesium, Epic Games, Meta, NVIDIA, Pixar, SideFX, Sony Group, and WPP, will present on a wide range of topics related to AOUSD, OpenUSD, and its industry applications.
More information about AOUSD’s presence at SIGGRAPH 2024 is available here.
Source: AOUSD
Debbie Diamond Sarto is news editor at Animation World Network.
