The companies together with the Joint Development Foundation (JDF) will try to standardize and further develop Pixar's technology used for creation of 3D and eventually AR/VR content.
Pixar's Universal Scene Description (USD) technology is at the core of the partnership and the alliance seeks to "standardize the 3D ecosystem by advancing the capabilities of OpenUSD" into a global collaboration.
Aptly, the alliance is called Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD).
Alliance for OpenUSD logo
OpenUSD is a sort of extended file format that can be used across 3D apps such as Adobe Substance, Autodesk, Houdini and Maya to make it easier to create 3D content, experiences or even worlds. In other words, it is about creating a standard for 3D content creation.
- "Universal Scene Description was invented at Pixar and is the technological foundation of our state-of-the-art animation pipeline," said Steve May, CTO at Pixar and Chairperson of AOUSD. "OpenUSD is based on years of research and application in Pixar filmmaking. We open-sourced the project in 2016, and the influence of OpenUSD now expands beyond film, visual effects, and animation and into other industries that increasingly rely on 3D data for media interchange. With the announcement of AOUSD, we signal the exciting next step: the continued evolution of OpenUSD as a technology and its position as an international standard."
Movies, games, AR, VR
If all of this sounds like something that can be used not just for movies but also gaming and AR/VR, well, you're right.
Two of the leading creators of game engines Unity and Unreal Engine (Epic Games), which are increasingly being used in movie making too, have announced that they are "committed to" or "recognize the significance of", respectively, the OpenUSD initiative.
Apple made it known that it considers Pixar's USD an essential technology to its upcoming visionOS powering the Vision Pro and likely future Apple headsets.
Also read: Apple Vision Pro features a home cinema mode, revives 3D movies
- "OpenUSD will help accelerate the next generation of AR experiences, from artistic creation to content delivery, and produce an ever-widening array of spatial computing applications," said Mike Rockwell, Apple’s VP of the Vision Products Group. "Apple has been an active contributor to the development of USD, and it is an essential technology for the groundbreaking visionOS platform, as well as the new Reality Composer Pro developer tool. We look forward to fostering its growth into a broadly adopted standard."
- "OpenUSD gives 3D developers, artists, and designers the complete foundation to tackle large-scale industrial, digital content creation, and simulation workloads with broad multi-app interoperability," said Guy Martin, Director of Open Source and Standards at Nvidia.
- "Pixar envisioned USD to solve several workflow challenges and computer graphics complexity issues. When we created USD, we weren’t thinking about the metaverse, but it just so happens that creating complex 3D worlds is an expertise that most companies don’t have. And it is a fundamental requirement for anyone building content or technology for the metaverse," added Pixar.
The alliance invites other companies to join the initiative by applying through aousd.org.
