Alliance for OpenUSD Launches Materials & Geometry Working Groups, Forms New Liaison Relationship

As demand for interoperability across 3D workflows continues, AOUSD grows by 8 new general members: Ansys, Bright Machines, Intel, Maxon, Siemens, Trimble, Worley, and WPP

SAN FRANCISCO, March 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD), an organization dedicated to fostering the standardization, development, evolution, and growth of Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD), today announced the formation of a new Materials Working Group, a new Geometry Working Group, and a new collaboration with the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), as well as 8 new members.

New Materials Working Group Advances 3D Workflows for Look Development
The creation of AOUSD's new Materials Working Group marks a significant milestone in the advancement of 3D workflows. Standardizing material definitions within OpenUSD will facilitate seamless collaboration for look development across multiple tools, applications, and renderers. This will be particularly welcome for industries that require the long-term stability guaranteed by a normative standard definition, allowing developers to use OpenUSD materials knowing they'll work consistently and predictably across the ecosystem, and continue to do so in the future.

New Geometry Working Group to Standardize USD Surfaces, Shapes, and Volumes for Virtual & Physical Worlds
Building upon ongoing work in the Core Specification Working Group, the new Geometry Working Group will draft specifications for describing surfaces, shapes, and volumes in USD for both virtual and physical worlds. Additionally, this group will specify interoperability standards for CAD geometry data. All of these areas are critical to formalizing OpenUSD geometry specifications across industries. For media and entertainment, these specifications ensure that geometry modeled in one tool will look and behave the same in all other USD-compliant tools. For industrial, manufacturing, architecture, engineering, and construction use cases, the specifications are even more critical to ensure the reliability and longevity of designs and operational data defined by USD geometry as it behaves and interacts with humans, sensors, robots, and more in virtual and physical worlds.

AOUSD and Academy Software Foundation Collaborate on Advanced Solutions
The foundation for AOUSD's new Materials Working Group is a new liaison relationship between AOUSD and the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), which will foster collaboration and communication across the foundations to better support the sharing of ideas. AOUSD working groups will collaborate with ASWF USD working groups on OpenUSD and on material interchange through ASWF's MaterialX project. This unlocks the potential of OpenUSD empowering the motion picture communities to develop and deploy advanced solutions that drive the industry forward. Read more here.

"We are excited to see the continued growth of the open source ecosystem surrounding USD. The Academy Software Foundation is working with AOUSD to incorporate the ideas and techniques developed by our USD Working Group - that now counts more than 1000 participants. Also, many of our projects have joint activities with AOUSD, such as MaterialX and its OpenPBR shading model. The formalization of our relationship will facilitate cross-collaboration and communication, accelerating open source adoption and interoperability across the industry," said David Morin, Executive Director of the Academy Software Foundation.

Latest OpenUSD Release to Enhance International Compatibility 
Pixar, a key contributor to AOUSD, announced the release of OpenUSD v24.03. This introduces new features that enhance usability and compatibility across different platforms and applications, expanding to broader international user and market needs. In particular, the support for Unicode identifiers in OpenUSD v24.03 allows source data originating in non-Latin-based languages to be natively representable in USD content. Content creators and industrial stakeholders all over the world are now able to encode USD in their native languages. For an in-depth exploration of this release, see the full announcement here.

AOUSD Welcomes New Members
Demand for interoperability across 3D workflows continues to drive interest in the Alliance for OpenUSD across industries. AOUSD is proud to welcome 8 new general members: Ansys, Bright Machines, Intel, Maxon, Siemens, Trimble, Worley, and WPP. Learn more about becoming a member of AOUSD today.

To learn more about AOUSD, join our members at GDC March 18-22 to hear about OpenUSD in game development. And, attend NVIDIA GTC, a global AI developer conference running March 18-21 in San Jose, Calif., for a panel featuring Alliance for OpenUSD steering committee members, OpenUSD sessions with leading companies across industries, and OpenUSD hands-on labs.

NVIDIA GTC sessions you don't want to miss include:

• The Big Bang of Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD)
  • Speakers: Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, NVIDIA
• Digitalizing the World's Largest Industries With OpenUSD and Generative AI
  • Speakers: Amazon Robotics, Cesium, Jaguar Land Rover, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Siemens
• An Introduction to OpenUSD
  • Speakers: NVIDIA

View Full Release with Supporting Quotes from New Members

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. 

Media Contact
Nora Anwar
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