The Open 3D Foundation Announces Latest Enhancements to Open 3D Engine, Invites O3DCon 'Call for Proposals'

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May 13, 2022, 12:10 ET

Newest release introduces performance and usability improvements, and marks welcome of O3DCon speaker proposals and discussion suggestions due July 15

SAN FRANCISCO, May 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Open 3D Foundation (O3DF), home of a vibrant, diverse community focused on building a first-class, open source engine for real-time 3D development, has released 22.05, the latest version of the Open 3D Engine, with a focus on performance, stability and usability enhancements.

With over 1,460 code merges, this new release offers several improvements aiming to make it easier for developers to build 3D simulations for AAA games and various applications across robotics, AI, metaverse, digital twin, automotive, healthcare, and more. Significant advancements include core stability, installer validation, motion matching updates, user-defined property (UDP) support for the asset pipeline, and automated testing advancements.

Artists can focus on bringing their visions to life using the tools they feel most comfortable with, such as Blender or Autodesk® Maya®. The Open 3D Engine (O3DE) can now integrate user-defined properties (UDP) metadata into its asset pipeline from source assets so that scene-building and asset-processing logic can be customized using this metadata. UDP metadata can be assigned in content creation tools to store custom properties for mesh, light, animation, and other elements to power asset generation workflows for O3DE.

Animation artists can now utilize motion matching, a data-driven animation technique that synthesizes motions based on existing animation data and current character and input contexts to deliver photorealistic experiences. This feature, introduced as an experimental gem, includes a prefabricated character example that can be controlled using a gamepad.

Other improvements include:

Simpler customization of the render pipeline is now possible using a new set of APIs. Examples of gems that currently exploit this capability include Terrain, LyShine and TressFx.
Developers can now re-use Material Types much more easily.
Developers can now control the spawning of player-controlled, networked entities using an improved interface, a capability that is essential for building multiplayer games.
Automated tests now verify that an installer build is valid, and ensures that all of the steps within the build are successfully executed. These tests are run nightly for O3DE, and have been designed so that anyone can plug them into their quality verification process.

The 22.05 Release marks the Open 3D Engine's first major release of 2022. Releases occur on a bi-annual cadence, in the first half and second half of each year. The next release is scheduled for October 2022, which will coincide with the Open 3D Foundation's flagship conference, O3DCon.

To learn more about this release and all of its features, read the release notes, or join the community on Discord. You can download the 22.05 Release today.

O3DCon Call for Proposals Now Open

The Open 3D Foundation also announced the call for proposals (CFPs) for its annual flagship conference, O3DCon. On October 18-19, 2022, in Austin, Texas, technology leaders, independent 3D developers, and the academic community spanning the 3D landscape will come together to share ideas, discuss hot topics and help shape the future of open 3D development across a variety of industries and disciplines. O3DCon will be presented as a hybrid event—attendees can join and participate in person or virtually. Workshops and pre-registration will be held on October 17, a day ahead of the actual conference events.

With over 25 member companies since its public announcement in July 2021, the Open 3D Foundation boasts a healthy, thriving community, adding Microsoft as its latest member. Other premier members include Adobe, AWS, Huawei, Intel and Niantic. The O3D Engine averages up to 2 million line changes and 350-450 commits monthly from 60-100 authors across 41 repos.

"I'm proud of the O3DE community's focus on core stability while delivering new capabilities aimed to simplify and enhance 3D development for developers around the globe," said Royal O'Brien, Executive Director of O3DF and General Manager of Games and Digital Media at the Linux Foundation. "I'm also incredibly excited about the opportunity O3DCon offers in bringing together diverse minds to collaborate on advancing the state of open 3D development across so many industries."

Proposals to speak at O3DCon are being accepted now through Friday, July 15, 2022, at 11:59 pm PDT. All those interested are invited to submit proposals. Those who have submitted proposals will be notified of a decision by Tuesday, August 2. Learn more and submit your proposal today.

Submission types requested include:

Lightning talks
Session presentations
Birds-of-a-feather discussions
Panel discussions
Hands-on workshops/training

Suggested topics include:

3D Development & Open 3D Engine 101
Building & Sustaining Open Source in 3D Development
Game Development
Metaverse
AI
Robotics
Digital Twin
Automotive
Healthcare

Sponsors have the unique opportunity to demonstrate their leadership in this burgeoning arena, forge valuable connections and help shape the future of 3D development. O3DCon offers multiple sponsorship levels for your consideration. To explore all of the sponsorship benefits, please click here. The sponsorship deadline is September 2, 2022. O3DF Members receive a 3% discount on all exhibitor packages. For questions about sponsorships and contract requests, or to become a sponsor, please contact us.

Visit the O3DF website and follow O3DE on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn for all the latest O3DCon updates and announcements.

About the Open 3D Engine Project

Open 3D Engine (O3DE) is the flagship project managed by the Open 3D Foundation (O3DF). The open source project is a modular, cross-platform 3D engine built to power anything from AAA games to cinema-quality 3D worlds to high-fidelity simulations. The code is hosted on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license. To learn more, please visit o3de.org. To get involved and connect with the O3DE community, please join us on Discord and GitHub.

About the Open 3D Foundation

Established in July 2021, the mission of the Open 3D Foundation (O3DF) is to make an open-source, fully-featured, high-fidelity, real-time 3D engine for building games and simulations, available to every industry. The Open 3D Foundation is home to the O3D Engine project. To learn more, please visit o3d.foundation.

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world's leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation's projects are critical to the world's infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more. The Linux Foundation's methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation Events are where the world's leading technologists meet, collaborate, learn and network in order to advance innovations that support the world's largest shared technologies.

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SOURCE Open 3D Foundation