The News: Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia, together with the Joint Development Foundation (JDF), an Affiliate of the Linux Foundation, announced on August 1 the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) to promote the standardization, development, evolution, and growth of Pixar’s Universal Scene Description (USD) technology and the larger 3D content industry.
OpenUSD is a high-performance 3D scene description technology that was originally developed by Pixar, and is designed to let users collaboratively capture artistic expression and streamline cinematic content production across applications and industries. OpenUSD is designed to provide interoperability across 3D content, tools, data, and workflows.
By promoting greater interoperability, the alliance will enable developers and content creators to describe, compose, and simulate large-scale 3D projects and build a greater range of 3D-enabled products and services, which range from creative content such as movies, to industrial uses, such as the creation of digital twins.
See the complete Press Release on the Alliance for OpenUSD at the Alliance for OpenUSD website.
Pixar, Adobe, Apple, and Others Announce Alliance for OpenUSD
Analyst Take: The Alliance for OpenUSD was launched August 1, led by technology firms Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia, with support from the Joint Development Foundation (JDF), an affiliate of The Linux Foundation, which hosts the AOUSD. The announcement of the Alliance is designed to raise the visibility of the technology, and pave the way for the eventual development of standards around the creation and collaboration with 3D content, thereby enabling developers to seamlessly develop, work on, and manage these assets across various software platforms.
The Need for a Common 3D Content Standard
According to Steve May, CTO at Pixar and the Chairman of the AOUSD, the impetus behind the launch of the Alliance is the lack of standards surrounding the development of 3D content across multiple platforms. After developing Universal Screen Description technology, Pixar in 2016 decided to share the technology and make it open source, so that all developers could get access to it.
Over time, 3D content has evolved, and is being used across a wider range of use cases beyond entertainment media, to encompass realistic augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) applications, spatial computing, and industrial simulation applications, including the development of digital twins of systems and assets.
However, according to May, the sheer number of different 3D content creation tools, workflows, and capabilities can make it difficult for creative professionals to collaborate across platforms. As such, a key goal of the AOUSD is to develop a specification around USD that can eventually be agreed upon and ratified into a standard, much in the way that the .jpg image file and H.264 video coding format are standards.
Standards Can Support and Accelerate Technological Progress
The development of a standard around OpenUSD will be a positive development for the 3D content creation industry, as efforts around innovation and improvement to the technology can be concentrated around a single point of focus, rather than diffused across a range of competing approaches.
“While USD is used by many companies, it’s not really a standard,” May says. “In today’s world, we have accepted standards for text and photos and video and other things, but not complex 3D content. To achieve the full potential of open USD, we need to work across many platforms on many kinds of devices reliably for many, many years into the future.”
Particularly in a field where the range of applications and use cases are wide, coalescing around a single standard that can be used across multiple platforms and devices will be key to ensuring continuous innovation.
A Long Road to Standards Development Lies Ahead
During the analyst briefing announcing the creation of the AOUSD, the answers to queries raised indicated that the formal ratification of any standards is likely years away. Indeed, according to May on the conference call, several specifics have yet to be discussed or announced, including the certification process and licensing terms for those who wish to use a forthcoming OpenUSD standard, as well as details on security, and, not surprisingly, a timeline for standards development.
The complexity of OpenUSD is one of the reasons why these specifics are still fuzzy, May says, noting that the technology behind OpenUSD is far more complex than the ones used for video or image formats. “So, the job of the first working groups for the Alliance is to start to define ‘where do we start,” May says. “What’s the innermost core of USD that we want to standardize, and then how to we expand out from that?”
Ultimately, though, the development of a specific consortium of companies to focus on the development of a 3D content standard that could impact such a wide range of industries is a positive development. Though there is still a lot of work to be done, and specifics that need to be hammered out, it does appear that the AOUSD is a good first step for the 3D content industry.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
Keith Kirkpatrick is VP & Research Director, Enterprise Software & Digital Workflows for The Futurum Group. Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.
He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.
In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.
He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).
Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.
