New Members and Interest Groups Expand Industry Contribution to
the Alliance, New OpenUSD Release and Core Specification
Development Simplifies OpenUSD Adoption and Implementation
SAN
FRANCISCO, July 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Alliance
for OpenUSD (AOUSD) today announced DigitalFish, Hunan Mango
Innocreative Technology, Microsoft Corp., Shutterstock, Sony Group,
and Sunvega Information Technology as new members, the launch
of new Interest Groups, a new release of OpenUSD, and momentum in
core specification definition.
New OpenUSD Release and Core Specification
Development Simplifies OpenUSD Adoption and Implementation.
Formed in 2023, AOUSD is an organization dedicated to fostering
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.
New Members
AOUSD is proud to welcome six new general members whose
participation will expand the use, evolution, and expansion of
OpenUSD applications across industries such as Architecture,
Engineering, and Construction, Industrial Manufacturing, and Media
and Entertainment. View Quotes from New Members.
Learn more about becoming a member of AOUSD today.
New Interest Groups Drive Innovation and Inclusivity
AOUSD also announced a new level of Alliance collaboration and
participation as contributors in newly formed Interest Groups.
Interest 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, ultimately 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 Steve May,
Chairperson at AOUSD. "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
The AECO Interest Group will examine the potential for USD in
the AECO sector and provide recommendations on its adoption.
Chaired by Angel Velez of Autodesk
and Sean Snyders of Trimble, the
group will assess the role of USD in AECO and its relationship with
existing standards such as IFC.
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) Interest Group
The DEI Interest Group is committed to promoting diversity,
equity, and inclusion across AOUSD's organization and its
activities. Chaired by Lori
Smallwood of Apple, the group will explore concrete actions
AOUSD can take to accomplish these goals, leveraging OpenUSD's
potential.
Emerging Geometry Interest Group
The 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 Raymond Fei of
Adobe and Gavriel State, senior
director of system software at NVIDIA, 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, bringing more flexibility
and accessibility to OpenUSD developers and workflows. This 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 inception in 2023. 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.
See AOUSD at SIGGRAPH
Those attending SIGGRAPH 2024 are invited to explore the
numerous OpenUSD-related sessions and network with AOUSD members.
This year, several AOUSD members, including Adobe, Ansys, Apple,
Autodesk, Cesium, Epic Games, Meta, NVIDIA, Pixar, SideFX, Sony
Group, and WPP, will be presenting on a wide range of topics
related to AOUSD, OpenUSD, and its applications in the
industry.
Connect with AOUSD members and the broader OpenUSD community at
the Alliance for OpenUSD and Academy Software Foundation USD
Working Group and the OpenUSD Developer Meetup.
For a detailed list of highlighted sessions and more information
about AOUSD's presence at SIGGRAPH 2024, please visit our
blog here.
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
pr@aousd.org
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