OpenUSD

Universal Scene Description, an open file format and library for exchanging 3D scenes, created by Pixar and promoted by the Alliance for OpenUSD; the format under NVIDIA Omniverse.

Pixar Animation Studios built OpenUSD for film and visual-effects production, as a file format and library for building animated 3D scenes collaboratively.^1,2 Like glTF or DXF, it is first a way to carry 3D data from one program to another, a framework for the interchange of 3D graphics data.⁴ Its files are .usda (plain text), .usdc (binary), .usd (either) and .usdz, a zip package that can also hold images and sound.⁴ Pixar released it as open source in 2016.⁴ Its documentation defines schemas for geometry, shading, lighting and physics.¹ A composition system assembles many assets into one scene so that several tools and people can work on it at once.¹ The Alliance for OpenUSD now promotes it and publishes a core specification.² The Alliance is a non-profit under the Joint Development Foundation; its founding members are Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk and NVIDIA.²

For models of places, OpenUSD is mainly a way to exchange scene data between content tools and simulators.^2,3 NVIDIA Omniverse is a set of libraries for building simulation-ready worlds for robotics and industrial digital twins.³ Omniverse lists OpenUSD as one of its core library areas, so Omniverse scenes are USD scenes.³ The two are related but not the same thing.

OpenUSD is open source, with documentation and releases at openusd.org.¹ The documentation is for release 26.11.¹ Omniverse libraries come through NVIDIA's developer site and GitHub, and NVIDIA sells enterprise support separately.³