NVIDIA and Partners are Developing Universal Scene Description to Accelerate the Industrial Metaverse and the Next Wave of AI

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 09, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – NVIDIA today announced a broad advancement initiative Universal Scene Description (USD)the open source and extensible language of 3D worlds to become a foundation of the open metaverse and 3D Internet.

In collaboration with USD inventor Pixar, as well as Adobe, Autodesk, Siemens and a host of other leading companies, NVIDIA will be pursuing a multi-year plan to extend USD’s capabilities beyond visual effects to better support industrial metaverse applications architecture, engineering, manufacturing, scientific computing, robotics and industrial digital twins.

at his SIGGRAPH special address, the company announced forthcoming updates on the development of the USD. This includes support for international characters, which will allow users from all countries and languages ​​to participate in USD. Geo-coordinate support will enable city- and planet-scale digital twins. And real-time streaming of IoT data will enable the development of digital twins that are synchronized with the physical world.

To expedite development and adoption of USD, the company also announced the development of an open USD compatibility testing and certification suite that developers can freely use to test and certify their USD builds that they meet an expected result achieve.

“Beyond media and entertainment, USD will empower 3D artists, designers, developers and others to collaborate in building virtual worlds across diverse workflows and applications,” said Rev Lebaredian, vice president of Omniverse and Simulation Technology at NVIDIA. “In collaboration with our partner community, we are investing in USD so that it can serve as a foundation for architecture, manufacturing, robotics, engineering and many more fields.”

Open source USD resources and leaders supporting the USD
NVIDIA is releasing a collection of free resources to accelerate USD adoption, including thousands of USD assets specifically designed to open virtual world creation to non-3D users. The company also provides hundreds of on-demand tutorials, documentation, and developer tools to help spread USD education.

“USD is a cornerstone of the Pixar pipeline, and it’s enjoying fast-growing momentum as an open-source framework not only for VFX and animation, but now for industrial, design, and scientific applications as well,” said Steve May, Chief Technology Officer at Pixar Animation Studios. “NVIDIA’s contributions to developing USD as an open foundation for fully interoperable 3D platforms will be of great benefit across industries.”

NVIDIA also announced investments in building USD plugins from popular 3D software ecosystems NVIDIA Omniverse™, a platform for connecting and creating virtual worlds based on Universal Scene Description. New beta versions include PTC Creo and SideFX Houdini with Autodesk Alias ​​and Autodesk Civil3D, Siemens Xcelerator and more in development.

“Siemens and NVIDIA come together to enable the industrial metaverse in which the future of design, engineering and collaboration will take place,” said Dirk Didascalou, chief technology officer of Siemens Digital Industries. “We are excited to support USD in the Siemens Xcelerator platform and plan to work with NVIDIA on the next generation of the format.”

at SIGGRAPH, NVIDIA also brings together hundreds of engineering and product leaders from across the USD ecosystem in labor councils to help align USD development priorities and get feedback on where NVIDIA can centralize development efforts. Among the many companies contributing and supporting USD are Adobe, Autodesk, Pixar and Siemens.

“From the beginning, Autodesk has been closely involved in the development of USD as a means to standardize the exchange of 3D data in animation and visual effects workflows,” said Raji Arasu, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Autodesk. “We have long recognized the importance of 3D interoperability and have already begun to extend USD’s applications beyond media and entertainment to design, construction and industrial applications. We’re excited about the momentum behind USD from partners like NVIDIA, who we believe will help better realize the concept of the metaverse and all the workflows it unlocks for our customers.”

Innovators in media, gaming, robotics, industrial automation, retail and food are already adopting USD as their metaverse language of choice, including Kroger and Volvo Cars.

“The promise of the USD is immense. At Volvo, we immediately understood the value of open, extensible, interoperable 3D scene description for our Metaverse projects. Being able to manage assets as a single source of truth and bring them from virtual world to virtual world will be seamless in 3D internet consumer applications,” said Mattias Wikenmalm, Senior Expert of Visualization at Volvo Cars.

learn more about USD resources from NVIDIA.

About NVIDIA
Since its inception in 1993, NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) has been a pioneer in accelerated computing. The company’s invention of the GPU in 1999 sparked the growth of the PC gaming market, redefined computer graphics and ushered in the era of modern AI. NVIDIA is now a full-stack computing company with data center-scale offerings that are transforming the industry. For more information, visit https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/.

For more information contact:
Kasia Johnston
Senior PR manager
NVIDIA Corporation
+1-415-813-8859
[email protected]

Certain statements in this press release, including but not limited to statements regarding: the multi-year roadmap to expand USD’s capabilities beyond visual effects; our cooperation with third parties; the impact of the development of the USD; Support for international characters, which allows users from all countries and languages ​​to participate in USD; Support for geo-coordinates, enabling city- and planet-scale digital twins; Real-time streaming of IoT data enabling development of digital twins synchronized with the physical world; USD’s rapidly growing momentum as an open source framework for VFX, animation, industrial, design and scientific applications; the benefits, performance and impact of our products and technologies, including Omniverse; the future of design, engineering and collaboration in the industrial metaverse; and the USD Promise are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause results to differ materially from expectations. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: global economic conditions; our dependence on third parties to manufacture, assemble, package and test our products; the impact of technological development and competition; developing new products and technologies or improvements to our existing products and technologies; market acceptance of our products or our partners’ products; design, manufacturing or software defects; changes in consumer preferences or requirements; changes in industry standards and interfaces; unexpected loss of performance of our products or technologies when integrated into systems; and other factors identified from time to time in NVIDIA’s most recent reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC, including but not limited to its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q . Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on the company’s website and are available free of charge from NVIDIA. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date of this release, and except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

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