Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD)

Pixar's open-source 3D scene-description format, now the standard scene format for NVIDIA's simulation platforms.

USD is a 3D scene-description framework originally developed by Pixar Animation Studios for film production and open-sourced in 2016, now referred to as OpenUSD. It stores not just model meshes but also materials, lighting, hierarchy, and physical properties, and supports layering multiple files on top of one another, which makes collaborative editing of a shared scene easier. In 2023, Pixar, Apple, Adobe, Autodesk, NVIDIA, and others formed the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) to push standardization forward. NVIDIA Omniverse and Isaac Sim both use USD as their core format; a robot's URDF gets converted to USD after import, and simulation assets and digital-twin scenes circulate largely as .usd files.

ExampleImport a robot's URDF into Isaac Sim, save it as robot.usd, then combine it with a kitchen scene's USD file to build a simulation environment.

Also called

OpenUSD, USD

Related

NVIDIA Isaac Sim · NVIDIA Omniverse · Unified Robot Description Format · MJCF (MuJoCo XML Format) · SimReady Assets · Simulation Assets

Sources

OpenUSD 官网 (Chinese)
Alliance for OpenUSD