Live data from Hacker News

Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia form alliance for OpenUSD

apple.com

201–210 of 271 posts

Re: Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia form alliance for OpenUSD

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

glTF is not a very optimal runtime format, and IIRC it even started out originally with the statement that it was 'purely for interchanging models between programs' and that engines would/should still use their own format (hence the Transfer Format in the glTF name.) Even GLB, the binary glTF format, is very sub-optimal for runtime. It even has chunks of JSON embedded in it.

glTF wouldn't be my first choice for a runtime format but it's hard to see the intent behind it as anything but a runtime format, there's a very distinct mapping from glTF concepts to OpenGL concepts. The first version didn't even have a standard material definition, the asset just had an inlined GLSL shader to render it with. They even use the same enum values so that you can plug the values in the glTF file directl…

> OpenGL/WebGL dead and buried by Vulkan/WebGPU.

If only.

Vulkan requires everyone to be a driver writer before they can even think about drawing a triangle, while at the same time already beating OpenGL with spaghetti extensions at the rate it is getting new ones every month.

And it is only a GNU/Linux and Android thing anyway, not the main API on PlayStation, XBox, Apple, Windows and Switch.

WebGL took a decade to be fully adopted, WebGPU has at least another decade ahead of it until it becomes fully widespread, and even then it will be targeting 2015 hardware capabilities.

Re: Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia form alliance for OpenUSD

#202

No Intel and AMD? No thanks. This is just a power play by all the companies most well known for lock-in and monopoly-like behavior. This is not a good thing.

As if Intel and AMD don't have lock-in and monopoly-like behavior of their own.

Re: Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia form alliance for OpenUSD

#203
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unreal already supports USD: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/universal-scene-desc... USD has the most traction in the offline rendering world, but it's creeping into gamedev workflows too as a replacement for FBX.

I thought gltf or something was gaining traction to be the replacement for fbx in gamedev?

Gltf isn’t very popular outside of web development. It’s intentionally quite limited to appeal to that demographic, but as a result isn’t as flexible as FbX or USD.

Re: Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia form alliance for OpenUSD

#204
post #152

I spent a ton of time in 2022 looking for people adopting USD for game development and came up with nada. It's popular in vfx but nobody in gaming seems to be adopting it in any way I could find. Has that changed since?

What would you use USD for in gamedev?

Re: Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia form alliance for OpenUSD

#205

The alliance will develop written specifications detailing the features of OpenUSD Since its an existing standard hasn't this already been done, at least to a decent extent?

No, there is an implementation but not a formal specification.

Albeit parts of the implementation are well defined enough that they are a good basis for a specification, many behaviour specifics are only existent in code.

A specification would need to be implementation independent.

Re: Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia form alliance for OpenUSD

#206

No Intel and AMD? No thanks. This is just a power play by all the companies most well known for lock-in and monopoly-like behavior. This is not a good thing.

As with many joint development groups, there’s ongoing membership inductions. Intel or AMD may join in the future. The initial set of companies isn’t representative of anything other than who founded it.

Re: Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia form alliance for OpenUSD

#207
post #30

USD will be great for animators, but I think the biggest beneficiaries will be AI's. The question of how and at what layers AI could interact with 3D art and still give the final aesthetic decision to humans with a true artistic eye left a big gap in willingness to use AI for 3D projects. If, essentially, they are speaking the same language as humans, this curation becomes trivial and the cost of incorporating AI bec…

> but I think the biggest beneficiaries will be AI's

It's just another 3D file format, calm down ;)

There have been quite a few "standard" 3D file formats in the last 30 years (COLLADA, FBX, glTF, to name a few of the more popular ones, check here for a more complete list: https://github.com/assimp/assimp/tree/master/code/AssetLib), USD isn't anything special except that Apple is involved (which means you probably shouldn't put too much hope into the "Open" prefix, or at least expect that Apple jumps ship as soon as the first cracks start to show in the "alliance").

Re: Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia form alliance for OpenUSD

#208
post #20

Stub for arguing about what "USD" means. These comments were originally at the top level but the offtopicness was choking the thread so I'm moving them here. I left https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36962294 out because it has actual interesting information about the project.

I am no longer into stuff like USD, and probably it is useful and a good thing. Adobe and Autodesk etc. will have an interchangeable structure. But I used to work for both of those companies indirectly and .. They want closed systems as much as possible, only open standards etc. when forced to do so, because of course they want all the business and all the money. So USD probably good, but they will wield it against c…

dang: This seems to have accidentally landed in the naming stub?

Re: Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia form alliance for OpenUSD

#209
post #152

I spent a ton of time in 2022 looking for people adopting USD for game development and came up with nada. It's popular in vfx but nobody in gaming seems to be adopting it in any way I could find. Has that changed since?

It's early days for USD in gamedev, but Remedy is using it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI2pyzTOvaQ

Interesting find, thanks!

Re: Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia form alliance for OpenUSD

#210
post #117
post #46

Does anybody know if the Blender project is involved / working towards this in any capacity?

Just finished writing [0] about Blender's USD import issue. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36947946

Wow, thanks!
Post reply on HN