NVIDIA Omniverse opens portals to vast worlds of OpenUSD

NVIDIA is advancing the development of OpenUSD – a 3D framework enabling interoperability between software tools and data types for the building of virtual worlds – through NVIDIA Omniverse and a new portfolio of technologies and Cloud application programming interfaces (APIs) – including ChatUSD and RunUSD – along with a new NVIDIA OpenUSD Developer Program.

These investments in OpenUSD expand on NVIDIA’s co-founding of the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) – an organisation announced last week that will standardise OpenUSD specifications – along with Pixar, Adobe, Apple, and Autodesk.

“Just as HTML ignited a major computing revolution of the 2D Internet, OpenUSD will spark the era of collaborative 3D and industrial digitalisation,” said Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “NVIDIA is putting our full force behind the advancement and adoption of OpenUSD through our development of NVIDIA Omniverse and generative AI.”

OpenUSD goes to the Cloud

NVIDIA announced four new Omniverse Cloud APIs built by NVIDIA for developers to more seamlessly implement and deploy OpenUSD pipelines and applications.

ChatUSD – a large language model (LLM) copilot for developers that can answer USD knowledge questions or generate Python-USD code scripts. ChatUSD is fine-tuned using USD functions and Python-USD code snippets from NVIDIA.

RunUSD – a Cloud API that translates OpenUSD files into fully path-traced rendered images by checking compatibility of the uploaded files against versions of OpenUSD releases, and generating renders with Omniverse Cloud. A demo of the API is currently available for developers in the NVIDIA OpenUSD Developer Program.

DeepSearch – an LLM agent enabling fast semantic search through massive databases of untagged assets.

USD-GDN Publisher – a one-click service that enables enterprises and software makers to publish high-fidelity, OpenUSD-based experiences to the Omniverse Cloud Graphics Delivery Network (GDN) from an Omniverse-based application such as USD Composer, as well as stream in real time to web browsers and mobile devices.

Evolving OpenUSD functionality

OpenUSD was invented to better connect film and animation pipelines. Industrial applications – such as building interoperable manufacturing design pipelines, creating physically accurate real-time digital twins of factories, or training and validating autonomous vehicles – require different demands of the 3D framework.

To enable these highly complex industrial and perception AI workloads, NVIDIA is developing NVIDIA Omniverse, the OpenUSD-native software platform for developing applications, as well as technologies that include geospatial data models, metrics assembly and simulation-ready, or SimReady, specifications for OpenUSD.

Geospatial data models for OpenUSD let users develop simulations and calculations for true-to-reality digital twins of factories, warehouses, cities and even Earth. For extreme-scale projects, it accounts for the planet’s curvature to ensure the simulations are physically accurate.

Industrial applications combine datasets from many tools and sources, each represented in different units. NVIDIA is developing a metrics assembly for OpenUSD that enables users to combine diverse datasets with complete accuracy.

NVIDIA is also developing a structure for new SimReady 3D models. These will include true-to-reality material and physical properties, which are critical to accurately training autonomous robots and vehicles. For example, an autonomous robot tasked with sorting packages needs to be trained in simulation on 3D packages that move and react to physical contact just as they would in the real world.

Get early access to OpenUSD services, resources, and tools through the NVIDIA OpenUSD Developer Program. This includes two new fully distributable OpenUSD sample scenes built by NVIDIA designers and artists – called Da Vinci’s Workshop and Riverfront Tower.