Universal Scene Description: Metaverse HTML

Have you ever seen the movie "Finding Dory?"

The 2016 Pixar film about a blue fish with anterograde amnesia might not be your thing, but it could be compared to CERN, the very first website that went live on August 6, 1991 .

What's the link? The animated film was the first to be built using Universal Scene Description (USD) - which many believe is a fundamental part of the Metaverse.

In other words, USD is the HTML code for 3D virtual worlds.

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"We didn't have the metaverse in mind when we created USD," Pixar VP and CTO Steve May said during a virtual panel discussion at Nvidia's GTC event this week. . "We didn't expect the USD to rise so quickly and so broadly."

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The metaverse is arguably one of the hottest talking points in the tech world – how to build it, govern it, monetize it – and the USD is hailed for its pivotal role in accelerating of its evolution.

And, in this, the USD is on a journey the world has seen before.

An easily extensible, open-source framework for exchanging 3D computer graphics data, USD was specifically designed to be collaborative, to enable non-destructive editing, and to allow for multiple views and opinions.

Many compare its current iteration to HTML: resources can be loaded and representation can be specified. Its next phase will be enhanced interactivity and portability – the CSS moment, so to speak. The general consensus is: "Let's move on to USD JavaScript," said Natalya Tatarchuk, distinguished technical colleague and chief architect for professional art and graphic innovation at Unity Gaming Services.

But first: the origins of the universal display description

As May explained, the USD came about because Pixar was looking to solve the workflow issues of making movies. The studio's films involve complex and often whimsical worlds that must be believable. With many animators working on scenes at the same time, Pixar needed a tool that fosters collaboration and is also expressive, powerful and fast.

USD essentially merged, distilled, and generalized many of the extended systems and concepts that had existed within Pixar for some time. The framework was first fully exploited in "Finding Dory", which was released in June 2016. The following month, Pixar made the USD open source.

Ultimately, May described the platform as "old and new"; it is nascent and evolving rapidly. And, because it's so versatile and powerful, it's widely adopted in many other areas beyond filming and gaming – design, robotics, manufacturing, architecture.

Nvidia, for example, noticed that the company had begun to develop content and applications for simulation and AI in-house, in particular creating worlds to simulate autonomous vehicles, explained Rev Lebaredian, vice -President of Simulation Technology and Omniverse Engineering at Nvidia.

The company needed a common way to describe and build worlds, "very large worlds, collaboratively in many spaces," Lebaredian said, and USD "focused on the essence of the problem".

Many file formats have come and gone over the decades, he said, but USD felt like "there was a lot of wisdom steeped in them."

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