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On July 25, 2024, the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) announced three kinds of progress: OpenUSD v24.08, new work toward a core specification, and expanded industry collaboration. It also named six new general members and established three Interest Groups focused on the built environment, diversity and inclusion, and emerging 3D geometry. The announcement describes developments at that time; it does not establish the current status of the release or specification work.
What AOUSD announced in July 2024
AOUSD described OpenUSD as an extensible framework for describing, composing, simulating, and collaboratively navigating and constructing 3D scenes. The alliance’s stated aim is to support the standardization, development, evolution, growth, and interoperability of OpenUSD for large-scale 3D projects.
The July 25 announcement brought together four related developments: a software release, progress on specification drafts and implementation work, three new Interest Groups, and six new general members. The membership additions were DigitalFish, Hunan Mango Innocreative Technology, Microsoft Corp., Shutterstock, Sony Group, and Sunvega Information Technology.
What changed in OpenUSD v24.08
AOUSD said OpenUSD v24.08 was available when it published the announcement. The release report highlighted three areas:
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- Runtime and platform alignment: Alignment with the VFX Reference Platform, including OneTBB support for newer data-parallel developments and Python 3.12 support.
- Rendering: A Vulkan-backed version of the Storm renderer, intended to improve cross-platform performance by using modern graphics APIs.
These are release details reported in 2024, not confirmation of what is included in a later OpenUSD version or whether v24.08 remains the latest release. The announcement also situated the work within collaboration across the OpenUSD ecosystem, including liaison agreements involving AOUSD, the Academy Software Foundation, and Khronos.
What the core specification work covered
AOUSD reported that its Core Specification Working Group had produced drafts for member review covering attribute data types, the document data model, and the core file formats USDA, USDC, and USDZ. The drafts being under member review is an important status distinction: the announcement did not describe them as finalized specifications.
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The group’s other stated work included sample implementations for USDA and USDC parsers, compliance testing, editorial work such as a conceptual glossary, and specifications for composition and stage population. Together, these activities span the description of data and documents, file-format rules, and ways to test or implement conformance.
Does OpenUSD support USDZ, USDA, and USDC?
The July 2024 announcement identifies USDA, USDC, and USDZ as core file formats in the specification effort. It also specifically mentions planned sample parser implementations for USDA and USDC. That is what this announcement establishes; it does not give format-by-format compatibility details for particular applications or versions.
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What the three Interest Groups do
AOUSD said each Interest Group works under a charter defining its scope and objectives. The groups make recommendations to AOUSD Working Groups, which drive normative specifications. In other words, the Interest Groups provide a place to explore needs and ideas; their recommendations feed into the groups responsible for specification work.
| Interest Group | Focus announced | Chairs named in the announcement |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations (AECO) | OpenUSD adoption in AECO and its relationship with IFC. | Angel Velez (Autodesk) and Sean Snyders (Trimble). |
| Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) | Concrete actions AOUSD could take to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. | Lori Smallwood (Apple). |
| Emerging Geometry | Newer 3D representation research, including Gaussian splats and Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs). Initial areas included neural-reconstruction assets and signed-distance-field primitives and operators. | Raymond Fei (Adobe) and Gavriel State (NVIDIA). |
How companies can participate in AOUSD work
The announcement presents participation as organizational and technical collaboration, rather than as use of a consumer product. It identifies general membership, Interest Groups that explore domain or technical topics, and Working Groups that drive normative specifications. The specification effort also included implementation samples and compliance testing.
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For a company deciding where its work fits, the useful distinction is the kind of contribution: an industry or research topic may fit an Interest Group’s charter, while specification drafting and conformance work sit with the relevant Working Group. The announcement does not provide application steps, eligibility requirements, fees, or a current group roster, so those details cannot be inferred from it.
Quick Recap
What the announcement does—and does not—establish
- It reports six new general members and three new Interest Groups as of July 25, 2024.
- It reports OpenUSD v24.08 as available at publication and describes its validation, runtime-alignment, and Storm renderer updates.
- It reports member-review drafts and related implementation and testing work, not a completed core specification.
- It explains the collaboration model between Interest Groups and Working Groups, but does not give current participation procedures or pricing.
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