Pixar Universal Scene Description (USD)

What Is Universal Scene Description?


Universal Scene Description (USD) is an easily extensible, open-source 3D scene description and file format developed by Pixar for content creation and interchange among different tools. As a result of its power and versatility, it’s being widely adopted, not only in the visual effects community, but also in architecture, design, robotics, manufacturing, and other disciplines.



Pixar Universal Scene Description (USD)



USD at NVIDIA


USD is the foundation for NVIDIA Omniverse™, a live collaborative platform that connects a wide variety of content creation tools to each other and to our real-time NVIDIA RTX™ ray tracer. Learn more about NVIDIA Omniverse and sign up for updates here.

NVIDIA has expanded upon USD by developing new tools, integrating technologies and providing samples and tutorials.


Showcase piece created by NVIDIA to illustrate the power of RTX on the Omniverse Platform. Marbles was created by a distributed team of artists and engineers in Omniverse, assembling VFX+ quality USD assets into a fully physically simulated game level. Marbles runs on a single Quadro RTX 8000 simulating complex physics in a real-time ray traced world.


USD Pre-built Libraries and Tools

    The USD libraries are only available in source form from Pixar, and building USD can be quite an adventure. We’re offering pre-built libraries as well as the accompanying tools (e.g., USDView) for download. This package will help you get started developing tools that take advantage of USD or get you up and running with USDView right away.


    USD 20.05, Python 3.6
    For Windows
    06/02/2020
    DOWNLOAD NOW
    USD 20.05, Python 3.6
    For Linux
    06/02/2020
    DOWNLOAD NOW
    USD 20.05, Python 3.7
    For MacOS
    06/02/2020
    DOWNLOAD NOW

    USD 20.05, Python 2.7
    For Windows
    06/02/2020
    DOWNLOAD NOW
    USD 20.05, Python 2.7
    For Linux
    06/02/2020
    DOWNLOAD NOW
    USD 20.05, Python 2.7
    For macOS
    06/02/2020
    DOWNLOAD NOW

      GitHub Repo (20.02)


USD Sample Assets

USD scene with MDL materials rendered in Omniverse USD scene with MDL materials rendered in Omniverse


NVIDIA USD Attic Sample

Please review the license agreement and check the box below to indicate that you accept it and wish to proceed to the download.

I Agree To the Terms of the UNIVERSAL SCENE DESCRIPTION ASSET DEMONSTRATION LICENSE AGREEMENT


Getting Started with USD

NVIDIA Tutorials and Notes

These tutorials will help Python developers new to USD learn how to perform common tasks on the scene graph, as well as learn how to be more proficient with the USD documentation.

Using USD

Using Hydra



Material Definition Language (MDL) Schema

USD is agnostic about the way material properties are represented. At NVIDIA, we believe artists should be able to author materials for cinema-quality rendering and have an automated process that produces simpler but still high-quality shaders in real time.


To achieve this, NVIDIA has developed MDL, an open-source, GPU-friendly Material Definition Language with an associated distiller that simplifies shaders for preview and virtual reality (VR) applications. The NVIDIA MDL SDK has been adopted by many application developers, including Adobe®, Allegorithmic, and Epic’s Unreal Studio.

To facilitate its use, we’ve created a specification (MDL Schema) for referencing MDL in USD and have developed Omniverse plug-ins to facilitate MDL-based workflows. MDL enjoys wide and increasing adoption in the design, visual effects, and gaming industries, among others.

MDL material examples

Additional Resources