It’s very likely that everyone involved has been working together for some time, they’re just formalizing it with this announcement. If you search for the company names and “USD” (except for JDF?), they’ve all got websites that predate this announcement defining their engagement with and support of the format.
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Apple Announces Alliance With Adobe, NVIDIA, and Others to Develop Pixar's 3D Standard
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😮 in light bulbs!? Wow I used to be in the know on leading edge tech but that was last in the mid-2010’s (work and tech burnout). I completely forgot about RISC.
right! I should have been more specific and that’s on me. My issue isn’t with ARM, it’s with Apple’s SoC. I’d go back and edit my posts but - I’m tired lol
thanks for the info!
oh, and someone else suggested I read up on Apple’s history - I’ve been using Mac’s since 1999, mostly PowerMac’s then Mac Pro’s. I sold my 2019 Mac Pro for a Mac Studio Ultra and finally said goodbye to towers for the first time in 20+ years. Thankfully, I already have a thunderbolt array, I just needed to grab another one for my internal drives that were in my Pro’s MPX module. I’ll miss the cleaner all-in-one tower but the Studio Ultra is blazingly fast and incredibly quiet. I don’t have a problem with ARM systems, just with SoC’s as (right now) Apple doesn’t allow users to upgrade GPU, RAM, etc. hoping that changes for the Mac Pro (and RAM for iMacs and laptops). I’m 45 so I’m used to having upgradable towers/ATX. Moving to an SoC desktop system has been an adjustment.
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Apple’s been burned by every CPU supplier (Motorola, IBM, Intel) they’ve ever used and people around here still question why Apple is building their own SoC’s now? Good grief…please try to grasp the obvious.
No one is questioning the obvious, some of us are merely lamenting the inability to upgrade components on apples SoC’s. As others have mentioned, that’s a design choice inherit with SoC’s (not ARM). That’s all.
They are already…
Home - The Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD)
aousd.org
They are so "brilliant" nowadays (just look at how they nailed the MacBooks with the notch), that I'm imagining the deal they did with NVIDIA this time: "Ok, ok, we let you in, but with one condition: you won't try to change the fact that the MacPro is an integrated GPU box and it will be like that forever"
It is robust for sure and just tested some quite complicated meshes and worked like a champ in my initial tests.They are already…
I think Pixar put a LOT of work into it internally before releasing its initial iteration, and it’s proven to be robust for the large scale 3D industry.Home - The Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD)
I think Apple was helping us by boycotting CUDA. Apple didn't want any Mac software to become reliant on CUDA. This would make it harder for them to switch to AMD if AMD gives them a better bid for a GPU in the future and would have made it harder for their switch to Apple Silicon.
Getting locked into CUDA would be bad for users too. If apps started using CUDA, it would make it harder for Apple to consider AMD bids, which could result in higher prices for us. And it would have been a rougher transition for us to Apple Silicon when losing CUDA-dependent features of apps. Or if CUDA had spread deeply and widely enough, we might still have power-hungry discrete GPUs in our laptops today.
Just of curiosity cuz I'm completely out of the loop--didnt even know there was beef involved between the two. But what would have Apple worked with Nvidia on a few years ago? Is it their GPU's and DLSS? Because I think work on Apple Silicon was already underway and apparently Apple has their own version own, albeit inferior, version of DLSS called MetalFX.
So maybe that's why Apple never bothered using Nvidia's GPU's in their Mac lineup? Just guessing.
OT: This alliance is great news. Glad to see Apple working collaboratively with other players. It makes sense for file and other standards as it's a win-win for everyone (same reason they should've jumped to USB-C much sooner but oh well).
WTF are you talking about? Both Painter & Designer are industry standard in Texturing & Material creation. Neither Mari nor 3DCoat are anywhere near in adoption rate.
And as a Freelancer I had no problem getting their 3D package that comes with Painter, Designer & Sampler; even though I don't use sampler.
If you still find it costly you can get a perpetual license on Steam.
I don't know which industry you are in, but if you are a 3D production artist, Substance Designer+ Painter (Painter more) are the go-to industry standards along with Maya & Zbrush that you must learn to get a job in big studios.
USD has been around for awhile and is already supported in motion/FCPX.
Would love to see one great interchange format in 3D.
This is the future to include, memory and GPU in the SOC. The x86 will also get more and more into this and upgradeability will suffer, but speed and latency will reduce.
While I'm not sure I'd go as far as "worthless", I was a bit surprised that Apple didn't come up with a way to use internal GPU-only (or even full M-series CPU/GPU) daughter cards to turn the Mac Pro into a potential render engine for high-end graphics applications.
This setup probably wouldn't have much of a real-time effect on gaming (FPS et al) because of the speed bottleneck between the compute engines...but I would have thought it would have a major effect on render times.
Perhaps in the future...
Meanwhile, I absolutely love the M-series CPUs and the SoC concept for my purposes. And the fact that I have to use an actual fire to roast marshmallows rather than my Intel MacBook is a feature I'm not willing to sacrifice for more speed. But I can imagine the frustration of users on the very high end.
This isn’t peace. This is shared mutual interest. I bet their representatives sit on opposite ends of the table.
Cool, I've used USD files in Blender a few times before, and it definitely feels a little like magic with how most things just work. Usually 3D formats are kinda a hassle, especially the older ones like OBJ or FBX. Always nice to see tech corps working together in improving new open standards, doesn't happen as often nowadays as it used to.
True. I just hate e-waste - if we can't upgrade RAM, GPU, etc (which does extend system life) then I wish a simple SoC replacement could be possible instead of junking an entire desktop system. I'm old school so I keep imagining swapping out a CPU type upgrade - a simple chip swap. I know, that's a dream considering all the other components that would have to work with a new SoC, but hey, I like to dream.
Instead what you find is that instead the focus is more on making the system recyclable in that can be stripped down and the parts recycled.True. I just hate e-waste - if we can't upgrade RAM, GPU, etc (which does extend system life) then I wish a simple SoC replacement could be possible instead of junking an entire desktop system. I'm old school so I keep imagining swapping out a CPU type upgrade - a simple chip swap. I know, that's a dream considering all the other components that would have to work with a new SoC, but hey, I like to dream.
So whilst may not be used as long the components can be recycled more easily.
Is a different way of looking at it however less of my Mac Studio will end up as Land Fill/e-waste then my old PC Towers did.
Reminds me of the VietNam peace negotiations. They argued over the shape of the table for weeks. 😂
Just listened to Siggraph 2023 keynote by nvidia. So has anyone here used Omniverse? They were really pushing how it uses USD and interoperates with other apps to do interesting things (they claimed Mercedes uses it to design their EVs and their ADAS system).