USDZ — Apple's favorite 3d file format

podperson

podperson

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I installed the latest version of Apple Motion (seriously, at $50/license for a first-rate piece of video-editing and compositing software that keeps getting free upgrades, it's a steal) and discovered they've added a bunch of real 3d functionality.

Anyway, the format they support is usdz, which I'd never heard of. Turns out it's a format developed by Pixar, which—wouldn't you know it—supports a whole bunch of functionality necessary for AR (hence Apple adopting it for Motion and ARKit).

You can convert glb files (which Cheetah 3d handles quite nicely these days) to usdz, but not vice versa. Right now that looks like the best path for most folks since glb has become quite widely supported in the last two years whereas usdz was only published in 2018.

(BTW anyone else annoyed that this forum's image upload limits seem to be firmly rooted in 2009? I wonder if the forum software at least supports automatically converting, for example, PNG files to JPEG.)

I found a thread on the babylonjs forums about adding usdz support and apparently one of the problems is that usdz has a much more powerful/complex shader model than glb, which suggests (a) there will be no lossless path from usdz back to glb etc. and (b) handling the files may be more complex than simply converting data formats.
 

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It's already mentioned in several threads, one of them asking for it's incorporation into Cheetah, another one that goes a little bit deeper (https://www.cheetah3d.com/forum/index.php?threads/13841/#post-122768).

By the way, I still think that USD has the potential to become a universal and professional data-exchange format, because more and more apps actually do support it, amongst them different 3d apps like Houdini and Modo, quixel mixer, nuke etc. You actually can shove around whole scenes around from one app to the other, all materials, cameras, lights etc. included, the whole thing far more powerful than literally every other 3d file format, probably already as widely (or even more) supported as gltf / glb. This probably has to do with Hydra linked to it, so viewports and renderers can more easily be incorporated in apps which will support it.

On the downside, it still hasn't become that standard and each developer may create bring his own ideas into his exporters, downsize the functionality (as Apple did), and as of now, this common standard has yet to be defined, as much as I know. A lot of apps wouldn't support everything that could be defined in there (so they would have to leave those parts simply alone and save that again together with what's supported, at least as long as nothing is changed that would affect those parts (which is far easier to write than to do, I know). But it would be great to have a file you could open in any 3d app you fancy, from modeling to animation to texturing to rendering, forth and back, as much as you like (or better is necessary).

But, don't get me wrong, please, it was almost impossible in the last 3 years to not hear about this format for anybody working with 3d, be that as a professional or hobbyist. It's probably mentioned in every forum for every app, already widely supported, and mentioned on countless websites and in 3d magazines etc.
 
I just came here to see if there are any updates on this because I also use Motion and this is still a pain to convert.

USDZ support would be amazing!
 
Hasdrubal said:
it was almost impossible in the last 3 years to not hear about this format for anybody working with 3d, be that as a professional or hobbyist. It's probably mentioned in every forum for every app, already widely supported, and mentioned on countless websites and in 3d magazines etc.
Click to expand...
Shows how out of touch I've gotten. (I did a bunch of AR programming in 2013, long before Apple built support into iOS, and haven't looked at it since.)

Sounds like USD support has been insanely fast as these things go. Even FBX took longer, and it was backed by SGI/Autodesk and they provided a free SDK.
 
podperson said:
Shows how out of touch I've gotten. (I did a bunch of AR programming in 2013, long before Apple built support into iOS, and haven't looked at it since.)

Sounds like USD support has been insanely fast as these things go. Even FBX took longer, and it was backed by SGI/Autodesk and they provided a free SDK.
Click to expand...

Yes, it was fast. But, how I understand it, with fbx you have to pay Autodesk a license, while USD is free of charge. Also it was already a proven format before, as it already was used internally by Pixar exactly for the purpose of shoving data around. Everybody seems to embrace it at the moment.

And yes, it's easy to get out of touch with 3d, a lot of changes recently, while the core concepts roughly are the same for something like 20 years.
 
USD / USDZ import/export is a must for macOS.

You can use Apple's Reality Converter GUI app (developer license required). It will convert OBJ, GLB, FBX etc to USDZ (including rigged character animations / keyframes).

On top of that, Apple just released a Photogrammetry API that turns your photos into OBJ or USDZ files in around 3 minutes on macOS with M1 or equivalent Intel chipset. https://developer.apple.com/augmented-reality/object-capture/ . Cheetah could even incorporate this API into its own import and grab some of that crowd.

These captured obj objects already character rig in Cheetah3D view demo USDZ scene on iOS AR Quick Look => https://usdzshare.com/?ug-gallery=photo-detail&photo_id=5708

Apple's Object capture API => Cheetah3D => Reality Converter App => Reality Composer App

You also have NVIDIA's Omniverse Platform that is built using the format USD => https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-omniverse-platform The next generation spatial computing platforms. Pixar’s Universal Scene Description (USD) is the HTML of 3D.

I've written iOS apps myself in the past year or so that import/export USDZ format so its doable & many macOS and iOS apps already now support USDZ format => https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uniformtypeidentifiers/uttype/3551587-usd/

I think Cheetah is missing an opportunity for the USDZ train because it definitely has strong rigging / keyframe functionality which incorporating USDZ will help people jump on board the software.
 
My workflow with Cheetah3D and USD is using my own App PBRtist:

- I create materials and their variants using PBRtist and export them to Cheetah's .c3dmat files
- I work on the model in C3D and create nice renderings.
- If I'm fine with the model I export .gltf .glb files and import these into PBRtist.
- In PBRtist I can create special versions with material variants to export as USD and check them in AR on my iOS devices.
- Changes on the model and re-exported to glTF will be reflected by PBRtist.

Check this post with the announcement of PRTtist Public Beta.

Roof Terrace.jpg
 
Hi Uwe,

Procreate 5.2 is adding 3D painting. That is going to be a huge release. https://procreate.art/insight/2021/procreate-52-preview

It will be coming soon as a free update for all existing Procreate users and a one off fee of just US $9.99 on the Apple App Store. It will support USDZ format with PBR etc.

This 3D painting ability has been missing on the iPad & will make a huge difference for 3D creatives in this area using iPads. Coupled with Apple's object capture API for getting quick mesh scans of small sized objects with photo textures. You will be able to do some very creative 3D stuff on an iPad now for less than $100 spend on software and subscriptions.
 
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