Alliance for OpenUSD
The Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) is a Linux Foundation project dedicated to promoting interoperability of 3D content through Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD). Founded by Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and NVIDIA, AOUSD standardizes 3D content ecosystems for film, gaming, architecture, industrial design, and the metaverse. OpenUSD provides a high-performance extensible software platform for collaboratively constructing animated 3D scenes with schemas for geometry, shading, lighting, physics, and volume rendering.
Limited machine-readable signal and partial portal coverage — documentation a human can read, but little a machine or agent can consume without scraping.
API Evangelist profiles Alliance for OpenUSD the way a machine reads it — 29 machine-readable artifacts across 2 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — Alliance for OpenUSD scores 43.6/100 (thin), with a separate agent-readiness read of 7/100 (human only). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile Alliance for OpenUSD
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Alliance for OpenUSD. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 2
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
OpenUSD C++ API
The OpenUSD C++ API is the primary interface for working with Universal Scene Description data. Provides access to USD core (scene composition and asset management), UsdImaging ...
OpenUSD Python Bindings
OpenUSD provides comprehensive Python bindings for all major C++ modules, enabling scripting and pipeline integration in Python-based DCC workflows. Python bindings cover the fu...
Pricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Aousd Plans Pricing
PLANSRate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Aousd Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFinOps 1
Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Aousd Finops
FINOPSFeatures 5
The notable capabilities this provider advertises, captured as structured features so they can be searched and compared instead of read one landing page at a time.
Notable capabilities this provider offers.
Scene Composition
USD's composition arcs (references, payloads, variants, instancing, and specializes) enable non-destructive scene assembly from multiple asset layers with override workflows.
Schema-Driven Extensibility
OpenUSD's schema system allows studios and tool vendors to extend the core specification with domain-specific schemas for physics, simulation, characters, and environments.
Hydra Rendering Architecture
The Hydra rendering delegate architecture enables pluggable render backends including Storm (OpenGL), Arnold, RenderMan, and others.
Multiple File Formats
OpenUSD supports human-readable ASCII (.usda), binary (.usdb), and packaged archive (.usdz) file formats for different use cases.
Asset Resolution
The ArResolver system enables customizable asset path resolution for integrating USD with studio asset management systems.
Semantic Vocabularies 1
JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
Aousd Context
JSON-LDSpectral Rules 1
Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.
Alliance for OpenUSD API Rules
SPECTRALJSON Schema 2
Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.
Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.
JSON Structure 2
JSON Structure captures the data shapes in a form built for tooling — a complement to JSON Schema that keeps the model machine-legible.
JSON Structure definitions describing this provider's data shapes.
Aousd Usd Layer Structure
JSON STRUCTUREAousd Usd Prim Structure
JSON STRUCTUREExamples 2
Real request and response payloads are what turn a spec from abstract into obvious — and they're one of the twelve things an agent needs to call an API correctly on the first try.
Example request and response payloads for these APIs.
Aousd Usd Layer Example
EXAMPLEAousd Usd Prim Example
EXAMPLESecurity Posture 1
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Use Cases 5
What developers actually build with this provider — captured so the catalogue answers 'what is this for', not just 'what does this expose'.
What developers build with this provider.
Film and Visual Effects Production
Exchange complex animated scenes between DCC tools (Maya, Houdini, Blender, Katana) and render farms using OpenUSD as the common format.
Game Development
Use OpenUSD as an interchange format between game engines like Unreal Engine and Unity and DCC content creation tools.
Architecture and Design Visualization
Share 3D building models, materials, and lighting between architectural design tools and real-time visualization platforms.
Metaverse and XR
Enable interoperability of 3D assets and scenes across XR platforms, spatial computing devices, and virtual world applications.
Industrial Digital Twins
Represent complex mechanical assemblies and simulation environments for industrial digital twin applications using USD schemas.
Integrations 5
Pre-built integrations with other platforms tell you where this provider already fits in a stack.
Pre-built integrations with other platforms and tools.
Autodesk Maya / 3ds Max
Import and export USD files via Autodesk's official USD plugins for Maya and 3ds Max, enabling OpenUSD-based pipelines.
SideFX Houdini
Native USD integration in Houdini via LOPs (Layout Object Primitives) for creating and editing USD scenes and assets.
Apple Reality Composer Pro
Apple's spatial computing tools use .usdz as the primary format for augmented reality and visionOS content.
NVIDIA Omniverse
NVIDIA Omniverse is built on OpenUSD, using it as the foundation for collaborative 3D design and industrial digital twin workflows.
Pixar RenderMan
RenderMan natively reads USD scenes, making it the primary production renderer for USD-based feature film pipelines.
Resources
Every other property we hold for Alliance for OpenUSD — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 2
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 2
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Design & Contract 1
Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events
Build 2
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 1
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Company 2
The organization behind the API
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/aousd · machine-readable index on apis.io