Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1547068
4 cgw j u ly • a u g u s t • s e p t e m b e r 2 0 2 6 A T A G L A N C E • OpenUSD, MaterialX, and OpenPBR have helped define how an as- set should look, and be portable across DCCs and renderers. Delivery hasn't caught up: leaving the workstation still means optimizing for a mesh format like glTF or rendering a turntable. • Miris spatial streaming treats 3D like video. The asset is ingested and converted to a stream once, then the 3D data streams adap- tively and reconstructs on the viewer's device without consuming a cloud GPU per viewer. • Assets originally in the 10s to 100s of GB now stream and render on devices in under a second. More than 30,000 OpenUSD assets have been conditioned by Miris. • Evercast, Playbook, and CGAxis use it today for live review, DAM previews, and marketplaces. Inside the studio, the argument is mostly settled. Layout, LookDev, Lighting, and FX pass the same OpenUSD scene description back and forth, and the adoption of MaterialX and OpenPBR means that materials can finally have consistency between renderers. When the asset has to leave the building, most of what we standardized gets le behind. A supervisor wants to review an asset but has a bad Internet con- nection. A client wants it on an iPad. A marketplace buyer wants to inspect it before paying. The options are either render a turntable or optimize the mesh and textures so that you can share a portable glTF or USDZ. Most likely both, if you want to support all devices and browsers. S T A N D A R D S F I X E D T H E L O O K , N O T T H E D E L I V E R Y MaterialX provides a portable language for describing materials and shading networks, while OpenPBR builds on that foundation to give renderers a shared, physically-based model for how surfaces should behave and appear. Alongside OpenUSD, these standards are creating a more consistent foundation for 3D content: OpenUSD describes the asset and its scene structure, while MaterialX and OpenPBR describe its materials and appearance. The goal is in- teroperability across DCCs and renderers without requiring the as- set to be rebuilt or its appearance reinterpreted at every step. Any- one who has moved an asset between rendering environments and watched it come out looking different understands the value of that consistency. But OpenUSD is also an unbounded standard. Production assets run to 100 or 200 GB of geometry, textures, and scene graph. Devices have gotten more powerful and networks faster, but delivering these large assets to the end consumer is still burdensome. How do you take an asset that strains a workstation, keep the art- ist's intent intact, and put it on the device in someone's pocket? T R E A T 3 D T H E W A Y W E T R E A T V I D E O People have called OpenUSD the HTML of 3D. The comparison holds, and it points at what's missing. The web became universal when HTML was paired with streaming audio and video. Audio and video started as something you downloaded; now they adapt reso- lution, bit depth, and sample frequency to whatever device and con- nection you have, and we expect it to work anywhere. 3D delivery hasn't been solved in the same way. The standard path is still to process the asset by hand, package it, download it to the client, and run it on the local device's GPU. Pixel streaming is an alternative that keeps the fidelity by rendering on a cloud GPU and sending video, but every concurrent viewer needs a dedicated cloud GPU and every interaction is a round tripMiris spatial streaming con- OpenUSD solved interchange. Miris solved delivery. STUDIOS HAVE STANDARDIZED HOW 3D ASSETS ARE DESCRIBED AND HOW THEY SHOULD LOOK. BUT GETTING THAT SAME HIGH-FIDELITY ASSET IN FRONT OF A REVIEWER, CLIENT, OR BUYER WITHOUT SIMPLIFYING IT, RENDERING IT, OR REQUIRING SPECIALIZED SOFTWARE IS STILL A CHALLENGE. BY LAURIE KOENIG SENIOR DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT, MIRIS SPONSORED CONTENT