Universal Scene Description (USD) is an efficient, scalable system for authoring, reading, and streaming time-sampled scene description for interchange between graphics applications.

For more details, please visit the web site here.

	master	dev
Linux

• User Documentation and Tutorials
• API Documentation
• Advanced Build Configuration

Need help understanding certain concepts in USD? See Getting Help with USD.

If you are experiencing undocumented problems with the software, please read our issue guidelines and file a bug via the Issues page on the GitHub repository.

USD is currently supported on Linux platforms and has been built and tested on CentOS 7 and RHEL 7.

We are actively working on porting USD to both Windows and Mac platforms. Support for both platforms should be considered experimental at this time. Currently, the tree will build on Mac, but will not build on Windows.

The Core USD libraries (located in pxr/base and pxr/usd respectively) have the following dependencies.

The Imaging and UsdImaging components (located in pxr/imaging and pxr/usdImaging respectively) have the following additional dependencies. These components can be disabled at build-time, for further details see Advanced Build Configuration.

git clone https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/USD

cd USD
mkdir build
cd build

cmake                                       \
-DTBB_tbb_LIBRARY=/path/to/libtbb.so        \    
-DOPENEXR_LOCATION=/path/to/openexr         \
-DOPENSUBDIV_ROOT_DIR=/path/to/opensubdiv   \
-DPTEX_INCLUDE_DIR=/path/to/ptex            \
-DOIIO_BASE_DIR=/path/to/openimageio        \
-DBOOST_ROOT=/path/to/boost                 \
..

make -j <NUM_CORES> install

The following will generate an Xcode project that can be used to build USD. See notes in the Supported Platforms section for more information.

cmake                                       \
-G "Xcode"                                  \
-DTBB_tbb_LIBRARY=/path/to/libtbb.dylib     \    
-DOPENEXR_LOCATION=/path/to/openexr         \
-DOPENSUBDIV_ROOT_DIR=/path/to/opensubdiv   \
-DPTEX_INCLUDE_DIR=/path/to/ptex            \
-DOIIO_BASE_DIR=/path/to/openimageio        \
-DBOOST_ROOT=/path/to/boost/include         \
..

make -j <NUM_CORES> install

The following will generate a Visual Studio 2015 (the minimum required version) sln file which can be used to build USD. See notes in the Supported Platforms section for more information.

C:\Program Files\CMake\bin\cmake.exe             ^
    -G "Visual Studio 14 Win64"                  ^
    -DTBB_tbb_LIBRARY=C:\path\to\tbb.lib         ^     
    -DOPENEXR_LOCATION=C:\path\to\openexr        ^ 
    -DOPENSUBDIV_ROOT_DIR=C:\path\to\opensubdiv  ^ 
    -DPTEX_INCLUDE_DIR=C:\path\to\ptex           ^ 
    -DOIIO_BASE_DIR=C:\path\to\openimageio       ^ 
    -DBOOST_ROOT=C:\path\to\boost                ^ 
    --build .. --config Release --target install

There are many options you can specify throughout the build, such as building third-party software plugins, disabling specific components, and enabling developer options. You can find information on these in Build Configuration.

Note 1: You will need to update the sample paths with your own.

Note 2: You may have to supply additional defines to cmake if you have many versions of packages installed.

Launch usdview with a sample asset.

$ export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:USD_INSTALL_ROOT/lib/python
$ usdview extras/usd/tutorials/convertingLayerFormats/Sphere.usda

Note: Replace USD_INSTALL_ROOT with the location set in your build, usually via CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX.

If you'd like to contribute to USD (and we appreciate the help!), please see the Contributing page in the documentation for more information.