Just as HTML describes web pages and JSON describes data, USD describes physical worlds.

What is USD

Universal Scene Description is a file format created by Pixar for composing complex 3D scenes. It describes geometry, materials, lighting, physics properties, and hierarchical scene composition.

Who uses USD

Film and VFX: Pixar, DreamWorks, Industrial Light & Magic
Automotive: BMW, Volkswagen digital twins
Robotics simulation: NVIDIA Omniverse, Isaac Sim
AR/VR: Apple RealityKit, visionOS
Game engines: Unreal Engine 5 native importer
Harmoniis: the marketplace standard

Why USD for robotics

A robot model in USD carries everything simulation needs:

Joint hierarchies and articulation
Mass properties and inertia tensors
Collision meshes and visual meshes
Material properties (friction, restitution, PBR textures)
Semantic labels for perception training

An environment in USD carries:

Scene composition (objects, lighting, cameras)
Physics materials
Domain randomization parameters
Sensor configurations

USD composes

The killer feature of USD is composition. You can layer a robot into an environment without converting formats. The same file works in Harmoniverse (physics), Isaac Lab (training), and UE5 (visualization).

For artists

If you already work in USD — for film, games, automotive, or VR — your skills transfer directly to the robotics simulation vertical. The same quality standards, the same tooling, a new market that pays.

Harmoniis is the monetization layer for USD skills in robotics. Upload your assets, tag them for discovery, and earn whenever someone uses them in a simulation training pipeline.

Start selling USD assets or learn how the marketplace works.