USD: the file format of the physical world
Every asset on Harmoniis is USD. Robot models, environments, and complete training scenes are composed in one universal format.
What is USD?
Universal Scene Description (USD) is a file format created by Pixar for composing complex 3D scenes. It describes geometry, materials, lighting, physics properties, and hierarchical scene composition. Just as HTML describes web pages and JSON describes data, USD describes physical worlds.
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, mass properties, inertia tensors, collision meshes, visual meshes, and material properties. An environment in USD carries physics materials, lighting, semantic labels, and domain randomization parameters. USD composes — you can layer a robot into an environment without converting formats.
USD on Harmoniis
- Every asset listed on the marketplace is in USD format
- URDF robot models are imported and converted to USD on upload
- Environments built in the Harmonia App (UE5) export as USD
- Harmoniverse physics engine reads USD scenes natively
- Isaac Lab training environments are composed in USD
- One format from artist's desk to robot's deployment
For artists
If you already work in USD — for film, games, automotive, or VR — your skills transfer directly. The same asset quality standards, the same tooling, a new vertical that pays. Any artist who learns to publish USD assets has a skill that works across film, games, robotics, and AR. Harmoniis is the monetization layer for that skill in the robotics vertical.