Knowledge base

Resources

Guides, documentation, and insights for modern USD pipelines — sourced from the OpenUSD specification and our production experience.

Guides

3 articles

Step-by-step walkthroughs for USD authoring, conversion pipelines, and tooling.

Tutorial

Hello World — Creating Your First USD Stage

Walk through creating a simple USD stage containing a transform and a sphere using Python, then visualize it in usdview.

Guide

USDZ Packaging — Single-File 3D Delivery

Understand the USDZ file format: an uncompressed zip archive designed for single-object 3D content delivery with zero-copy file access.

Guide

UsdPreviewSurface — Setting Up PBR Materials

Learn how to create physically-based materials using the UsdPreviewSurface shader, with support for both metallic and specular workflows.

Docs

3 articles

Technical reference for USD composition, scene traversal, and rendering architecture.

Reference

Composition & Layering — How USD Resolves Scenes

USD's composition engine evaluates six arc types (SubLayers, References, Payloads, VariantSets, Inherits, Specializes) in the LIVRPS strength ordering.

Reference

Stage Traversal & Scene Hierarchy

Understanding Prims, Properties, Attributes, and Relationships — the building blocks of every USD scene.

Reference

Hydra Rendering Architecture

Hydra connects scene delegates (data consumers) to render delegates (renderers), enabling mix-and-match rendering backends.

Blog & Updates

3 articles

Industry insights, pipeline tips, and product updates from the Inside Media team.

Insight

Why USD Is Eating the 3D World

From Pixar's internal tool to industry standard — how Universal Scene Description became the lingua franca of 3D pipelines.

Pipeline

USDZ for Apple Vision Pro & Web Delivery

Practical tips for packaging USDZ assets that work across Apple's spatial computing platform and browser-based viewers.

Engineering

Building a USD Lint Pipeline

How Inside Media's converter validates and auto-fixes USD assets — from extent computation to physics schema tagging.

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