UniversalSceneDescription 7.2.0

Universal Scene Description for .NET

Pixar's OpenUSD - Universal Scene Description - packaged as a single, drop-in NuGet for .NET 10. Bundles the managed bindings, the native USD runtime, and the Pixar plugin tree under the standard runtimes/<rid>/native/ NuGet convention, so the .NET SDK automatically deploys everything into your output folder. No build steps, no environment variables, no plugin registration code.

USD is a high-performance extensible software platform for collaboratively constructing animated 3D scenes, designed to meet the needs of large-scale film and visual effects production.

Install

dotnet add package UniversalSceneDescription

Quick start

using UniversalSceneDescription;
using pxr;

// Configures the native loader and registers the bundled Pixar plugin tree.
// Idempotent and thread-safe - call once at startup.
UsdRuntime.Initialize();

using var stage = UsdStage.CreateNew("hello.usda");
UsdGeomXform.Define(stage, new SdfPath("/Hello"));
UsdGeomSphere.Define(stage, new SdfPath("/Hello/World"));
stage.Save();

That's it. The UsdRuntime.Initialize() call points USD at the usd/ plugin folder that the .NET SDK dropped next to your executable, and makes sure the OS loader can resolve the native DLLs.

What's in the box

The .NET SDK auto-deploys everything under runtimes/<rid>/native/ to your build output (preserving the usd/ subdirectory layout) - dotnet run, dotnet test, and dotnet publish all just work.

Configuration

Override the plugin location at runtime:

UsdRuntime.Initialize(
    pluginPath: "/custom/path/to/usd",
    nativeLibraryDirectory: "/custom/path/to/native");

To suppress the bundled native runtime entirely (rare - only useful if you ship your own USD build):

<PackageReference Include="UniversalSceneDescription" Version="7.1.0">
  <ExcludeAssets>runtime</ExcludeAssets>
</PackageReference>

Opt out of the automatic plugin-tree staging (rare - only needed if you want to stage the usd/ plugin folder somewhere other than next to the executable, or you ship your own USD build):

<PropertyGroup>
  <DisableUsdPluginStaging>true</DisableUsdPluginStaging>
</PropertyGroup>

Platform support

The csproj globs runtimes/**/*, so refreshing any per-RID folder with a newer platform USD build is enough to ship updated native support - no csproj edit needed. Each per-RID folder includes runtime notes and currently ships binaries from Unity's com.unity.usd.core plugin distribution.

UsdRuntime itself is fully cross-platform: on Linux it prepends the native directory to LD_LIBRARY_PATH, on macOS to DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH and DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH, on Windows to PATH. PXR_PLUGINPATH_NAME is set on every platform so libplug discovers the bundled plugin tree.

Learn USD

• Introduction to USD
• Tutorials
• FAQ
• Toolset
• NVIDIA USD resources & samples
• Pixar demo assets

Credits

• Pixar Animation Studios - authors of OpenUSD.
• Unity Technologies - the managed C# bindings vendored here are extracted from the com.unity.usd.core package.
• 3DEngine - packaging and .NET 10 helper API.

License

MPL-2.0 - see file for details. OpenUSD itself is licensed under the Modified Apache 2.0 License.

Issues, PRs and contributions welcome at github.com/EggyStudio/UniversalSceneDescription.