Simstim

Latest

OpenUSD 26.08, AOUSD's ISO push and VFX Platform CY2027

OpenUSD 26.08 ships LOD and Profiles schemas, AOUSD starts ISO work, CY2027 is final, and Unreal and Blender take new USD steps.

· 4 min read · houdini · unreal · blender · news · openusd · pipeline

This summer brought a lot of pipeline-standards news, much of it around SIGGRAPH in July. None of it is from the last few weeks except the VFX Reference Platform update at the end of August and a Houdini Engine release in early September. It is still worth a look if you maintain USD tooling across Houdini, Unreal and Blender. The items below run from June 17 to September 3, 2026.

OpenUSD 26.08 (July 20)

Pixar's OpenUSD changelog dates v26.08 to July 20, 2026. The items most likely to matter to pipeline TDs:

  • New schemas. UsdProfiles, for "capability-based profile compatibility queries", Level-of-Detail schemas, and back plate support with an initial Storm implementation.
  • Build changes. Python 3.9 and 3.10 support is deprecated, the minimum CMake is now 3.27, MaterialX moves to 1.39.5, and Python modules now install to the standard lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages location.
  • Deprecations. Deprecation warnings for .usdc files older than version 0.8.0 are now on by default, SdfTimeCode is replaced by GfTimeCode (with a compatibility alias), and more Hydra 1.0 classes are marked deprecated in favour of Hydra 2.0.

If you build USD yourself, the install-path change and the Python deprecations are the ones to check first, because they can break environment setup scripts. The .usdc warning will start showing up in logs, so it is a good time to find and re-save very old caches.

AOUSD: Core Spec 1.1 heads to ISO (July 21)

The Alliance for OpenUSD announced on July 21, 2026 that Core Specification 1.1 is starting the ISO certification process. The announcement also says:

  • the Core Specification now has a public GitHub repository;
  • Geometry, Physics and Materials 1.0 specifications are expected later in 2026;
  • ByteDance, Huawei, Physicl and Unity have joined as general members.

For background, Core Specification 1.0 was published on December 17, 2025, and 1.1 was planned to add animation, scaling for very large scenes, and refined compliance-testing guidelines. A written spec matters for TDs because it gives vendors a target to test against. "Supports USD" should become something you can check, not just a claim.

VFX Reference Platform CY2027 is final (August 30)

The VFX Reference Platform marked CY2027 final on August 30, 2026, effective January 1. The main change, announced with the April 10 draft, is Linux moving to glibc 2.34, which "effectively mandates that everyone should be on an EL9 Linux OS (or equivalent)". The listed versions include Python 3.13 and Qt 6.8. OpenColorIO, OpenSubdiv and OpenEXR versions are to be confirmed by early October, and OpenVDB by early November.

If your render farm or workstations are still on EL8, start planning the upgrade now. Software built for CY2027 targets glibc 2.34, so it may not run on EL8.

Unreal Engine 5.8: USD through Interchange (June)

The UE 5.8 release notes describe USD support through Interchange as "production ready for asset import and experimental for level import". You can now reorder schema handlers, extend the translator in code for custom schemas, and add new render contexts. A new experimental USD Pregen framework processes referenced USD files so they are not flattened and duplicated on import. GameFromScratch reported the release on June 17, 2026.

Custom schema translators are the key feature for studios with their own USD schemas. You can now write code that decides how your custom prims come into Unreal.

Blender 5.2 LTS: Hydra 2.0 (July 14)

Blender 5.2 LTS was released on July 14, 2026, with support until July 2028. CG Channel reports that it moves Blender to Hydra 2.0, that existing render delegates "should continue to work without changes", and that color spaces are now converted to the .blend color space when importing USD. Because this is an LTS release, it is the Blender version most studios will standardize on, so check it with your USD round-trips.

Houdini 22 and Solaris

On the Houdini side, SideFX says Houdini 22's Solaris "has new layout, world-building and set dressing tools". SideFX has also released Houdini Engine for Unreal 4.0.1 (September 3) against Houdini 22.0.429, with builds for UE 5.8 and 5.7 on Windows.

Sources

Related

  1. HoudiniStage in, stage out: Houdini's Solaris treats every node as a function over a USD sceneIn Houdini's Solaris, every LOP node takes a composed USD stage and returns one, and its edits land in one in-memory layer at the top. A 31-line usd-core model of that contract, the Python LOP that does it for real, the same network checked in Houdini 22, and why a Layer Break decides what gets saved. · 10 min read
  2. Houdinisplit() is a tokenizer: building cache paths from strings in Houdini VEXVEX strings look like Python's, but split() merges separators and drops empty fields, len() counts bytes, and a wrangle expands $ before the compiler sees it. A per-piece cache path built from the scene file name, and the traps along the way, checked in Houdini 22. · 10 min read
  3. LatestMaterialX is an IR for materials: build a typed shader graph in Python, then lower it to GLSL and OSLA MaterialX material is a typed dataflow graph stored as XML, which a library type-checks and compiles to several shading languages. With only pip install MaterialX, build a checkerboard material in Python, watch the validator reject a float wired into a color, and generate GLSL and OSL from the same file. · 9 min read