In this edition of the “Meet the Visionary” series, we spotlight Guido Quaroni, Senior Director of Engineering for 3D at Adobe. A longtime champion of Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD), Guido’s contributions to the development and expansion of the standard have had a lasting impact, first at Pixar and now in Adobe’s mission to make 3D content creation more accessible to all creatives.
From Pixar’s Innovation to Industry Standard
Guido’s journey with OpenUSD began in 2012 at Pixar Animation Studios, where he oversaw the engineering team that launched and led the USD project. “OpenUSD began as an internal initiative to unify Pixar’s multiple, fragmented APIs for managing 3D scenes,” Guido explains. “We aimed to streamline workflows and create a single, comprehensive API for scene traversal, from high-level assets to individual components.”
From the outset, Guido and his team recognized the potential of OpenUSD as an industry-wide standard. However, the path to open sourcing USD was not straightforward. At a time when Pixar historically maintained its proprietary technology internally, Guido and his team had advocated for the value of an open ecosystem. “We approached the development with a future-proofing mindset,” he recalls. “From the outset, we wrote clean, well-documented code, anticipating that USD might one day become open source.”
That vision became a reality in 2016. Following extensive internal use including the production of “Finding Dory,” USD had evolved into a robust technology ready for broader adoption. The decision to open source USD marked a significant shift in Pixar’s approach to its technology. “We successfully argued that open sourcing USD would enhance its ecosystem value, prevent obsolescence against emerging industry standards, and elevate our engineers’ contributions—giving them the opportunity to release their own ‘movie’ in the form of code,” he explains. Pixar’s decision to open source USD marked a pivotal moment in advancing 3D content creation.
Adobe: Democratizing 3D Creation
Now at Adobe, Guido is driving a new chapter in OpenUSD’s evolution. As Senior Director of Engineering for 3D, he oversees the development of Adobe’s comprehensive 3D portfolio, including Substance 3D tools, Adobe’s flagship collection for 3D content creation spanning modeling, texturing, and visualization. “Adobe’s vision is two-fold,” Guido explains. “We’re combining the power of AI and emerging technologies with OpenUSD to transform how 3D professionals create, while making sophisticated 3D creation accessible to the broader creative community. This intersection of AI, 3D, and open standards is opening entirely new possibilities for creators.”
This approach aligns with Adobe’s “Creativity for All” mission, as the company works to integrate USD support across its Creative Cloud products. As a founding member of the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD), Adobe is championing the democratization of 3D technology, ensuring that creators of all skill levels can participate in the growing 3D ecosystem.
One of the biggest challenges in 3D workflows has historically been interoperability—moving assets between different tools without losing data. OpenUSD solves this by creating a common language for 3D applications, allowing assets to be exchanged smoothly between tools like Substance, Photoshop, Maya, and Houdini. At Adobe, Guido is working to ensure that OpenUSD integration across Creative Cloud maintains lossless interoperability, enabling users to seamlessly edit, view, and share assets across platforms.
The Value of Universal Standards
When discussing OpenUSD adoption with potential users, Guido focuses on two key questions: “How important is it to go between different tools and not lose any data?” and “How important is it to work in parallel with peers?” These questions cut to the heart of OpenUSD’s value proposition—seamless interoperability and collaborative workflows.
The technology’s unique features, such as its layering system and parallel workflows, have proven transformative across industries. “While we were confident in USD’s success within media and entertainment, its impact on manufacturing and other enterprises has exceeded our initial expectations,” Guido reflects.
Looking to the Future
Guido’s vision for OpenUSD extends far beyond its current applications. Looking five years ahead, he sees widespread adoption beyond media and entertainment, supporting emerging technologies like volumetric data and digital twins, and facilitating real-time, non-destructive collaboration akin to Photoshop layers but for 3D scenes.
His longer-term aspirations are even more ambitious. “We want to enable effortless sharing of 3D content, similar to how we copy and paste images today,” he explains. “Imagine tools that allow viewing and sharing 3D assets as seamlessly as we share photos.”
Particularly exciting are the possibilities around materials standardization with MaterialX and OpenPBR —universal languages that define how surfaces look and behave across different 3D applications, much like how PDF ensures documents look the same everywhere. Also promising is the potential for digital twins that can represent 3D data through 2D capture. Guido even envisions USD being used for non-3D applications, such as collaborative tools like Miro boards, enabling non-destructive editing through layers. This is similar to Photoshop layers but for 3D content, allowing multiple artists to work on different aspects of a project simultaneously without overwriting each other’s work, while maintaining the ability to review and revise changes at any time.
The intersection of OpenUSD and generative AI also holds significant promise. “USD’s open source nature makes it particularly compatible with AI tools,” Guido notes. “This enables them to learn and generate content using USD, opening up new possibilities for creative workflows.”
As we continue our “Meet the Visionary” series, Guido’s unique perspective, from USD’s origins at Pixar to its future at Adobe, offers valuable insights into the technology’s evolution and potential. His vision of making 3D creation more accessible while maintaining professional-grade capabilities exemplifies the transformative power of open standards in creative technology. To explore more about OpenUSD’s origins at Pixar, don’t miss our conversation with Steve May, Pixar’s Chief Technology Officer.
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