First Steps to Becoming an OpenUSD Developer
Welcome to the NVIDIA OpenUSD documentation! This page will help you navigate the resources available to you to start learning to develop with OpenUSD. We recommend starting with our guided learning content.
Start Learning
We recommend starting with Getting Started with the Basics of OpenUSD Authoring and Querying. This learning path will guide you through a series of courses and tutorials that will give you the best introduction to developing with OpenUSD. You can start learning without leaving the comfort of your web browser. Later tutorials, will guide you through setting up an environment on your computer to write OpenUSD Python code. If you want to forge your own path you can browse all of our guided learning or independent learning content.
Get OpenUSD
The OpenUSD source code is located at the OpenUSD Github repository. You can clone the repository and follow the repository’s build instructions to build OpenUSD from the source. Alternatively, NVIDIA provides prebuilt binaries for Windows and Linux. If you just need to use the OpenUSD Python API, you can install usd-core directly from PyPI.
Look Up Code
When you write OpenUSD code, technical references like the Python API documentation and C++ API documentation can help when you need to look up a particular class or function. For example, you may use these resources when you want to browse all the member functions of the Usd.Stage class or the return type of Usd.Prim.GetTypeName(). On the other hand, when you have a high-level task or concept in mind, you may find the exact snippet you need in our USD code samples or they may help orient you towards the libraries you need to use.
Get Help
OpenUSD Study Group
There is a group of developers on the Omniverse Discord server interested in supporting each other as they learn OpenUSD. The study group meets every Tuesday at 2:00 PM (PT) to cover and discuss scheduled topics in a beginner-friendly environment. There is also a dedicated channel to ask OpenUSD questions. Join the Discord server and ask about the OpenUSD Study Group.
More OpenUSD Forums
There are a few other places where you will find OpenUSD experts generously sharing their time to answer questions. If you are working within the Omniverse platform, the OpenUSD category in the NVIDIA Omniverse forums is a good place to get help from Omniverse and OpenUSD experts.
For general OpenUSD questions, there are two other forums where the OpenUSD community likes to gather. The first is the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) forum. The other is the #wg-usd channel on the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) Slack.