The Open 3D Foundation (O3DF) has accepted Epic Games as a Premier member to join numerous companies such as Intel, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Adobe, LightSpeed Studios, Niantic, Huawei Technologies, Niantic, and others, it was announced on Wednesday.
Epic Games joined the Foundation to promote the interoperability and transfer of visuals, assets, media scripting, and other tools to provide content creators with open-source platforms.
We are proud to welcome Epic Games, creators of @UnrealEngine, as an Open 3D Foundation Premier Member as we continue our journey in championing the integration of #OpenSource and commercial solutions to give creators greater freedom.
Learn more: https://t.co/Tjm6OlgPjd pic.twitter.com/2dJJ3IyKQF
— O3DE (@o3dengine) July 20, 2022
The Cary, North Carolina-based firm and creator of the world-class Unreal Engine appointed Vice President Marc Petit to the O3DF’s Governing Board and plans to share 30 years of his firm’s knowledge on asset and content creation.
In a statement, Petit said the Metaverse would require firms to “work together to advance open standards and open-source tools,” adding the O3DF hoped to “play an important role” in doing so.
He continued, stating,
“With shared standards for interoperability, we’re giving creators more freedom and flexibility to build interactive 3D content using the tools they’re most comfortable with, and to bring those amazing experiences to life in Unreal Engine and across other 3D engines”
Echoing Petit’s comments, Royal O’Brien, Executive Director of the O3DF and General Manager of Games and Digital Media at the Linux Foundation, added Epic Games’ Premier membership would underscore the organisation’s goal to integrate open-source and commercial solutions for a “sustainable, balanced ecosystem” to drive the industry’s success and innovation.
He added,
“It’s truly exciting to see how the industry is responding to the real-time 3D needs of content creators around the globe, providing them with best-of-breed tools”
The news comes as the Foundation has celebrated its one-year anniversary as it opens new opportunities for extended reality (XR) content creators, artists, developers and others to collaborate, develop best practices, and build infrastructure using the organisation’s Open 3D Engine (O3DE).
The O3DF recently launched the world’s first open-source real-time 3D engine for high-fidelity immersive experiences. It received a massive upgrade in May to improve performance, usability, and other features of the engine, allowing 3D simulations for top-tier games.
To date, the O3DE community monitors roughly two million code line changes and from 350 to 450 monthly commits across up to 100 authors and 41 repos, it explained.
In July, Huawei Technologies also joined the organisation as a Premier member to leverage 3D technologies for its more than 700 million active users of its product lineup, including VR Glass, tablets, laptops, computers, and HI Smart Car platform, among many others.
Other organisations such as the Khronos Group and Metaverse Standards Forum have also launched similar initiatives to boost RT3D assets for content creators, allowing the industry to expand and deploy immersive content, standards, best practices, and technologies across sectors rapidly.
