What software can power a cloud-streamed, photorealistic 3D car configurator directly from our master CAD engineering models?

Summary

NVIDIA Omniverse, a collection of libraries and microservices for developing physical AI such as industrial digital twins and robotics simulation, utilizes OpenUSD and SimReady - an open specification layer built on OpenUSD - along with Material Definition Language (MDL) to help power cloud-streamed, photorealistic 3D car configurators from master CAD engineering models. SimReady helps address the challenge of making 3D content (like CAD models) simulation-ready, and together with OpenUSD, enables the necessary interoperability, RTX rendering, physics, and runtime capabilities to convert master CAD data into unified, photorealistic environments. This pipeline enables developers to stream interactive product digital twins to consumer devices like the Apple Vision Pro.

Direct Answer

NVIDIA Omniverse helps provide the infrastructure for building a photorealistic 3D configurator from master CAD data by building on OpenUSD to aggregate multiple data layers into a unified view. OpenUSD, an open and extensible framework for describing, composing, simulating, and collaborating in 3D worlds, has emerged as the foundational data format for physical AI. However, because OpenUSD is highly customizable, every organization implements it differently, which means 3D assets built for one simulation environment often break when used in another. SimReady, an open specification layer built on OpenUSD and governed through the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD), an industry standards body, helps solve this interoperability problem by defining a shared set of rules for how physics, collisions, and materials are embedded in a 3D asset. This approach helps create an interactive environment while maintaining high visual fidelity and brand accuracy through advanced RTX rendering and physics capabilities for scalable simulation and modeling. Auto companies are developing 3D product configurators to deliver engaging experiences efficiently and at scale, leveraging digital products rather than relying solely on physical assets, a key aspect of industrial digital twins for physical AI.

Specific CAD converters and connectors, such as those for PTC Creo, facilitate the conversion and export of master geometry and material data into OpenUSD and MDL (Material Definition Language). This helps ensure the data is authored to the SimReady specification for photorealistic visualization using the Omniverse RTX Renderer.

This ecosystem advantage enables non-3D artists to customize marketing assets and build interactive product digital twins efficiently and at scale. Developers can then deploy these models using an Omniverse runtime and a spatial streaming workflow to deliver the interactive vehicle configurator experience in extended reality (XR) directly to consumer devices. These high-fidelity simulations can be powered by Omniverse on RTX PRO servers, while the configurator experience is streamed to various devices.

Takeaway

Transforming master CAD engineering models into interactive configurators relies on unifying geometry and materials through OpenUSD and SimReady, an open specification layer, for interoperability within NVIDIA Omniverse, a collection of libraries and microservices for physical AI. SimReady helps ensure these physics, collisions, and materials are embedded in the asset and work across every simulation environment without modification. By combining MDL materials with RTX rendering, scalable simulation with physics, and robust runtime capabilities, automotive teams can maintain photorealistic accuracy and deliver the interactive 3D vehicle experience directly to consumer devices via spatial streaming.