The SimReady Specification

The SimReady specification represents an effort to help 3D artists understand the processes involved in creating their 3D art assets so that they are valuable for machine learning and simulation needs. The question of why build this new standard can be answered as follows.

While many artists can build 3D assets to photo-real standards, very few understand how to conform their art assets so that a machine learning researcher can take them and quickly incorporate them into their research, whether that researcher is testing new algorithms for autonomous driving, or simulating the layout of a new factory design to identify bottlenecks. These researchers are not 3D artists, and as such, having to manually configure or fix random 3D assets so that they work within Omniverse and its simulation environment is a huge barrier. Mixing and matching licensed 3D content also forces the researcher to become responsible for making sure those art assets work within their simulation, and they don’t have that expertise. Simply put, researchers want to license and consume 3D content that is purpose-built for simulation.

Given the rapidly growing need for this sort of content, the SimReady specification provides a baseline for the additional metadata needed to make 3D art assets useful right away within the Omniverse simulation platform. This includes the addition of semantic labeling, rigid-body physics and physical material association, which will all be covered in other sections.

Types of 3D Art Assets Covered by SimReady

The SimReady standard as described should only be applied to static props and 3D art assets that don’t move or articulate. Why? While NVIDIA would like to provide a SimReady standard for every simulation feature immediately, that’s not practical. We’ve made the decision to start small and build up from that foundation and simple props are a good way to prove out the various aspects of the SimReady specification which can then be applied to more complicated 3D art assets like robotic armatures, vehicles and characters at a later date. Defining those standards will take longer and will build upon the knowledge gained by working with various industry stakeholders. When new SimReady processes are introduced, this documentation will be updated to reflect those additional requirements.

What this means is that the SimReady standard specification is designed to evolve over time and grow in lock step with the various Omniverse simulation industries.