By Coulter Heiberger · Updated
A real-world site as USDZ: one self-contained USD file with the terrain, texture, and materials packed in.
To get a real-world site as USD, you want USDZ: the packaged form of Universal Scene Description that zips the geometry, textures, and materials into one self-contained file. Draw your area on Mantle Place and take the terrain mesh as USDZ, included at no extra cost alongside the other formats and with imagery baked into the material, ready for Omniverse, Houdini, iOS AR Quick Look, and more; a USDZ handed to an iOS device simply opens. Building the same thing by hand means meshing a DEM, texturing it with aligned orthoimagery, and running a USD export with the right up-axis and units. One honest note: the bundle carries USDZ only, not loose .usda or .usdc, because those would be exact duplicates of the same scene.
No. The site is not locked to USD: the same bundle carries GLB for web viewers and Unity, OBJ for Rhino, the files the importer turns into an editable Landscape for Unreal, and more, all cut from the identical terrain and imagery.
Define the area of interest on Earth; the USDZ covers the same extent as every other format in the bundle.
In your vault, download the Real-time set: the terrain as USDZ, glTF, and OBJ, cut from the same data as every other format. One order, every bundle format.
Load the USDZ in Omniverse or usdview, import it into Houdini, Maya, or a recent Blender, or hand it to an iOS device for AR Quick Look.
Reference the USDZ into a larger USD stage as a layer, keeping the site intact while the rest of the scene composes around it.
USD is the scene-description format; USDZ is its zero-compression package: one file carrying the geometry, textures, and materials together, which makes it the practical form to deliver and share.
Because they would be the identical scene three times. The USDZ contains the same data in its portable, package form, and every USD-capable tool reads it, so the duplicates were dropped deliberately.
Yes. USDZ is the AR Quick Look format, so the file opens directly on an iOS device. Keep the area modest if you plan to view it that way; a large site makes for a heavy AR scene.
Draw your area, read its Site Brief, and download a bundle you keep: terrain, imagery, CAD drawings, and more, ready for Unreal, Revit, Rhino, and more. $5 plus $2 per square kilometer, and 2 km² and under is free.
Native plugins: Mantle Place for Unreal and Mantle Place for Revit.
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