Distribution rights to NVIDIA MDL files?

Gaming and Visualization Technologies Visualization MDL SDK
1

This posting may be more appropriate for the Omniverse forum but I thought I’d first post it in the MDL forum.

Basic situation: we would like to distribute some of the NVIDIA core MDL files with our USD/MDL centric application for the situation where a user may not have Omniverse installed. This is an adjunct to our USD import/export capabilities which are connected up to our MDL SDK support code. In order to support the import of USD materials and bake them out to images we need to let the MDL SDK access the Omniverse MDL files.

However, there are mixed statements from NVIDIA in terms of their licensing terms. Hence, I wanted to confirm which may apply to the general situation?

I’ll inline two different header statements from the MDL files in question:

core: (omni*.mdl files)
mdl/nvidia
[ mdl v1.7 ]

  • Copyright 2020 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved.
  • Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
  • modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
  • are met:
    • Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
  • notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
    • Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
  • notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
  • documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
    • Neither the name of NVIDIA CORPORATION nor the names of its
  • contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived
  • from this software without specific prior written permission.

rtx (UsdPreviewSurface* files)
[ mdl v1.8 ]

// Copyright (c) 2023, NVIDIA CORPORATION. All rights reserved.
//
// NVIDIA CORPORATION and its licensors retain all intellectual property
// and proprietary rights in and to this software, related documentation
// and any modifications thereto. Any use, reproduction, disclosure or
// distribution of this software and related documentation without an express
// license agreement from NVIDIA CORPORATION is strictly prohibited.

2

core is BSD 3 clause license, a very permissive open source license. You can use them anywhere as long as you keep the license header.

usdpreview i have to check.

3

Thank you for your prompt follow up on May 19.

Just while you are checking up up on “USDPreview” situation I’d like to amend my prior question with some additional lesser important context. This may help others in the future reading this forum posting if they too have similar questions about stated distribution rights.

In terms of your mention that “core is BSD 3 clause license”, there are a few sub-files that have differing distribution and/or warranty statements. Hence, does BSD 3 override all statements shown in the “core” directory or do each of these sub-files have their own considerations?

Let me list a few examples:

core\Base\SimPBR.mdl
Only a warranty statement is provided

core\mdl\adobe
No distribution nor warranty statements

core\VRay*

// NVIDIA CORPORATION and its licensors retain all intellectual property
// and proprietary rights in and to this software, related documentation
// and any modifications thereto.  Any use, reproduction, disclosure or
// distribution of this software and related documentation without an express
// license agreement from NVIDIA CORPORATION is strictly prohibited.

core\PACKAGE-LICENSES\omni-core-materials-LICENSE.md

Ditto text to that listed for core\VRay\*
4

sorry, i was not specific enough. With core i was referencing “core_definitions”
BSD does not override all licenses. the mdl materials in the core directory stem from different sources and therefore have different copyrights and owners. MTLX for example stems from the MaterialX project and is Apache (and also fine for redistribution)

Anything not explicitely licensed or with a restrictive header is not safe for redistribution. For Vray and UsdPreview i will try to change the licensing to something permissive, but thats unlikely a fast process.

5

Small update, for everything we own, the license should change to BSD3 with kit108.
adobe and alg will be removed since adobe deprecates those workflows.

In short, from kit108, everything we ship as mdl material content with kit should be redistributable.

6

Confirmed. Thank you for your attention and interest in my original request. That time is much appreciated.

As a lesser important follow up question, when might kit108 be available?

7

If you access OV through the regular dev program, it should be Q4 to my knowledge. This might of course shift.