A lightweight C++ terminal-based viewer for USD (Universal Scene Description) scenes. Renders USD files as ASCII/Unicode art directly in your terminal.

• Fast terminal rendering using ncurses
• Real-time 3D visualization in ASCII/Unicode
• Interactive camera controls
• Minimal dependencies

• CMake 3.10+
• C++17 compiler
• Eigen3
• ncurses
• USD (Universal Scene Description)

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make

./build/usdcat <scene.usd>

To enable debugging with symbol information on MacOS, ensure that the debug symbols in the executable and the dSYM bundle match. You can verify this using the following commands:

# generate one if missing
dsymutil ./usdcat -o ./usdcat.dSYM

# verify UUIDs match (they MUST match)
dwarfdump --uuid ./usdcat ./usdcat.dSYM

Profile in Instruments for example by attaching to a running process.

• Arrow keys: Rotate camera
• w/s: Zoom in/out
• q: Quit

MIT