Pixar: USD, OpenSubdiv, jss-api-gem
WDAS: Reposado, SeExpr, Ptex, Partio, Dynamica, BRDF Explorer
ILM: OpenEXR, Alembic (with Sony)
WDAS: Reposado, SeExpr, Ptex, Partio, Dynamica, BRDF Explorer
ILM: OpenEXR, Alembic (with Sony)
The first version of Alembic was pretty much just Sony's internal geometry format renamed.
The idea (a hierarchical organization of geom prims and transforms) was very similar between ILM and Sony. The library API organization (for better and worse) and hashing more more ILM but it was a pretty close collaboration all along the way.
I was at The Foundry while this was happening.
ILM struggled to use Katana with their existing file format.
I'd be worried if the idea wasn't similar - it was the implementation that mattered, and ILM's older format wasn't very good at random access and lazy loading (which were things needed for efficient use in Katana).
Alembic 1.0 was very close to Sony's Taco format rebranded.