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Universal 3D File Format In The Works
telstar writes "The Register is reporting that more than 30 companies are working together to define a new file format intended to serve as a universal 3D file format. The new file format will be named the 'Universal 3D Format', or U3D. According to the article, they hope to make the new format as standard as MP3 has become for audio, and JPEG has become for 2D images. Interesting that they would choose two lossy media formats as models for comparison."
Not only did they pick two lossy formats to use as examples, both MP3 and JPEG are patent-encumbered formats. (The validity of the Forgent patent on a piece of JPEG is a bit of a still-contested issue... but I'll leave that to others to discuss.) If you want to write a program using either of those formats, you're going to have to pay the toll.
Let's hope U3D is able to stay clear of such entanglements. Having a patent involved in a file format makes it questionable if FOSS can legally use the format.
Interesting that they would choose two lossy media formats as models for comparison.
Would one really notice slight noise in the coordinates of points of a mesh or in texel color values?
Frankly, I'm more worried about this from the article:
MP3 is not free. Will Intel or one of Intel's licensors pull a Unisys after this format has become popular? Apparently, the 3D Industry Forum's FAQ page doesn't even contain the word "patent".
...right here.
There's also a separate 3DIF site.
The Army reading list
will allow 3D data to be more easily incorporated into other apps, such as web browsers
I hope the Christmas Island people get their act together before this becomes widely used... the horror... the horror...
Trolling is a art,
3D maps?
3D wireframes?
3D solid objects?
3D interior spaces?
JPEG != MP3, and wishing will not make disparate needs and functionality the same.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Interesting that they would choose two lossy media formats as models for comparison
Yeah, they're probably working on a lossy 3D format. Duh.
The fact that MP3 and JPEG are lossy formats doesn't have anything to do with this, and no, it's not "interesting".
Martin
Ok, so its ASSOCIATED with some random application (3d studio max), but ANYTHING that does 3d will read/write to a .3ds file, if they take themselves seriously. Whats wrong with that?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
How was choosing lossy formats even mildly interesting? That comparison was only for the purpose of pointing out that well defined standards for some audio and images exist. I would think fighting between 3d-studio and every other 3d graphics program allows for little to no transfering. Think every 3d program writing it's own non published file format and then think about having 1 published standard that everyone uses. Things like word and excel as open standards would also be nice.
:(){
Why haven't I heard anything about that 3d format in the past 5 years.
Is it not scalable or something?
I was always under the impression that it was as open as html.
Kaydara Motionbuilder (.fbx I think) files seem to be becoming one of the defacto standard file formats for 3D - it stores mesh, bone, and UVW/texture information (to my knowledge), as well as animation info and most of the major apps now have Kaydara support.
You have a point with MP3, but the author of BurnAllGIFs.org seems to think the JPEG patent wouldn't stand up in a court of law.
U3D will get a head start due to early release and saturate the market with crappy files while formats with better compression and quality are ignored by the public because "it's good enough"
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I use a WYSE terminal, you insensative clod!
But...
One restriction I wouldn't mind, however, is the same sort of compatibility requirement that JAVA has: If something follows the format, it MUST follow it exactly and have no proprietary extentions. This tripped up MS when they tried to hijack JAVA for their own nefarious purposes.
Just my views on this...
The Cheese Stands Alone.
The Register is reporting that more than 30 companies are working together to define a new file format intended to serve as a universal 3D file format.
I forget who said it, but I think this fits very well: "The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from."
"they hope that such a standard will allow 3D data to be more easily incorporated into other apps, such as web browsers, to make 3D imagery more widespread" Web browsers?!? I really hope not. I find the idea of a banner ad requiring a minimum of a GeForce 4 and pixel shader support offensive. "Shoot the 3D rendered monkey in each limb and win a prize!" *shudder*
[coordinate noise would] create a jittery effect
In skeletal animation, noise in the mesh would move more or less rigidly with each bone, creating a bit of roughness but no jitter. In non-skeletal animation, one could move a slider to increase the precision with which the animation tool stores coordinates. Remember that even 64-bit floating point isn't perfect.
Aren't there enough proprietary 3d formats already! It's time for an open source / free software GPL type format. Maybe SGI now that they love Linux can work with the community to free up some of their proprietary standards and make it really happen.
It is annoying when given a 3D engine, it cannot load a 3D Format which happens to be the only one that your 3d Modeller can export to. I would be happy for that problem to disappear!
But how general will it be? If it can handle detailed CAD models, and open landscape, and UT2003 style maps, high polygon characters and so on, then will it end up being unspace-effective for all of them?
Is there a reason why right now 3DS seems to be the nearest to a standard we have, when it doesn't even have many features?
JPEG might be the standard for images, but it isn't used for everything: Sometimes PNG and TIFF are used for particular reasons. TGA and PNG for example support Alpha channels, while JPEG does not. My friend draws pictures, and sometimes she gets good compression with JPEG, but sometimes the quality loss is terrible. Sometimes GIF is better, or something PNG is. And then there are vector graphics.
MP3 is nearly a standard, but we use OGG for political/legal reasons, or a lossless format when that is important. Real is often used when the sound needs to be streaming.
So, really, how useful will this standard be? And how free?
- Jax
"Interesting that they would choose two lossy media formats as models for comparison."
Well, this is probably a sign that the new 3d format will probably reduce 3d files to 2d or 2.5d. So you'll lose some of the third dimension when you save in it.
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
Actually i really hope that his works. .obj format. but even blender has a hard time with uv mapping in that area. as far as lossy, there is no such thing, 3d models dont work that way a model has so many meshes so many polygons and so many textures, how you choose to render it determines the lossyness of it. nut a u3d standard would be great because than i could buy models from anyone and know they would work.
about a year ago i started doing 3D animations, this year i wanted to buy a collection of 3D models but in the end i found that 1 the app that i use has terrible support for model importing (blender) and 2 there are two many different formats out there. someone previosly mentioned 3ds but thats the stupidest thing ive ever heard because 1 its proprietary 2 it sucks. the closest thing to a standard is the
and for the 3ds guy your modeling software sucks and is a POS.
from a multimedia point of view, we have been trying to make flash animation support 3d but no format was light enough and easy to render, with director mx, we have 3d objects but the format is proprietary for macromedia and u have to transform every element and the rendering is without shadows and lights. a decent open 3d format is exactly what we (as multimedia developpers) need to take us to the next level to deliver virtual interactive environments.
who wants to rule the world?
Most likely has to do with the fact that .mp3 and .jpeg are ubiquitous more so than anything. If they said, for example, .FLAC, they would have confuzlled the hell out of a good chunk of people.
As there are so many different ways to represent the geometric structure of a 3D object that tie to the engine rendering that object. The fact of the matter is that 3D graphics rendering is still a non-trivial problem which requires optimizations for the use in question. Just about any piece of hardware still in use can handle JPEG and MP3 without a notable performance hit.
3D applications still push the limits of the hardware they run on and are keyed for specific intents; 3D games sacrifice detail and accuracy of modeling the interaction of light on surfaces for speed, while povray and RenderMan go for full hardcore ray tracing to make sure each pixel on the screen is accurately representing a reflective light model to the capacity of their respective engines.
Sadly, I don't think this arena has trivialized to a one size fits all format yet.
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
It will be XML based (i.e. text file with tags), use MIME to encode bitmaps, and be so bloated you will need a 10GHz P5 with 4GB of RAM just to render a rotating "Hello, World!" file...
... let it not be XML-based. If there is a God in heaven he will not let it be in XML!
Thanks,
--
Matt
Ooooor, it's interesting that they compared it to a few formats that have allowed real people with real-world storage capacity to enjoy/share media of different flavors.
"Dude, you should see this 3D monster I created! Just let me plug my iEverything into the accompanying 70 lb. iRenderFarm."
You know what?
I have enough trouble getting 5 people to agree on where to go for dinner or for which movie to go see... and we're all friends!
These guys want to get 30 companies to agree to one specific file format that would probably have an impact on the work they do???
Good luck!
The lossiness of MP3 and JPEG was only relevant because it allowed the actual files to become small enough to transmit over slow connections and fit on small hard drives. Additionally, while they may be lossy, the "lost" information goes completely unnoticed by the end-user, 99.99% of the time. If they come up with a convenient way of storing 3D information that is "lossy" but doesn't lose anything that will be missed, then more power to them.
Additionally, the demand for small files, and therefore for MP3 and JPEG, draws on preexisting "content" sets that are enormous; all the audio data ever recorded (including in analog media), and all the static, 2D visual data ever recorded (including photos, texts, drawings, etc). By comparison, there are currently relatively few recordings of true 3D data; and the present uses of that recorded data are so specialized that a general file format would probably be insufficient anyway.
So the day that Wal-mart starts selling digital cameras that laser-scan the whole room and render a complete 3D model, and the day they start selling holographic projectors for those 3D models, at prices that are reasonable for personal use, then there will be a market for a generic 3D file format.
The only question that matters:
IS IT PATENT ENCUMBERED?
All other issues are secondary.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Conformal surface parameterization allows you generate a geometry image from an arbitrary mesh. The geometry image is a parameterization of the mesh on a uniform grid where the (r,g,b) coordinates are considered to be (x,y,z) spatial coordinates. You can now use the image format of your choice, lossy or not.
word.
Not to long ago there was a push for Microsoft to adopt open file formats for their office suite. They naturally didn't follow through. Their reason is they have a virtual monopoly in office suites - despite very viable alternatives. If they adopted an open file format then that would, in their mind, strengthen the competitors and weaken customer lock-in.
Their motive for advocating an opne 3D graphic format is that they have no stake in the 3D imaging market. If an open format is adopted then that gives them a leg up on taking over the 3D image market.
The interesting thing is how Microsoft "embraced and extended" the SVG format - only to make their own incompatible format wvg. This is inspite of the fact that Microsoft was involved in the specification. I would suspect they will use the same strategy with U3D.
"Anything is possible with enough programmers, time and pizza." (Substitute caffeine for time as needed.)
Not at all. U3D is actually just the Shockwave3D file format that Intel are trying to ram through a standards body somewhere.
They originally tried to do this through the Web3D consortium (the owner of the VRML standard) under the guise of a CAD format. After a lot of manipulation of the members and several other very dodgy things, the consortium told Intel to get lost. It's now just popped up again under another guise. The laughable thing is that this file format is completely inappropriate for CAD requirements. It's somewhere between a scene graph file format and a programming API, with neither being particularly good. For example, it's not extensible and has a lot of hardcoded strategies. If you wanted to extend or change an iimplementation of one item in the modifier chain, it would require complete reimplementation of the entire system. For example, changing the humanoid representation to using shaders for rendering the mesh was impossible. The entire format is designed around CPU-based rendering. Video hardware accelaration is not possible for about 95% of the spec.
Nothing has changed at Intel since we were dealing with them for the last 2 years on it. Effectively this project is 2 engineers and one manager trying to save their arse and the code from failed Shockwave efforts.
An example - the press release says it will be an ISO standard. The ISO people have no idea what Intel is talking about as they've not been approached yet. It would fall under either SC24 or SC29 subcommittes (SC24 3D graphics, SC29 is programming and home to MPEG) and both of these committees already have standards that fullfil these requirements (MPEG and VRML/X3D). It wouldn't make it past the front gate at ISO.
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
Basically VRML wasn't designed to scratch a real itch, just a theoretical one. It was just a neat idea that was designed by committee, with predictable results.
At least according to the reports I could find, Alias and Autodesk are not members/founders of 3DIF. I would be very surprised if a "universal" 3D format is created without their help.
The problem is that there are many diverse needs/users for 3D data and the data is so large and/or hard-to-render that simplifying it to a single format that meets the needs of CAD, film animation, sci-vis, game animation, 3D web content, and GIS is not reasonable.
On the other hand, VRML may have been too early, but a poly+texture+simplebehaviours format that was well supported by all applications would be a good thing to (re)create.
So what's the point here? Will this enable me to model dancing hamsters and spinning thingies in Alias or Rhino and export them directly to Front Page and Power Point? Be still, my beating heart.
"In a hierarchy every employee will rise to his level of incompetence". The Peter Principle
Unless they have done some serious modifications to it from when we were working with them on it 12 months ago, the architecture prohibits the use of any video hardware accelerated capabilities - let alone programmable shaders. The format implicitly requires CPU utilitisation all the way through until you hit the rasterisation stage. If you want to see why, do some research into the Modifier Chain architecture part of the spec. It's a great concept, but totally in appropriate for hardware acceleration.
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
Alright, this is all very well and good for games and general purpose stuff, but (since 3DIF is slow at getting login confirmations) I looked at the rather small list of supporting companies in their FAQ, and this is what I saw:
Adobe, Boeing, Dassault/Systemes, NGRAIN, Lattice, Microsoft, Parallel Graphics, SGDL Systems and Tech Soft
Where's discreet (3dsMax), where's avid (Softimate), maxon (Cinema4d), or alias (Maya), or how about newtek (Lightwave)? Maybe this can become the universal CAD format, but if those are their backers, don't expect this to become a standard in the high-end 3D arena. Someone mentioned Kaydara Motionbuilder earlier -- that's good, but proprietary.
I wouldn't give this much credibility as a UNIVERSAL format until they get some of those companies in on it... And if they are, and they aren't listing it in their FAQ, they're foolish.
called x3d
web3d's x3d
so if they think iso is gonna aprove a second 3d format they are being pretty silly
back in the day we didnt have no old school
I do research in computer graphics. Finding 3d models is a pain. There are so many formats, and converting between formats is no fun. Sometimes parts of the model get messed up. For example the surfaces normals come out backwards or the material properties disappear. I think if they release a nice file format, and a nice and fast API for loading and saving files i would check it out. And if there were a lot of nice 3d models available in that format, i would be all for it.
Burbank, CA - A consortium of one programmer is working to
define a new file format intended to seve as a universal
file format for all data. The new file format will be
named the 'Universal File Format', of UFF. According to
the consortium, he hopes to make the new format as
standard as MP3 has become for audio, and JPEG has
become for 2D images.
"The basic structure of my file format is a sequence of
8-bit numbers," says the consortium, "in which each
number can represent anything required by the users of
the file."
I suspect it'll be more like TIFF and MPEG-4.
TIFF had so many options that it was years before a common subset developed.
MPEG video is a maze of twisty little codecs all different.
JPEG is not *necessarily* lossy. The JPEG specification allows for both lossy and lossless compression.
In common parlance, however, JPEG refers to the *JPEG baseline algorithm* which is lossy (but allows you to define the amount of loss). Note that even though you can create images that are visually lossless, baseline JPEG can never produce truly (mathematically) lossless compression. (no, not even if you set quality=100)
If you want lossless JPEG compression, there's the standard called *lossless JPEG* (LJPEG) which doesn't provide a high degree of compression though. There's also *JPEG-LS* which is another JPEG standard which provides for lossless compression.
If that's not enough JPEG for you, there's the new standard called *JPEG 2000* which allows a host of features such as the ability to choose between lossy and lossless compression, progressive transmission etc.
So calling JPEG lossy is true only if you are referring to baseline JPEG.
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
Do something cool, and THEN move to standardize it. This was the fundamental problem with VRML. Standards locked it down far before it was useful.
(ducks for cover...) ;-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
We all know what this is going to be: an XML definition like everything else these days.
Universal everything is a misnomer, because everything is in a constant state of evolution. What works today, will be passé in a year or two when DirectX n+1 is released with new gimmicks. Standards are good for fixed concepts, or at least ones that take a long time before having significant changes. 3D ain't one of them.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Perhaps the best approach is a pseudo file format with plug in codecs, like Microsoft uses for its video playback.
the .u3d file extension is already used for a proprietary format for a neat little app called uinwrap3d, which a lot of modders use to make skins for custom game models. prolly no big deal but i just thought that was mildly relavent
maybe not...
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
They will. Don't forget Direct X. Yes, Direct X is focused at the moment on games (mainly), but that will change. And besides, Microsoft has a stake in controlling the video game industry.
What happens when you lose data in a 3d file? in images you have less crispness and contrast between adjacent similar pixels. In audio you have the same effect between adjacent similar frequencies. What happens when adjacent vertices get confused? You wind up with corrupted geometry which makes the entire thing worthless. (this assumes that we're using specifying vertices and not just using mathematical primitives)
Then there's the companies involved. I can see intel knowing something about 3d. They make processors for all of our favorite stuff. But Microsoft usesd to own Softimage which was the industry standard for many years. But did nothing with it but let it sit and rot and eventually sold Softimage to Avid. Have you seen Adobe's 3d stuff lately? They ought to stick to 2d. Why did none of the other 30 companies get mentioned by name? Who are they? is Alias involved? Softimage? Newtek? Side Effects? Discrete? Kaydara? These are companies that I know have a clue as to what it takes to make a 3D format, they've already done it.
What kind of applications would this format be aimed at? the needs of an architect making CAD drawings are vastly different than those of an animator making character animations, which are different than those of someone making scientific visualizations. An architect doesn't need any dynamic simulation routines or an IK solver. But an animator doesn't need solid modelling features or measurement tools.
That's all my ranting for now.
The major players in 3D modelling/content creation can't even agree on the precise interpretation of trimmed nurbs surfaces, much less on other more difficult areas like material properties and lighting for rendering. For materials no two renderers agree on what something simple like a chrome material means much less something more complicated like wood, leather or marble.
:-)
They want to define something universal that everyone making 3D software will use as a native data format -- the two main products at Alias (Studio Tools and Maya) don't even use the same file format (because they have different problem domains -- but at least they share the same interpretation of nurbs
In StudioTools, some of the textures and images in the scene can be the result of compositing a bunch of layers (like photoshop) -- are they going to embedd a photoshop like 2D format in their 3D format? Others are 16 bit/channel or float per channel -- Now add trimmed nurbs, hierarchical subdivision surfaces, construction history, particle systems, dynamics, kinematics, animation tracks, procedurally generated textures, fluids, the list goes on and on -- the number of node types for StudioTools and Maya alone would be in the thousands. I'm sure that CAD and Engineering software packages would add a couple thousand unique ones to that list.
The mind just boggles at the complexity of what they're attempting. I'm quite sure they have not the faintest idea of just how large a chunk of work they've bitten off.
When I was at IBM (10 years ago now), we used to call this sort of thing "boiling the ocean". ie. comsume enourmous resources and money for extended periods of time while producing no discernable and/or useful results.
Ian Ameline
Software Architect,
Alias.
(Not speaking for my employer.)
Ian Ameline
High-quality 3D CAD programs *should* already be able to import the Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES). IGES has absolutely been the de-facto standard for the past 10 years on data transfer between CAD packages. It handles surfaces, 2D drawings, 3D wireframe, as well as solids (although it didn't originally support solids). Unfortunately, some CAD software manufacturers *cough*AutoCAD*cough* force the consumer to buy an additional license to handle it. They want everyone to use their proprietary Drawing Exchange Format (DXF)
Some CAD packages had attempted to go to the solid model transfer format STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data), but few have been quick to adopt it. STEP works extremely well between CAD packages that do support the format. It'll even build assembly heirarchies for the user as necessary. Unfortunately, STEP doesn't handle parametric models (models driven by dimensions, instead of the other way around).
That said, there are still some downfalls of all flavors of the current intermediate transfer formats. I look forward to the day when I don't have to worry about what format a given CAD package uses, and how they interact with each other.
-Malfaetor
Reviled did I live, said I, as evil I did deliver.
http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/members. htm
isn't pixar one of the more popular 3d companies? at least in movies they are, and their RenderMan 3d format is pretty damn popular among photorealistic renderers. There's nothing that I know of that a RenderMan file cannot represent. I'm wondering why they're not making some effort to collaborate in this.
another question: why is apple a part of this when Pixar is not? Steve Jobs is CEO of both companies, as we all know.
I think one of the main pushes behind this is DirectX. Currently DirectX uses the .X format, that many professional modelling programs don't natively support. Maya 5.01 Unlimited, the latest version available to my knowledge, exports to OBJ, GE2, RTG, VRML2, and RTG. This has people turning to third party apps like Deep Exploration or hacked plug-ins*.
Microsoft wants to be certain that every available 3D modelling program can easily and accurately export to a format that will work directly with the next version of DirectX.
*Some of the export plugins available are homebrewed and don't support important features, or don't convert properly. What should a 3D format support? Polygons only, or NURBS as well? Subdivision surfaces? Camera angles, animation? How much shader information will be stored?
"Universal" is a very ambitious word. I have seen attempts at standard "universal" 3D formats and realized that the problem space of 3D is so complex that "universal" will very likely never exist. So, who do we please? CAD/CAM? LOL: within CAD/CAM there is machining, molding, prototyping, ship building, process planning, etc. Mesh editing for still-lifes and animation? That would be easier but there are already formats for that (gee, it's just a mesh and some primitives).
The problem is simply that the standards documents become so large that no one can implement them, no one can follow all the changes in them, everyone will be behind, no one will be compatible with each other. I'm talking tens of thousands of pages of standards documents, for starters. And people thought "web based" and it's hundreds of related acronyms is bad? Just you wait!
Intel should just look to history and all the failed attempts at reforming 3D (IGES, STEP, and VRML to name a few) and revise their goals a bit lower.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
And it is quite possible to specify an XML format which would serve as the "canonical" format for a model and specify one or more "shorthand" formats that encode the XML format more concisely with rules for transforming one to the other.
XML has several advantages - it is text based so can be easily edited by humans when necessary and there are XML editors that can simplify the process. It has many standard tools and toolchains and XSLT is maturing nicely as a transformation engine which provides for lots of additional capabilities (and don't forget XQuery, and native XML databases). Finally, it is by nature extensible, allowing for different ways to put in comments, add in vendor specific extensions that are easily ignored by other vendors (or used when possible), provide for upgrade paths and the like.
On the whole, using XML has disadvantages, but advantages as well. Given a choice between large XML and some smaller but quasi-proprietary binary format, I'll take XML every time.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the IGES format was supposed to be a "universal" 3d file format.
I know 3D Studio MAX and Rhino3D support it and I believe SoftImage and Lightwave do, too.
But what about Intel's motive? From the article:
Getting a chipmaker involved in a 3D file format committee sounds like a good way to ensure a very computationally inefficient format that needs custom hardware to encode and decode. Heck, why not get some RAM manufacturers, hard drive manufacturers and bandwidth suppliers on the committee to make sure the file sizes are huge, too?
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
The main reason why there is not one standard file format is because each one implements different features.
Some file formats may require that polygons be all adjacent per object/mesh and some don't. Some formats are editable by text editors (XML, OBJ) and some are completely binary. Some formats implement feature X, but others implement feature Y, and maybe a third format implements X and Y, but not Z which just came out and is needed by the game to work, so they had to make another texture format. Then they learn that yet another format got extended to include Z, but still only partially implements Y for some cases. Then suddenly someone comes out with another new feature that requires another texture, so ever format needs to be modified, but this will break compatibility. The story goes on and on and never ends until the time when new video cards and drivers stop being made.
There needs to be a file format that includes all the features that were needed for most programs created and had extensibility, so that newer versions could easily be made without breaking compatibility.
Sadly, this is not likely to happen, since standards organizations take 2 years to make 5 year old technology into standards or update them, so the extensibility will not be updated correctly, and different programs will make different non-standard extensions based on their needs. Basically it will end up like HTML. And finally standards organizations come up with a better file format that implements much more, and maybe even future features (like XHTML) And the story continues... But everyone will still use the old format (HTML) because it is more supported. by this time, it will be too late. And then, even the new format will be old, so yet another, and even less suported file format will come in another 5 years.
This is in some ways similar to image formats. There are JPEG, PNG, BMP, PPM, SVG, ..., etc. JPEG gets best (but lossy) compression, but PNG gets better quality, but PPM is easy to edit, but takes forever to load, and BMP is easy to load, etc. Then SVG is completely different and draws lnes and objects instead of by pixel. Each format is different based on the needs.
You're partially correct. X3D added a XML format, it didn't replace the existing one with it. As such it has grown a lot so now you can express the same concepts in 3 different file formats - the origial Inventor-style curly brackets, XML and a pure binary form.
As for the other technologies, they're included in the X3D standard. The only ones taht aren't are progammable shaders and 3D texturing support. Both of those are currently going through the standardisationn process working groups within the Web3d consortium.
Only a part of X3D is incorporated into MPEG IV. There's a lot they didn't take - most specifically all the extensibility that X3D allows. It's a single fixed profile of functionality. It's a rather cut-down version if anything.
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
Funny... a new 'standard' seems to pop up every few months.
: .3ds .obj
:)
Despite even a good deal of acception, such as the FiLMBOX format, I keep seeing people falling back to
- export and import
- export and import
- export and import through third party plugins
- in-house export/import routines
I'd be all for an XML format. Yes, I know, storage space.. but considering there's a limited datatypeset, a compression routine could easily be written that collapses the file to a tidy binary, which a decompressor could then stream right back out to tidy XML. But whatever
VRML files are huge. VRML was designed to be human readable (a laudable goal) but this meant that a VRML of any complexity made an enormous file. I used to use VRML files out of ProEngineer in a 3D simulation package and the smallest files were usually about 20 megabytes and it went up to 200 at times.
VRML files are designed to be human readable because VRML isn't just a mere 3D description language, but also a programming language.
The very big advantage of VRML/X3D for designing virtual worlds is that you can not only design objects with VRML, but also define the interactions between them directly in the VRML source.
Moreover, the concept of scene graph (the 3D scene is a tree, if you affect an object its children are affected) which was by popularized by VRML has proven to be quite effective for developping virual worlds, and has been for example adopted in newer technologies like Java 3D.
I define "parse" the same way your dictionary does- which does not call it equivalent to "understanding". In computer science, as in linguisticts, parsing is one specific stage of coming to understand.
The following sentence is parsable according to the same rules as the English language; but can you understand it?
It's parsable, but not comprehensible. You can identify each noun, verb, adverb, and adjective. The relationship between each is clear. But you still can't tell what it means! (Another good example)
To go back to the more specific topic of Microsoft file formats: if they used XML, you could probably parse out their data. You'd know what each of the variables in the file was set to. You might even know what each variable was called, if the XML or DTD is verbose enough. But you still don't know what they do.
You can guess, but that'll never be good enough, since "correct" behavior is defined as "whatever Microsoft Word does when given the file". Only exhaustive reverse-engineering of the actual program can produce true bug-for-bug compatibility.