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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.
...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
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.
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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.
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*
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
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
key difference: vrml is for realtime 3d.
interesting note: more students have had success with using the unreal engine to model spaces. it is much prettier, and the navigation is better.
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'....