[x3d-public] Purpose of X3D
Leonard Daly
Leonard.Daly at realism.com
Thu Oct 6 10:21:51 PDT 2016
I have been struggling with this topic for several months -- what is the
purpose of X3D in the electronic ecosystem of the 21st century. The
Consortium says that "X3D is a royalty-free open standards file format
and run-time architecture to represent and communicate 3D scenes and
objects using XML" [http://www.web3d.org/x3d/what-x3d]. As an ISO
standard, X3D needs to have a long shelf-life, contain 3D models,
animation, and interactivity; and communicate this within and between
systems using XML. To do this effectively, it needs to stay current with
industry practices while maintaining an ability to communicate
information from the past.
There is no question about X3D's handling of old data. To my knowledge
there is no other 3D system that can display models, animation, and
interaction from 15+ years ago. In the Internet age where half-life
appears to be around 18 months, that is a remarkable achievement.
X3D has not kept up with current practices in modeling, animation,
rendering, or interaction. Work on the most recent update to X3D (V3.3 -
2013) started back in 2009 and the document was mostly completed in
2010. The most advanced feature is 3D volume rendering. Work on particle
systems and physics is several years before that. The standard for
animation of any model is with bones and rigs - whether that model is a
character, a tree, or a machine. All current renders use shaders (code
that runs on a graphics card) to create highly realistic (or fantastic)
surface appearance. Work on upgrading interaction to support mobile
devices (including multi-touch), head-mounted-displays including game
controllers, paddles, LEAP interfaces, and other specialized devices is
just beginning.
So back to my question -- what is X3D for? In 20 years time will the
only content for X3D be 35 years old? Current content not created
explicitly for X3D won't work because X3D does not support much more
than static modeling.
I have collected several choices. These are described below in more or
less least to most complex (aka work). There are a lot of other options,
more towards bottom of the list. If you have other contributions, please
feel free to state so along with what you think it would take to get
there from X3D V3.3.
1) X3D is for static models only (no texture). This is a very good
match. There are just a few things that X3D doesn't handle and most of
those are having to deal with interchange with other formats.
2) X3D is for static models + appearance. X3D needs to expand to make
full use of appearance shaders of all sorts.
3) X3D is for models including animation. X3D needs to expand to
include at least the current practice of skeletal structure plus rigging
(attaching surface weights to various joints). This is not H-Anim, but
broader as it includes models that are not even at all human,
human-like, animals, or even "living".
4) X3D is for runtime display. X3D needs to include all major 3D
formats. It needs to run AND use interface mechanisms of all major
platform types, including phones/tablets, HMDs, desktops, etc. It needs
to run in a browser: it needs to run as an app.
5) X3D is everything. Well, think about that for a moment. That means
all of the above need to be done. It also needs to be widely adopted,
and this needs to be completed in the next 12-18 months. It would
probably take a team of 20-50 people working on a specification,
implementations, conversion, integration applications, marketing, etc.
to accomplish this. Advocates for this choice need to have a reality check.
Given that we have maybe 7 part time people (right now) where does X3D go?
--
*Leonard Daly*
3D Systems & Cloud Consultant
LA ACM SIGGRAPH Chair
President, Daly Realism - /Creating the Future/
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