[x3d-public] Purpose of X3D

Leonard Daly Leonard.Daly at realism.com
Wed Oct 12 09:16:45 PDT 2016


The message was originally sent to x3d-public and x3d. Based on the 
responses, I think this conversation is best held on the Public mailing 
list. If you don't receive the public announcements and wish to 
participate, please let me know.

Leonard Daly



> 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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-- 
*Leonard Daly*
3D Systems & Cloud Consultant
LA ACM SIGGRAPH Chair
President, Daly Realism - /Creating the Future/
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