Universal 3D File Format In The Works 464
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."
Really bad examples to pick... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Lossiness? No, try patents (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [mp3licensing.com]. Will Intel or one of Intel's licensors pull a Unisys [burnallgifs.org] after this format has become popular? Apparently, the 3D Industry Forum's FAQ page [3dif.org] doesn't even contain the word "patent".
3D what? (Score:5, Insightful)
3D wireframes?
3D solid objects?
3D interior spaces?
JPEG != MP3, and wishing will not make disparate needs and functionality the same.
Lossy (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
lossy formats interest? (Score:5, Insightful)
Danger, Danger... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another closed proprietary format ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lossy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really bad examples to pick... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Really bad examples to pick... (Score:4, Insightful)
-fren
Re:Really bad examples to pick... (Score:5, Insightful)
In that case, it's a very good example, only not a slashdot-compliant one.
Re:Lossy (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh come on, the point of the analogy was just to bring to light how far they wanted to take adoption, reading anything into the lossiness of the respective formats is trifling and borderline pedantic.
Oh knock it off (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Really bad examples to pick... (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe the references to JPEG and MP3 were just examples of other popular standards, not meant to point out patent-encumbered standards.
That being said, the companies involved are all heavy users of patents, in many cases aggresively. They're also using ECMA as their standards body, who has a very premissive policy on patents [ecma-international.org]. For anybody who reads that link, "reasonable and non-discrimantory licensing" means "everybody who uses this 'standard' can be made to cough up some dough."
So yes, in all likelyhood, this "standard" will be patent-encumbered and will require any new kids on the block to pay what will likely be extortion-rate fees (though they'll be "reasonable" fees in that any multinational with billions in the bank can afford them). The companies involved in creating the standard (the ones who don't like competition and in some cases have been convicted for price-fixing and illegal monopolistic practices) will simply cross-license the relevant patents amongst themselves, meaning they're free to implement it without cost.
Why Lossy Matters (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What about VRML (Score:3, Insightful)
VRML is as open as HTML, it's an ISO specification. There's the next revision of it going through ISO process right now called X3D (final ISO vote on the IS acceptance ends June 30, so see an announcment at Siggraph). X3D takes all the good stuff from VRML and expands it again to allow for multiple different encoding strategies (VRML-style, XML, binary etc) and componentises the spec to add a lot of different things.
Re:.3ds (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:JPEG patent is bullshit (Score:1, Insightful)
And if there's anyone in the patent lawyer field who's studied the issues and has a valid opinion on this issue, it's that BurnAllGIFS.org guy.
You need to at least click the links to see how the author backs up the assertions.
Yeah, right ... (Score:1, Insightful)
How many formats are still in use for 2D images?
What about audio and video? Why do people need to have 3 media players installed? (Windows, Quicktime, Real)
What about instant messaging? That is 4 apps that are imcompatible between each other, but all do the same thing. (AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo)
Yes, I do know about gaim and mplayer, but the average user in a windows box is a different story.
I think the industry that created this mess would be better off first cleaning this up, where it impacts the end user, and worry about 3D formats, which aren't widely used, after.
Talk is nice, but it is the mighty buck that does the walk.
Re:Microsoft's motive (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [microsoft.com]. This is inspite of the fact that Microsoft was involved in the specification [w3.org]. I would suspect they will use the same strategy with U3D.
Re:What about VRML (Score:3, Insightful)
Believe it or not, the technology probably wasn't the biggest issue. It's a classic example of a solution searching for a problem; there was no killer app. Sure there are niches where 3d might be cool, and it might yield interesting ways to visualize data, but those niches are (already) better served by standalone apps optimized for that purpose (games, for example.) And for everyday information, it's just easier to scroll down a page of text than to navigate through some awkward 3D universe.
Think from a practical perspective, too: Say you own some website and have bought into the VRML hype. Unfortunately, reality comes knocking: modeling and texturing is a rare skill and extremely time consuming (at least compared to being able to throw together a quick site in Frontpage), and I doubt there were really great tools for VRML to help in its adoption. Is it really going to be worth it, if you own some website, to pay several times more and have to go root out a bunch of talented 3D artists when a couple of web jockeys can churn out web pages quickly, reliably, and cheaply?
On the other hand, unlike in the VRML days, today pretty much all computers have some kind of 3D hardware acceleration, so a Flash-like 3D plugin could be moderately interesting. I wouldn't hold my breath, though.
-fren
Re:What about VRML (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of the problem with VRML lay in a bad choice of applications it was applied to.
When I go to an online store, I have no need to be able to "walk through" a virtual mall. Hell, that's why I'm on the online store in the first place, the 2d format has greater ease of use for that application.
VRML was trying to shoe-horn 3D experiences in where they weren't required. I'd love to have a 3D rotatable/scalable graphic of something I'm looking at purchasing. That's a good idea. What I don't need is a storefront and product listing that requires me navigating a 3D environment.
3D chat rooms? Perhaps cool. Not a huge improvement over standard 2d interfaces though, and again, having to navigate in a 3d environment to find a particular person is simply a pain.
The trick is, use 3D for where it's useful, and discard it where it's not. VRML was lousy at that.
Re:Really bad examples to pick... (Score:3, Insightful)
Its a press realse. Its not a white paper or a tech demo. Hell, it was probobly writen by a marketng guy who doesn't know what a losssy format is, and has their engineers grumbling about it as we speak.
Re:Really bad examples to pick... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not nitpicking at all...the article states that
MP3 is unquestionably a patented, and therefore proprietary, format, and JPEG might have some patent issues of its own. If those are the examples they cite, then it's perfectly legitimate to probe more deeply into what exactly they mean when they say they wish to make their format "as freely available" as these.
Re:I fail to see how this will be successfull... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Really bad examples to pick... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:30 companies? Good luck trying to get an agreem (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Universal ever-evolving crap (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:JPEG patent is bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
If emotion was mutually exclusive with competence, we wouldn't have had Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, or most of the United States Founding Fathers.
Re:Microsoft's motive (Score:2, Insightful)
These guys are *clueless* (Score:4, Insightful)
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.)
where the hell is pixar (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Microsoft's motive (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
It won't be universal not now not ever (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:I fail to see how this will be successfull... (Score:1, Insightful)
Solid modeling programs such as Pro/Engineer and Solidworks use parametric equations and relations to describe solid geometry.
Using equations to render is very slow but using polygons to represent curves is an approximation many mechanical designs cannot tolerate. Perfectly describing a sphereical object might be neccesary to design a trackball but would be useless for a rendering engine input where the final result will be broken into polygons.
It needs extensibility, and lots of it. (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Politics and Tech (Score:1, Insightful)
VRML was a project started by Marc Pesce who, inspired by William Gibson's cyberpunk books, wanted to create virtual reality for the people. Gibson (and later Stephenson) was hot and many companies saw VRML as the future and wanted to be ahead on the issue, to avoid getting behind as Microsoft did for a while with HTML up to HTML 3.2 (aka Netscape extensions).
So politics ensued. All energy went in there but the tools, well, those are not so hot. Ever wondered why VRML viewers are sluggish when a 486 can show a fast Castle Wolfenstein (limited 3D) and a Pentium can show Doom in glorious 3D?
In the end Marc Pesce was kicked out and he wrote The Great Leap Downward (article offline tese days) where he told the sorry saga that VRML had turned into.
The concortium took revenge by sanitising their documents from his name. And there it stands. Occationally you wil see people claiming VRML is alive (shouting movie at 11) but then again the CP/M newsgroup is active too.
Re:JPEG patent is bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course not. That's not what I was commenting on -- I quoted your phrase I mean, come on. 'BurnAllGIFS.' It practically reeks of professionalism and years of law school. That and that alone was the sentence that I took issue with. It makes no more sense to ignore someone as "unprofessional" because the name of their domain is "burnallgifs.com" than it does to ignore someone because the name of their domain is "sickfuck.org" [meaningful glance at Phexro's homepage link].
Re:Microsoft's motive (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [ingeb.org])
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.