Today, the Khronos group announced that Autodesk has joined the consortium, specifically the 3D Formats Working Group and the 3D Commerce Exploratory Group. The Khronos Group is the regulatory body guiding such efforts as OpenGL, Vulkan, OpenCL and of course glTF. This is a long winded way of saying that Autodesk, makers of popular 3D applications such as 3DSMax and Maya as well as industry standard AutoCAD, are moving to support the open standard glTF.
Details from the Khronos website:
Big news! 3D software developer, Autodesk has joined the Khronos Group. Autodesk is an industry-leading provider of 3D design, engineering and entertainment software, that joined the 3D Formats Working Group to support the Khronos glTF file format and the 3D Commerce Exploratory Group, a group of companies exploring standards and guidelines for the production and distribution of real-time 3D representations of products. glTF is an open standard for efficient and reliable encapsulation and transmission of 3D assets and scenes, including PBR materials and animations.
“Autodesk is committed to accelerating the adoption of open standards as industry-wide collaboration is critical to improving our customers’ workflows and advancing computer graphics technology,” said Henrik Edstrom, senior software architect, Graphics Technology at Autodesk. “As the need for interoperability and consistency between applications and across platforms becomes increasingly important, we see great value in open data formats like glTF. There is also more demand for richer experiences on web, mobile, and XR platforms, and new opportunities in areas such as general compute and real-time ray tracing. We’re excited to be part of the Khronos group and the evolution of computer graphics.”
Further support for the open and real-time friendly glTF format is a step forward in interoperability between game engines and DCC tools and away from proprietary and complicated formats such as Autodesk’s own Filmbox (FBX) format, or that of prior overly complicated open standards such as COLLADA (DAE).
Interestingly, there was no mention of MAX, Maya or games in general in the entire article, arguably the biggest sector impacted by this announcement.