Article about Universal 3D by David Geer

Page 1

August 2005

T E C H N O L O G Y N E W S

Published by the IEEE Computer Society

roponents have long touted

the impending popularity of

3D technology on the Web.

They have contended that

before long, gamers and on-

line businesses would lead a parade of

users to 3D approaches to creating

Web content. However, these promises

have not come to fruition.

“A major reason for this is that there

has not been an open, affordable

approach to making existing 3D con-

tent accessible across multiple plat-

forms,” said Richard Boyd, CEO of

3Dsolve, a vendor of 3D-simulation-

based educational products and a 3D

Industry Forum (3DIF) board member.

For example, a major use of 3D

applications is in computer-aided

design. However, CAD applications

create data in proprietary formats, said

Kathleen Maher, a senior analyst with

Jon Peddie Research, a consulting firm.

This prevents users on other platforms

from working with CAD data. Even

nonengineering employees of compa-

nies that create CAD data often can’t

work with the information.

The Intel-led 3DIF developed the

Universal 3D file-format specification

as a way to make CAD data usable on

multiple platforms, explained Richard

Benoit, forum chair and business devel-

opment manager of Intel’s Software

Solutions Group. The 3DIF is a cross-

industry group of about 40 developers

and corporate users of 3D graphics

technology.

Proponents hope U3D will let devel-

opers incorporate 3D CAD data into

various applications, such as Web

browsers, thereby making 3D use more

widespread. This would also increase

demand for 3D development tools and

faster CPUs and graphics chips.

Intel and the 3DIF are working

with Ecma International (www.ecma-

international.org), an industry-based

standards-development organization.

They ultimately hope to make U3D an

ISO (International Organization for

Standardization) standard.

However, U3D faces several hur-

dles to widespread adoption, includ-

ing technical issues and competition

from similar specifications.

THE PUSH FOR U3D

Users have created 3D objects with

CAD applications such as CATIA, Pro/

Engineer, SolidWorks, and Unigraphics

since the late 1970s, said Neil Trevett,

vice president for embedded content at

graphics-chip maker Nvidia and pres-

ident of the Web3D Consortium,

developer of the Extensible 3D (X3D)

standard, a U3D rival.

However, Boyd said, the relative lack

of standards and open, affordable

tools has held back 3D development.

Nonetheless, 3D use has grown.

For example, as Figure 1 shows, in a

recent survey by market research firm

Gartner Inc. of US engineers who use

mechanical design applications, 72 per-

cent of respondents said they mainly

used 3D design in 2004, compared to

54 percent in 2000, noted Laurie Balch,

a Gartner principal analyst for design

and engineering.

Now that corporate and individual

users have broadband Internet con-

nections and computers with powerful

processors, Benoit said, more people

can receive, send, and work with 3D.

There is thus a demand by companies

for a way to use their 3D CAD-related

engineering data in nonengineering set-

tings by customer service, marketing,

sales, and other departments. However,

CAD products create large data sets in

proprietary formats that can take a long

time to transmit and that nonengineer-

ing departments can’t work with on the

applications they use.

“Viewing CAD data in mainstream

applications,” Benoit said, “in the past

has required proprietary software and

high-end hardware.”

“A number of software vendors have

developed digital content creation tools

to repurpose 3D data,” Boyd noted.

However, he said, the process is complex

and expensive because CAD data gen-

erally requires significant massaging to

yield content usable in business appli-

cations.

There is thus a demand for an open

file format, such as U3D, that would

enable easier, more widespread use of

3D CAD data, Trevett said.

U3D SPECIFICATION

The 3DIF has released a U3D speci-

fication, as well as sample runtime

libraries. The ISO is slated to approve

U3D later this year.

U3D, which would be added via

plug-ins to commercial tools that han-

dle CAD data, has already received

some major industry support.

Making 3D

Technology

Universal

David Geer

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Computer

T e c h n o l o g y N e w s

to work with files and lets them deter-

mine if they have the correct data with-

out waiting until it all arrives. More-

over, users can stop the transmission of

detail when they have enough to work

with.

U3D also supports rigid-body and

skeleton-based animation, which is

necessary for mechanical and charac-

ter animation and is thus important for

any complex-design application.

The technology offers file-format

and runtime extensibility via a plug-in

architecture that allows the addition of

new capabilities in the future.

OTHER 3D STANDARDS

There are several industry and for-

mal 3D standards in addition to U3D.

For example, Autodesk, which makes

digital-design and digital-content-cre-

ation software, developed the Design

Web Format for 2D and 3D engineer-

ing design. However, DWF can only be

used with the company’s products.

Kaydara, a 3D character-animation

and motion-editing products developer

acquired last year by 3D graphics-

software vendor Alias Systems, devel-

oped FBX, a platform-independent 3D

authoring and interchange format. The

product works with content from most

3D vendors and platforms. Because

FBX is proprietary, companies can’t

build on it and must use Alias tools to

work with the technology.

According to Boyd, U3D is more

useful than DWF or FBX because it is

open and gives users a high level of

control over the level of image detail

they work with. He said U3D is also

preferable because it can be used with

the popular Adobe Acrobat.

VRML

The 11-year-old Virtual Reality

Modeling Language is supported by

the Web3D Consortium, formerly the

VRML Consortium. VRML uses vec-

tor graphics, an approach that creates

digital images via a sequence of com-

mands or mathematical statements.

“VRML is a 3D file format delivered

over an Internet connection. The client

For example, Adobe Systems sup-

ports U3D so that its popular Acrobat

7.0 document-creation and -viewing

software can work with repurposed

CAD data.

Actify uses U3D in its newly

announced SpinFire for Microsoft

Office product, which embeds interac-

tive CAD data directly into documents.

3Dsolve includes U3D support in its

educational applications and its inter-

active, electronic, technical manuals

for the US Department of Defense.

What U3D accomplishes

U3D is designed to compress and

repurpose CAD data for use in other

applications.

CAD data, already written in pro-

prietary formats not accessible by

other applications, includes consider-

able product model detail germane

only to designers—such as part num-

bers, stress tolerance levels, and screw

threads. This detail could slow render-

ing on a standard desktop computer.

CAD files allow engineers working

on a product to examine, edit, and

otherwise manipulate the data in

numerous ways. U3D, on the other

hand, strips out the engineering data

and permits only the limited manipu-

lation of an image that marketing per-

sonnel, sales staff, and other non-

engineers would need to perform, such

as changing viewing angles, zooming

in and out, and looking at animations,

explained Benoit. Personnel could use

these files for many purposes, such as

creating support, assembly, repair, and

training manuals, as well as market-

ing material.

U3D capabilities

By stripping out most of the non-

image-related material and some of the

graphics-related information from

CAD files, U3D makes it more efficient

to distribute and stream CAD data over

the Internet and private networks. In

addition, this makes it easier for appli-

cations to work with the information.

The technology also offers continu-

ous level-of-detail capabilities. In send-

ing 3D models over networks, systems

build up layers of polygons and details

over time. Continuous level-of-detail

capabilities let users interact with the

material as it streams in. U3D thus

reduces the time users spend waiting

Source: Gartner Inc.

Respondents (percent)

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

Figure 1. A recent survey of US engineers who use mechanical design applications shows

steady growth in the adoption of 3D technology as their main design approach.

Page 3

August 2005

files. U3D generates 3D images via

polygons and thus requires larger files

than X3D to offer a given level of detail.

Developers are using X3D software

to build educational applications, engi-

neering programs, and more. Parisi

predicted that in the near future, X3D

will also be used in consumer applica-

tions such as computer games. How-

ever, the lack of many X3D tools limits

the technology’s usefulness, said Jon

Peddie Research’s Maher.

U3D’S POTENTIAL DOWNSIDE

U3D may have an uphill adoption

battle. Numerous attempts to create

industry Web-based 3D standards have

failed, including Adobe’s Atmosphere,

Microsoft’s Chromeffects, and the

Intel/Macromedia joint venture to pro-

mote Shockwave 3D on the Web.

They failed because of technical rea-

sons in some cases; because 3D is a

market with so many niches that it is

difficult for a single approach to appeal

to enough users to succeed; and

because the technologies weren’t con-

trolled by an open standards body, said

Nvidia’s Trevett.

According to Maher, the existence of

other 3D standards may keep some

potential users from working with U3D.

In addition, product designers may

well continue relying on their current

CAD vendor’s proprietary 3D visual-

ization applications and format because

of tight integration with existing

authoring tools, stated Ken Versprille,

a partner and product-lifecycle-man-

agement research director of Collabora-

tive Product Development Associates

(CPDA), a market-analysis firm.

And, according to Drust, because

U3D removes data from CAD files, the

technology loses some detail when ren-

dering graphics, particularly when

zooming in on an image. Moreover, he

software interprets the file format to

render 3D models, their surface prop-

erties, visual effects such as lighting, and

animated behaviors and user interac-

tion,” said Web3D Consortium direc-

tor Tony Parisi, president of Media

Machines, a vendor of 3D and other

rich-media technologies.

Developers use VRML to build

image sequences into Web pages.

VRML can let users with the proper

viewers or browsers interact with

images by, for example, changing the

way a digital room looks as they vir-

tually walk through it.

Because processors and Internet con-

nections were slow when VRML was

developed, there was little demand for

the technology, explained Jeff Drust, a

vice president of business development

for software vendor Lattice3D.

X3D

In 2002, the Web3D Consortium

developed VRML’s successor, X3D,

which is backward compatible with the

earlier technology. The ISO approved

X3D as a standard in August 2004.

“We added state-of-the-art render-

ing and enhanced programming capa-

bilities. We also added an XML-based

format,” said Parisi.

XML is key to integrating X3D with

the Web services architectures that an

increasing number of organizations use

for creating cross-platform distributed

applications, he explained. The ability

to deliver X3D data via XML-based

Web services is critical for its commer-

cial adoption, he said.

X3D’s mathematical model lets sys-

tems highly compress graphics for

quick transport while still retaining

considerable detail for display when

decompressed.

This enables X3D, like U3D, to make

CAD data easier to transport over net-

works, according to Lattice3D’s Drust.

The Web3D Consortium published its

first X3D draft for CAD—the CAD

Distillation Format—last year.

X3D generates images via encrypted,

highly compressed algorithms that sys-

tems execute when they open graphics

explained, U3D doesn’t offer as much

compression as X3D.

Finally, Drust said, U3D was

designed to work with single-CPU sys-

tems, which have dominated the com-

mercial-chip marketplace for years.

However, he added, the market is now

moving from single-CPU to multiple-

CPU platforms, and U3D won’t always

work well with the latter.

3D’s future depends, to some

extent, on the growth of 3D use.

Said Maher, “3D use is growing

on the Web, in design, and so on;

not as fast as some people would like,

but as fast as people need it to.”

According to the CPDA’s Versprille,

U3D will likely command much of the

market for viewing the technical docu-

mentation of products because it can be

used with Adobe’s popular technology.

Maher predicts that U3D will be

most successful in CAD environments,

for which it was specifically designed,

while X3D will prosper in other areas

such as Web development and enter-

tainment-related design.

There’s not much chance the groups

promoting the two technologies will

work to combine the standards

because the 3DIF’s core group of mem-

bers had already been part of the

Web3D Consortium before withdraw-

ing in 2003, Parisi said.

Nonetheless, Maher said, U3D

should have a future on its own. “The

world needs ways to communicate

between media-creation tools,” she

explained. “As long as there is a rich

and wide variety of tools, there is a

need for a rich and wide variety of

interchange formats. U3D is one of

these very useful formats.”

David Geer is a freelance technology

journalist based in Ashtabula, Ohio. Con-

tact him at david@geercom.com.

Editor: Lee Garber, Computer,

l.garber@computer.org

U3D will let developers

incorporate 3D CAD data

into other types

of applications.