CesiumJS just released a demo streaming over 135,000 buildings in Washington, DC using tiles of glTF in Cesium. The demo is fairly fast and there are more optimizations to come. Over 135,000 measurement-quality structures with rooftops from CyberCity 3D.

Cesium uses the web-friendly glTF format for 3D models. Cesium provides an online COLLADA-to-glTF converter that allows us to drag and drop a COLLADA model and its textures to produce a glTF model for use in Cesium. This blog post is a series of tips for authoring 3D models and then exporting them to COLLADA to get the best performance and robustness.

The COLLADA to glTF converter online tool allows you to convert your COLLADA models to glTF for use with Cesium. Simply drag-and-drop your COLLADA file (.dae) and any images it references by zipping them together. A self-contained glTF file will be downloaded once the conversion is finished, and a model preview will be shown below.

Cesium is an open-source JavaScript library for creating 3D globes and 2D maps in a web browser without a plugin. It uses WebGL for hardware-accelerated graphics and glTF for 3D models. Version 1.0 includes support for worldwide high-resolution terrain; global imagery from standards such as WMS and Bing Maps; vector data from GeoJSON and TopoJSON; and a large geometry library.

LibreOffice 4.3 now supports inserting 3D models in the glTF format into presentations (using libgltf). Currently this feature is only available for Linux and Windows. There is also limited support for 3D models in .dae and .kmz formats using collada2gltf.

Khronos is proud to share that Amobee, the company defining digital advertising relies on glTF as part of its workflow to create immersive 3D mobile ads with its cutting-edge Amobee 3D technology. Check it out!

Cesium has introduced full support for glTF models. A demo with example aircraft, ground vehicle, and character models is available. There is also a tutorial on how to use the Cesium API for glTF, and a tool to convert COLLADA to glTF (based on COLLADA2GLTF).

MontageJS has introduced a new WebGL-based component for the MontageJS framework. The 3D view component for MontageJS offers an abstraction layer for WebGL and aims to make the individual elements of a 3D scene just as easy to manipulate as conventional HTML elements in the page DOM. If your browser has WebGL enabled, you can try out a demo here. The MontageJS 3D view component is designed to load and display glTF content. The COLLADA working group provides Mac and Windows open source converters to translate COLLADA files into glTF.

Analytical Graphics, Inc. used the Cesium library with WebGL along with glTF assets to simulate Orbital’s Cygnus spacecraft mission to the International Space Station.

Dr Rémi Arnaud from AMD offers a great review the WebGL community and a round up of just how fast WebGL is catching on, from SIGGRAPH 2013. “The SIGGRAPH 2013 WebGL BOF definitely had the kind of energy and vibrant community that I took for granted when at Silicon Graphics, but have since learned is rare. WebGL is an enabler;” writes Remi.

The COLLADA Work Group invites you to attend the COLLADA/glTF BOF at SIGGRAPH 2013. The meeting will be on Wednesday July 24th at 2PM in the California Ballroom A&B at the Hilton Anaheim. There is a great line up for speakers, news and presentations.

• glTF updates and roadmap
  Fabrice Robinet - COLLADA Working Group Chair
• OpenCOLLADA upgrade
  Uli Klumpp - Smith Micro
• COLLADA and AutomationML
  Fabrice Robinet - COLLADA Working Group Chair
• Integrating glTF and Three.js
  Tony Parisi - SkyBox Networks
• glTF in Cesium
  Patrick Cozzi - Analytical Graphics Inc. and University of Pennsylvania
• Rest 3D
  Remi Arnaud - AMD

The COLLADA working group announces that it has delivered on key objectives agreed with the COLLADA community over the last year. By working with NetAllied, the OpenCOLLADA open-source importer/exporter has been significantly upgraded to provide proven, robust operation and hosted on GitHub for free and easy adoption by tools vendors and the COLLADA community. The OpenCOLLADA SDK offers direct write and parsing import capabilities, and robust support for full COLLADA import/export, which is superior to many commercial solutions. The COLLADA working group also announced the formation of the new “glTF” project to define a final stage OpenGL Transmission Format to enable rapid delivery and loading of 3D content by OpenGL®, OpenGL ES or WebGL™ APIs. More details are available in the press release.

The Khronos™ Group today announces that COLLADA™ 1.5.0 has been published as an official ISO standard to provide a reliable, long-term international standard for 3D asset authoring and interchange. ISO SC4 TC184 has published ISO/PAS 17506 to enable developers to create tools to process COLLADA resources to import to or export from digital content creation (DCC) applications, 3D interactive applications and tool chains, prototyping tools and real-time visualization applications.