A few days ago, The Khronos Group released a glTF Viewer for iOS. Eric Chadwick from DGG prepared a demo piece for the viewer, and it has been added to the glTF Sample Model library. Let’s have a look at the special features of this asset.  

But first, what is the Khronos glTF Viewer? 

The Khronos glTF Viewer is an easy-to-use iOS application that allows users to view and interact with 3D models in the Khronos glTF 2.0 file format on iPhones and iPads and includes support for viewing in augmented reality. It was created by the Khronos 3D Formats Tooling TSG and the source code is available on GitHub; developer feedback is welcome. More information about the new viewer can be found in the Khronos blogpost.  

glTF Pot of Coals – the sample model and its features 

Working with the Tooling TSG, Eric Chadwick created this “glTF Pot of Coals” sample asset to showcase what glTF can do with metallic roughness, clearcoat, and emission, in the Khronos glTF Viewer. It’s also a great asset to test animation effects. He created refractive heat distortion by adding a disc shape on top, as if the hot coals were releasing heat into the air. This disc uses the specular, transmission and volume extensions, to cause a non-reflective bumpy glass-like surface, which distorts the hot coals underneath. Then a simple rotation animation is all it takes to get the distortion moving. 

The asset is currently available in the glTF Sample Asset library with a separate pull request to add the animation. The effect is still a work in progress, with possibilities to improve the animation by potentially using the draft extension KHR_animation_pointer.  

Check out the Khronos glTF Viewer and choose the Pot of Coals from one of the several pre-loaded sample models. The clearcoat surface effect creates a beautiful shine on top of the rougher copper surface underneath.  

Why are we working on this topic? 

Moving 3D standards and workflows forward, and thereby accelerating the whole 3D industry, is one of our key activities at DGG (see this punctual lights model for another example and check out the recordings of our recent 3D Pipeline Days event for some deep dives into related topics). 

With the goal of making 3D technology broadly accessible and helping everyone to automate their workflows at scale, we at DGG are in a unique position. We are seeking to understand all possible content creation methods and enable a broad variety of content creation workflows, with standardized best practices (see the Khronos Asset Creation Guidelines).  

Providing mission critical automation tooling “in the middle” is our key mission, making 3D assets as easy to handle as images or videos, and working on 3D standards plays a vital role in this effort. We believe that standardized formats will ultimately benefit all of us, and act as a key driver for the adoption of 3D media, real-time 3D and XR.